AKRON, Ohio - Can this city finally plan a downtown revival that sticks?

Dozens of Akron leaders in business, foundations, government and the nonprofit sector say the answer is yes.

And they could be right if the Rubber City, America's one-time leader in tire manufacturing, is serious about making downtown a livable, walkable place, rather than a speed zone for cars.

Doing that will mean following the example of cities across the nation including Cleveland that have lured millennials, young professionals and empty nesters with housing, supermarkets, restaurants and walkable, bikeable streetscapes.

That's precisely where Akron now appears to be headed after decades in which it viewed downtown just as a place to work, attend a convention or see a ballgame.

First cut at a big idea

At a press conference on Tuesday, several dozen civic leaders, led by Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan, rolled out the still highly conceptual first phase of what they called the city's first comprehensive downtown plan, ever.

The setting provided a sense of urgency. It was the unheated and partially renovated lobby of the Landmark Building, formerly Akron Savings & Loan, at 156 S. Main St., the site of a residential redevelopment that has stalled and that the city is trying to reboot.

Financed by $65,000 in grants from the GAR and Knight foundations, and led by the Downtown Akron Partnership, the nascent planning effort identified Main Street as its principal focus.

Details are still hazy, but the city hopes to use tax abatements and other incentives to convince developers to convert vacant offices to apartments or condos with ground floor retail shops and restaurants, and to start filling the city's empty blocks.

To boost the transformation, the city wants to create high-quality public spaces and to turn one-way thoroughfares into scaled down, two-way streets with pedestrian-friendly sidewalks and safe routes for bicyclists.

Jason Segedy, the city's social-media-savvy and widely respected new planning director, said Akron's goal is to grow its population from 198,000 to 250,000 by 2050, with a healthy slice of that increase occurring downtown.

"We unashamedly say we want to grow the population," Segedy said. "We don't believe in a shrinking city."

Catching up

Akron is starting from a low base, with a downtown population that hovers around 2,600, less than a fifth of the residential population of 14,000 in downtown Cleveland.

Beyond a sense that Akron is lagging its peers in downtown revitalization, the city's leaders are alarmed over an office vacancy rate that has jumped from 11.9 percent to 23.5 percent over the past five years, spurred by an outmigration of employers.

"The vitals are reaching a crisis," said Kyle Kutuchief, Akron program officer of the Miami-based Knight Foundation.

Also troubling is that the University of Akron, a big anchor next to downtown, saw enrollment drop after the turbulent two-year presidency of Scott Scarborough, who roiled the 23,000-student campus with layoffs and a failed attempt at rebranding before he resigned in May.

Crisis and opportunity

Kutuchief said that Horrigan's election as mayor last year gave the city a chance to rethink downtown after nearly 30 years under the previous mayor, Donald Plusquellic.

"We have a man [in the mayor's office] who is a recreational cyclist," Kutuchief said, speaking of Horrigan. "He knows what it's like to be out on a road without a protected bike lane and getting buzzed by a car."

Horrigan's office did not respond to a request for an interview, although the mayor's enthusiasm for downtown planning was on full view Tuesday.

"This is the first time we actually gathered most if not all of the stakeholders and asked them not what's going on, but what do you want to see in downtown?" Horrigan, a former City Council member and clerk of the Summit County Common Pleas Court, said at the press conference.

The question is whether the new downtown vision will work better than anything Akron has tried in the past.

And try, it has.

Downtown is a virtual open-air museum of planning fads and fashions from the past half-century that have failed to sustain long-term vitality.

Follower of fashion

That legacy, ironically, accounts for some of the biggest obstacles the city will face in its newest attempt to reshape downtown.

Nostrums from the past have included the oversized and heavily engineered downtown Innerbelt Freeway, designed in the 1960s to zoom suburban commuters into and out of downtown.

The highway instead encouraged sprawl and obliterated a black working-class neighborhood.

Catering to commuters, the city turned major thoroughfares into one-way speedways to hasten traffic.

The city also created a mile-long system of over-street walkways and tunnels that connects parking garages to major office buildings, enabling workers to zip to and from their desks without stepping outside.

Dull on foot

Even if you do venture out for a stroll, downtown can be pretty boring. Garages and parking lots account for roughly a third of downtown's blocks, according to data collected by planners.

Akron retains a scattered collection of magnificent historic landmarks such as the 28-story, Art Deco-style FirstMerit Tower at 106 S. Main.

But developers and businesses also built modernist glass and concrete office towers atop elevated plazas set well back from streets and sidewalks, such as Cascade Plaza, just south of the FirstMerit Tower. And it often allowed new buildings to flank streets with blank walls.

Some 53 percent of the street frontages downtown are marred by unsightly gaps, including garages and parking lots, said Suzie Graham, president and CEO of the Downtown Akron Partnership.

As if to compensate, Summit County's Metro Regional Transit Authority gussied up Main Street in the late 1980s with brick sidewalks, new bus shelters and other amenities.

But the sidewalks have since buckled and heaved in spots, and Main Street often feels deserted.

Plusquellic, a forceful and at times controversial mayor who served for 28 years before his abrupt resignation in 2015, buttressed downtown with big new attractions.

Big projects

On his watch, the city built a new convention center, a minor-league ballpark for the Akron Rubber Ducks, and Inventure Place, the one-time home of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and now a STEM middle school. (After financial difficulties in the middle 2000s, the Hall of Fame moved its headquarters to Canton, and its museum to Alexandria, Va.).

Downtown Akron's Inventure Place is a big project that fizzled. Once a museum, it's now a middle school.

Akron also welcomed the Towpath Trail, the 101-mile hike and bike path that connects downtown to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and to points as far south as Zoar and New Philadelphia.

But the islands of excitement didn't add up.

"You have those set pieces in place," said Andrew Overbeck, a planner with the Columbus firm of MKSK, the lead consultant on the new downtown plan, referring to the big projects of the Plusquellic years. "It's the fabric between them that's been eroded."

One of the last big initiatives under Plusquellic was the city's 2014 decision to remove the last mile of the Innerbelt, otherwise known as State Route 59, and to open up 30 acres adjacent to Cascade Plaza for redevelopment.

But as Horrigan and others said at Tuesday's press conference, filling those acres would have to wait until the downtown core improves.

Fixing the gray zones

What comes next will be defined by a second round of planning with specific, block-by-block suggestions for Main Street and plenty of public feedback.

But Kutuchief said that foundations and the city aren't waiting to get started.

In September, Akron became one of four cities nationwide to win a $5 million Reimagining the Civic Commons grant from the JPB, John S. and James L. Knight, Rockefeller and Kresge foundations.

The Ohio & Erie Canalway Coalition will use the money to revitalize the downtown section of the Towpath Trail.

The organization scheduled a free, family-friendly "Harvest Fest" Friday and Saturday at Lock 4 Park to highlight early improvements to the cage-like Towpath Trail bridge over the Innerbelt, including lighting, planters and movable benches.

In July, the city landed a $5 million federal TIGER grant, short for Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery, to turn 13 blocks of Main Street into a "complete and green street," with dedicated bike lanes and attractive landscaping that soaks up storm runoff.

Such efforts typify the new emphasis on bite-sized improvements to the public realm that the city sees as imperative after the big projects of the Plusquellic years.

Streets for people

And that viewpoint is justified by successes in Cleveland and many other cities that have focused on taming the car, focusing on street-level livability and creating a sense of place.

"We've got to hop to it," Kutuchief said. "Time is not our friend on this. We have to get moving."