Roth said as people moved to the suburbs, development in Fairlawn began to boom in the 1980s, with the mall and local businesses feeding off each other and attracting people to the area by offering multiple shopping options. Fairlawn was more rural then,” said Roth, the Fairlawn mayor since 1996. "You had housing, you had retail obviously on Market Street, but. Co.īefore the mall’s construction, Fairlawn Mayor Bill Roth said the area was “pretty rural,” with the village not becoming a city until 1971. selected a triangle formed by West Market Street, Ghent Road and Smith Road, with each point of the triangle anchored by a department store: M. Summit Mall, Greater Akron’s first all-enclosed, temperature-controlled mall, opened in October 1965, two years ahead of Chapel Hill Mall - and six years before Fairlawn even became a city - as shoppers moved from Akron to the suburbs.įor its location, Youngstown developer Edward J. “It's lifestyle-based.”įrom rural village to booming shopping center “I think that's the biggest evolution piece of what keeps us relevant in the market is that we're not just retail-based,” said Kaylie West, Summit Mall’s director of marketing and business development. It’s diversified itself, with sit-down restaurants, activities and an array of local and national stores - a move that could mean it survives in the era of the dying mall. Mall and city officials say Summit Mall is not just a collection of retail shops. In the Akron area, Rolling Acres is gone, and the county last week filed a foreclosure complaint against the owner of Chapel Hill.īut Summit Mall has withstood the fallout and is, in fact, thriving, with nearly every space in the mall occupied and a steady stream of visitors. FAIRLAWN - As customers have shifted from shopping in person to shopping online, malls have suffered.
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