Destination Akron
During 2017-2018’s @PLAY Akron project, our team explored every street in the City of Akron and interviewed thousands of residents. While mapping the Sherbondy Hill and West Akron neighborhoods, we were struck by the number of kids who bemoaned the lack of “destination worthy” landmarks in their neighborhood. They longed for something creative and iconic that they could take their friends to. When pressed for more ideas and details, the kids often mentioned the iconic script letterform Cleveland sculpture.
We put out a call for artists to see if a similar sculpture could be produced for $10,000 or less with a portion of our @PLAY Akron grant. A local Akron artist and graphic designer named Jeremy Jenkins responded to the call with several compelling ideas. As we reviewed and discussed preliminary designs, we decided that four letterform A’s would be more striking and beneficial for our mission.
Art x Love engaged John Comunale, a famous and prolific Akron metalworker, to partner with Jeremy in producing the Destination Akron benches. Jeremy reached out to Akron’s oldest company, APV Coatings, and secured a special teflon coating to color each bench.
The Destination Akron letterform benches are sculptures and functional pieces of furniture. They were designed to be installed on the North, South, East, and West sides of Akron. In the summer of 2018, the first Destination Akron bench was unveiled at the Signal Tree Festival in downtown Akron’s Lock 3 park.
As the @PLAY Akron project came to a close at the end of 2018, Art x Love partnered with the Soap Box Derby (East), Stan Hywet (North), Summit County Historical Society (West), and Firestone Park (South) to install the benches. Unfortunately, the bench at the Summit County Historical Society could not be installed due to an ongoing archeological excavation.
In 2024, Art x Love engaged the North Hill CDC and secured permission to move the Summit County Historical Society’s bench to the newly constructed Howard Street Heritage Courtyard. Art x Love also secured a Neighborhood Partnership grant from Akron City Council to restore the benches so that our vision of an incentivized tour of the Destination Akron benches could be fully realized.
