"A great starting spot for anything you want to do in the Akron area, from eating breakfast to getting a tattoo." That's how a longtime salon owner near Ayers Avenue describes the crossroads where West Market Street, West Exchange Street and Hawkins Avenue meet, and if you've driven through Wallhaven lately, you've probably felt the same thing. Ken Stewart's Grille still has a wait on weekends. The original Swenson's still runs its curb-service line down Hawkins. Acme Fresh Market, Whole Foods and a newly opened ALDI sit within a few blocks of each other, close enough that a lot of people from Highland Square, Fairlawn Heights and even Copley end up running errands here instead of closer to home.
What's changed isn't the businesses you already know. It's what's happening one block off Market Street, where a 72-year-old firehouse has been sitting empty for almost two years with no public word on what comes next, even after the city went looking for someone to take it.
The Firehouse That Moved Three Blocks, And The One That Didn't
Akron Fire Station No. 12 served Wallhaven from 1852 W. Market St. starting in 1952. By the time the city broke ground on its replacement in May 2023, the old building was flooding in the parking lot and needed steel beams in the basement just to hold the weight of the fire trucks upstairs. The new station, about 15,000 square feet and roughly $9.5 million, went up three blocks away at 112 S. Hawkins Ave. Firefighters moved in on November 13, 2024, and the department held an open house that weekend where hundreds of residents came through to check out the new building's fold-in doors, its two decontamination sauna pods, and a workout room the old station never had.
The old building at 1852 W. Market St. closed the same month. In October 2025, the city put out a call for developers, specifically asking for proposals that would reuse the existing structure rather than tear it down. As of this writing, no developer has been publicly named.
Here's the timeline, side by side:
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| May 16, 2023 | Groundbreaking on new Fire Station 12, 112 S. Hawkins Ave. |
| November 13, 2024 | New station opens; old station at 1852 W. Market St. retires after 72 years |
| October 3, 2025 | City issues RFP seeking adaptive reuse proposals for the old building |
| September 2026 | No developer publicly announced |
Eighteen Months To Build, Longer To Decide
Construction on the new firehouse took about a year and a half, from groundbreaking to move-in. The old building has now sat vacant longer than that, and the clock is still running with no announced buyer. The city's request for proposals didn't set a public deadline for a decision, and nothing has surfaced since to suggest one is close. For a corner this visible, at a crossroads Wallhaven itself is named for (the neighborhood took its name from the old Wallhaven Hotel and service station that once anchored the same stretch), that's a longer stretch of uncertainty than the new station took to become a building at all.
The Grant Program Wallhaven Is In, But Not All The Way In
While the firehouse question sits unresolved, smaller money has been moving through Wallhaven's storefronts. Akron's Great Streets Akron Initiative covers 13 Neighborhood Business Districts, Wallhaven among them, and has awarded more than $2 million to local businesses since the program started in 2018. The most recent round, announced in December 2025, split roughly $400,000 between two pools: about $229,785 in matching building improvement grants and $165,000 in micro-enterprise grants, together touching 14 properties and 40 entrepreneurs citywide.
The city's published program guidelines spell out one detail for Wallhaven: businesses in the Wallhaven district do not qualify for the Matching Façade Grant, the pool of money meant for brick cleaning, new doors and windows, and signage. Eligibility for that particular grant is pegged to household earnings in the census block where a business sits, a federal requirement tied to the Community Development Block Grant funding behind it. Wallhaven is still counted among the 13 official districts. It just isn't eligible for the specific dollars meant to fix up the buildings themselves.
"The neighborhood has become too commercialized with chain retail stores."
That's a complaint one Wallhaven business owner raised in a recent Akron Documenters profile, and it lands differently once you know which grant this district can't tap into. The money that helps a small storefront freshen its exterior is reaching Firestone Park, Goodyear Heights and ten other Akron neighborhoods. Wallhaven's own buildings are on the outside of that particular door.
The New Branch Everyone Actually Noticed
Contrast that with how fast private money moved into the same crossroads this year. 717 Credit Union opened its first-ever Akron branch at 1 N. Hawkins Ave., Suite 2, in Wallhaven on April 6, 2026, its first new branch anywhere in eight years. It's part of a larger push: the credit union planned four Ohio branches in 2026 alone, including one downtown, one in Stow and one in Streetsboro, backed by a $100 million commitment to affordable housing initiatives across northeastern Ohio called the Ohio Strong Campaign. CEO John Demmler called it "a new birth for 717" as the institution grows into the Akron market. From announcement to ribbon-cutting, that branch came together in a matter of months. The firehouse three blocks away has been waiting for a decision for nearly a year.
What This Means If You're Watching That Stretch Of Market Street
None of this changes what's already working in Wallhaven. Acme, Whole Foods and ALDI are still there for the last-minute grocery run. Ken Stewart's is still the fine-dining answer on the west side. The Art of Essence, at 1963 Ayers Ave., is still doing hair after 14 years in the neighborhood, and the Anne T. Case Community Learning Center is still anchoring the residential side of the district. What's different is the gap between how fast visible, private investment can land here and how slowly the public side of the equation is moving on its own biggest vacant property.
If you live near this crossroads, the two things worth watching are the same two things nobody's answered yet: who ends up with 1852 W. Market St., and whether Wallhaven's own storefronts ever get folded into the façade grant pool the way the rest of the Great Streets districts already have. Both are open questions right now, not settled ones, no matter how many other things at this corner look finished.
Shelly Booth keeps an eye on what's actually changing in the neighborhoods she covers, not just what's easy to find. If you want to know what's happening on your own block before it shows up anywhere else, Shelly Booth is a good person to ask.
