Downtown Kent’s Redevelopment Project Revitalizes Competition

The recent redevelopment plans for the city of Kent has been continuing to revitalize Downtown Kent rising in the most recent years

“In many respects downtowns are the front porch of a community,” Dave Ruller, Kent City Manager, said.  “They are often what visitors see first and they create the overall impression of a community and with only one chance to make a great first impression, downtown was very important to Kent’s future.  Both the city and the university recognize the social, cultural and economic value of a vibrant downtown so we partnered up and got busy raising the bar in downtown Kent.”

In addition to the community revitalization that has resulted from the project, economic success has shown to follow as more people began visiting downtown. Ruller said redevelopment planned never have a beginning or end, but the city’s more recent success in the project began gaining traction in 2009.

The numbers also show the  overall total economic growth of the city of Kent as a whole. From 2009, the supposed beginning of the projects time frame started with a grand total of $10,482,215.25 in revenue tax incomes for the entirety of the city of Kent.  By 2011, with the similar total income tax revenue was $10,711,488.37, in only one year later in 2012 once new areas as well as Acorn Alley  and the newest businesses beginning to gain more popularity, showed a jump in revenue income tax total of $12,067,197.56, an addition of  $1,000,000.

Though with new economic businesses popping up in the city, so has more competition. The project brought many new local businesses and even now, more is being planned to help with the efficiency of maximizing parking for the downtown area through expansion of infrastructure and more parking.

However, has this growth in new businesses may have created a over population of new businesses, especially restaurants. In just the past two years, there have been approximately 10-13 new restaurants have opened in that last 2 years said Bridget Susel, Community Development Director of the City of Kent.

Some small local business restaurants have gotten their start in Kent during this redevelopment project, with a lot of success in the downtown area in revenue from even citizens outside of the city.

“We’ve definitely seen a huge draw of surrounding cities’ residents coming in,” said T.J. Ingersoll, the owner and general manager of the Fresco Mexican Grill & Salsa Bar in Downtown Kent. “Which before, I know, was just a lot of local and student business was the main business in Kent where now we have people from the Falls, from Stow, Streetsboro, Ravenna, Hudson, all over the surrounding cities are coming in, especially in the summer.”

Ingersoll had first wanted to set his restaurant in Kent for the great location and did well since Fresco first opened in 2012. Fresco has been gaining revenue every year, said Ingersoll, but in the first few weeks it opened he said it was slow because people were weary of new places in the city.

“People don’t like change,” Ingersoll said. “And that’s understandable.”

But after word of mouth, he said his restaurant gained popularity very quickly as more new business started coming up in the area.

On the other side of the spectrum, this growth gives some long time business owners who have been here for a while feeling fine and welcome the competition, said Charlie Thomas, owner of Ray’s Place. Thomas has owned the restaurant since 1978 but the business itself has been around since 1937, Thomas said.

But right now Thomas wants to keep caring for the customers that come in, and said he isn’t really worried about expanding.

Thomas already expected the drop in sales once the new stores started popping up in 2012. After about 6 months, Thomas said he started getting his customers back.

Thomas also said the restaurant had already gotten renovations in 2007, which also, he said he believes, was the first real redevelopment followed by the rest of the city.

But some other owners may be like Mike Beder, owner of the Water Street Tavern, Tree City Coffee and the new Venice Cafe, who has mixed feelings about the new restaurants emerging in the city.

“I’m on two sides of the fence with all of it.” Beder said. “Because Tree City was built within that revitalization period and Water Street (Tavern) existed before it, and Venice Cafe I got after the development came in, so I’m kind of all over the place from my involvement in all of that.”

Beder said he believes, ultimately, that competition is a good thing and any business that was in Kent before the project started knew this competition was coming.

But with all the reward comes great risks as a number of shops that have lost their businesses. As an experienced entrepreneur, Beder gave his thoughts on the success and failure rate in downtown.

“I think the market’s saturated with restaurants that have pretty similar concepts,” Beder said. “I think that’s where some of those fell to the wayside and I don’t know if you can really blame development, per say, on all of that. In a normal couple year span in any city, and some places are going to make it and some aren’t.”

Since the project began over five years ago, the project had a total of close to $130 million invested in all of the downtown redevelopment, said Ruller. And the city, he said, is just one partner among many investors.

“The City has invested roughly $10 million and we have utilized over 18 different funding sources to pay our share, including federal, state, regional and local grants, loans and debt instruments,” Ruller said. “At this point, our share of the revenues from the project are covering our annual debt payments which is a couple hundred thousand a year.  As to the revenues from the other $120 million, I don’t have that information.”

The redevelopment project in Kent succeeded in its goal to revitalize the community, infrastructure and economics beyond expectations. However, as some have found, its economic impact has made ripples in the local economy, with a possible similar trend for 2014.

Bruce Walton is  a city reporter at the Daily Kent Stater, to contact him email him at bwalton4@kent.edu