Kajima Builds in Akron
By Maura Webber Sadovi
Wall Street Journal real estate writer
Published: October 26, 2011
Download a PDF of this article
While many real-estate players pass over the nation's midsection in favor of the coasts, Akron has tapped a subsidiary of Japanese construction company Kajima Corp. to help remake and revitalize a 50-block swath of the Ohio city.
The University Park Alliance, a nonprofit group that gets funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, said this week that KUD International, the Kajima subsidiary, will act as the developer of the area around the University of Akron.
Planners see hundreds of millions of dollars in construction and renovations.
KUD expects to bring in other developers for various pieces of the plan, which is slated to include new housing, offices and retail, according to Tom Winter, senior vice president of KUD.
The area contains many older low- to moderate-income single-family homes and some vacant lots. "Today … communities and institutions are simply stuck," Mr. Suomi says. "We help them get unstuck." KUD has worked on other large scale public-private projects such as the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, Calif.
