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Akron Blu Zone hotel anchors entertainment district
RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter
Published: January 16, 2020
Anthony B. “Tony” Troppe has had a vision of the revitalization of downtown Akron for more than two decades.
“Twenty years ago, First Night 1999, I was downtown, and I had an idea,” said Troppe, speaking to a group of people at the official opening of the new BLU-tique hotel at 1 South Main Street and playing flute to entertain the crowd.
“That idea,” he said, “has come to fruition.”
That idea, shared by a few others at city hall and throughout the community, was a reboot of the northern end of downtown Akron into an arts and entertainment district, repurposing historic buildings and bringing a vibrant cultural life back to the city.
After two decades acquiring properties, opening clubs and building downtown residential structures in the neighborhood of Market and Main, Troppe opened his BLU-tique Hotel at New Year’s Eve as the capstone of his efforts.
The approximately $10 million project was co-developed by the Riley Hospitality Group of Medina and financed using historic building credits along with bank loans and other local funding.
The former United Building, once a cigar company and a semi-vacant office building, completes the redevelopment of this historic corner.
Troppe described an eight-story, 50,000-square-foot building with 71 rooms, a piano bar, café, restaurant and meeting, conference and party rooms that anchors his “Blu Zone” neighborhood development that started with his vision 20 years ago.
It joins his Blu Plate restaurant and Blu Jazz music club, as well as Cascade Lofts, the Everett Building, Uncorked Wine Bar, High Street Hop House, Musica, and other sites to complete a restructuring of what was once a decaying urban landscape in the neighborhood.
Among the crowd at the opening, David Lieberth had a smile on his face looking around the bright new facility.
He had his office in the building that became the BLU-tique Hotel for three years, he said.
Lieberth had served for 10 years as assistant to Mayor Don Plusquellic as the point person in charge of redeveloping downtown Akron.
A former journalist who has also practiced law, he now runs his own consulting group. He was standing in the building when the purchase deal was made years ago, he said.
The hotel is the centerpiece of both Troppe’s and Lieberth’s vision for a new, modern and attractive downtown.
Lieberth said that the thought process behind how to go about redeveloping downtown has always been “what will bring people to the city and keep them here?”
The here has been a lot of progress downtown, said Lieberth, but he thinks that it is almost hidden, at least in terms of public awareness.
“People don’t realize how consequential that progress has been,” he said.
Sitting at the bar in the new hotel space he talked about how unique a vision it is to create residential property downtown, as Troppe and company have done with Lofts Akron, and particularly with the residential lofts at Everett.
“The goal is to draw people to live in the city,” he said, noting that the burgeoning technology industries scattered around town are bringing young people downtown and keeping local talent at home to a greater extent than at any time in the recent past.
People not from Akron are moving to town for tech jobs, but there are other reasons as well, said Troppe—helped along by the live arts and music scene he helped create in the neighborhood.
One young musician named Jake Olsen came to Akron from Seattle because it was “the most affordable good city to live in in the country.”
Since landing here and buying a house, he has played all over town and formed a band. He wears an “Akron” sweatshirt everywhere. He may be the next big act to break it out of Akron, and he said that he is here because this is the best city in the country for him.
Lieberth was excited to hear about Olsen’s story.
Today, Lieberth’s old office space on the third floor has been converted into two hotel rooms and Lieberth has seen the city start and continue an economic and cultural upswing.
“It has all been a team effort, and there is plenty of credit to go around,” he said. “But Tony Troppe is the most visionary person I know. He has been in the forefront (of redevelopment) for 20 years.”
A tour of the building with Troppe and Lieberth (and Trope’s father Fred, who also used to have an office on the third floor) showed a building that is both classical (marble floors) and modern (white walls and ceilings), with a lounge area that can seat up to 100. The rooms are very comfortable-to-luxurious and reservations are in up until April, Troppe said.
Troppe has brought in Frank Zupher, formerly chef at Virtues, to run the restaurant called The 1 (open in late January).
Troppe’s Blu Zone entertainment district is inspired, he said, by an overall environmental vision that comes from a study of human health and longevity centered around so-called “Blue Zones.”
Those are communities around the planet that show a high degree of health and longevity.
Troppe said that one of the aspects of Blue Zones are close-knit communities—healthy communities that contribute to the health of individuals. That view works into his general vision for Akron, he said—a vibrant, healthy community grounded in the arts and food.
Troppe, sitting in his then-unfinished lobby, looked around at the view of the corner through the windows, feeling a sense of completeness he said but also ready to continue to move forward. He said that his organization is looking to expanding into other cities to drop in an urban development like the Blu Zone.
“This is a replicable model,” he said.
In particular, he is looking at cities that have or had Knight-Ridder newspapers—cities like Macon, Georgia, Miami, Detroit, Charlotte, San Jose, Philadelphia and St. Paul.
These are the kinds of cities, he said, that at their urban core have historic commercial buildings that can be repurposed into entertainment districts similar to what has been accomplished in Akron.
But for now, Akron is it, and the future remains to be seen.