Jul 20, 2023

Greetings,

Just a reminder that during the summer months the rectory offices are closing at 3pm on Fridays. Regular hours will return as we near the opening of the academic year.

IN OTHER NEWS:

TRAFFIC CIRCLE: This week volunteers gathered to work on the frst stage of landscaping the Mull/Hawkins circle. Keep Akron Beautiful, Akron’s Finest Mulch and Alpha Phi Alpha have joined together with the parish and concerned residents to enhance and make safer this entrance way into West Akron. It will eventually involve a local work of art at its center but that is several steps away. It is hoped that better lighting and more visibility will not only make it more beautiful but safer as well.

MULL AVENUE: This week we were expecting the sidewalk along the north side of the parish (the side that runs along Mull Avenue) to be removed. Since nobody is able to park along Mull Avenue this should not cause any further disruption to your ability to make it to Mass. Soon they will be pouring new sidewalks and aprons and access walks. For those who park along Elmdale or in the brick parking lot, your walk from your car to the church will not change at all. This past week they have been laying new lines for new lampposts, grading the devil strips and preparing to pour more concrete to form the access roads. So far things are still on schedule! Pray for nice weather with no rain, so everything can be fnished before school begins.

SCHNEIDER PARK: Along with the construction occurring on the Perkins property, if we were not surrounded enough by construction, the city is fnally installing a walkway around Schneider Park! So far it looks beautiful. There are also plans for trails crisscrossing the park, but I have been told by our councilman that there will be a community meeting in August (TBA) to discern whether that would be a wise move or not.

There is also a petition going around to change the name of the park. For those who do not know, when the park was donated to the city it came with the stipulation that no structures could be built there. This is at least in part because it was once a cemetery for the county home. When the home was moved, there was an efort to move the cemetery but there are all kinds of stories and rumors that they were not as thorough as one would hope.

The University of Akron attempted some tests at the park to determine if there were in fact still remains located there but the soil has too much clay in it for the equipment to be able to give conclusive results. So, there is a movement to rename the park Schneider Memorial Park out of respect for who were there and who might still be!

WORK AT THE PARISH: Our summer team continues to work diligently on the school, painting and cleaning. There will also be work done on our church air conditioning. Although we just recently replaced so much of it, it is not running as well as it seems it should. Those who installed it are returning to make some adjustments and replace some parts under our warranty. There have also been upgrades to our security system across the parish. Other than that (ha) it has been a rather quiet week!

God bless,

Fr. Valencheck