'You can shop right here': Merchants light up Maple Valley

Starting Saturday, the entire Maple Valley business district on Copley Road in West Akron will be lit for the holidays.

Area entrepreneurs also have arranged for holiday displays at local retailers with the goal of attracting shoppers.

"This is our biggest year for donations," said Fannette Morris, president of the Maple Valley Merchants Business Association.

"This year we'll actually be able to have Christmas lights starting at Pizza Hut all the way up to the corner of Hawkins and Copley Road, so we'll have the whole business district covered."

Revitalize: Maple Valley festival celebrates West Akron neighborhood

Christmas trees also are on display in and around various businesses, including the local Walgreens and CVS pharmacies and the Save A Lot grocery store.

Morris said the hope is to keep people in town when they do their holiday shopping.

"We don't want them to have to go to another community," Morris said. "You can shop right here in your community − so we have lit up Copley Road.

"Our slogan is 'For the community − Buy the community.'"

Morris said volunteer "ambassadors" from the association's 11 member businesses have been gathering donations and helping set up the display. Donations were still coming in days before Thanksgiving and the final strings of lights are scheduled to be turned on Saturday.

Morris said the association's stockpile of lights and decorations now fills a small shed, but may end up being stored next year in a new facility being developed by the Progressive Alliance Community Development Corp., a non-profit founded in 2018 to support the West Akron community along Copley Road.

Ward 5 Councilwoman-elect Janice Davis, who will take the seat currently held by Councilman Russ Neal in January, also helped with the work. Morris credited her for help gathering volunteers to put up decorations.

"She's been very, very hands-on," Morris said.

Davis said Morris and the merchants association should be recognized for their work over the last three years to revitalize the area.

"We have to make a concerted effort to clean up the business district and make it safe," Davis said. "Somebody has to go out and start the effort and Fannette took the initiative. She got ambassadors on board and she's been with them for three or four years."

Davis said that since her election, she's learned from a consulting firm that there is around $500 million in buying power between residents of Wards 3 and 4 in the city.

"That money is going out to Montrose and Fairlawn and locations like that. We can use that money," she said.

The more support there is for local shopping, she said, the more likely it is for outside investment to come to the neighborhood.

"For organizations and businesses to come to our community, we're going to have to show that we want it and we show that by cleaning it it up and making it safe and making it friendly," she said.

Eric Marotta can be reached at emarotta@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Maple Valley merchants expand Copley Road holiday displays in Akron