Elizabeth Park is the old site for the first AMHA housing project that was replaced with mixed income housing now called Cascade Village. The original housing project was the location for many low income families after the displacement cause by the Innerbelt/Rt 59. This displacement caused many African Americans to never own their own businesses nor their own houses again. Since the displacement the original housing project, Elizabeth Park, was considered ground zero of Akron’s crack epidemic in the 1980’s-1990’s. The in the mid 2000’s they decided to create mixed income housing units in the old park and turn the site of the row housing into a city park. Since then the neighborhood has seen the installation of the City of Akron’s CFO basin and the installation of many mid to upper class restaurants put within a block or two of the site. In 2019 Elizabeth Park won the Akron Park’s Challenge and started seeing amenities brought to the park. Through the consistent work of The Big Love Network and the Living Water Association, Akron’s first public food forest was born! 7+ years of door knocking, bbqs, and neighborhood programming has gone into producing this food forest. It has paid off! After 3 years of planting edible, mostly perennial plants, the park was completely picked out as of the the summer of 2022. Neighbors take great pride in there food forest and have expressed a desire to expand it throughout the neighborhood. Although demand is high and the rewards to neighbors’ health and the local ecosystem are great, getting funding for understory plants has been spotty at best. Thanks to our partners at the Community Life Center and SoSA, we are finally able to plant the understory plants this neighborhood so rightly deserves! Join us to help plant and for food and fun on April 29 12-6pm!