For most of a century, the most important building in Firestone Park has been the one nobody lived in.
Firestone Plant #1 — the original headquarters of the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company, with its iconic clock tower rising over South Main Street — has anchored this neighborhood since before most of the houses around it were built. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2014. And in 2025 and 2026, it became the center of a fight: city employees asked council to approve demolishing the entire 115-year-old structure after determining it would cost too much to save, while council members stalled the decision again and again. "There are things we do for money and things we do for love," one council member said during the debate. The resolution, as of early 2026: the building comes down, but parts of the clock tower will be preserved — and the city is seeking a developer to reuse the front bay and tower as a catalyst for the whole Firestone Park area.
We buy houses across Summit County, and Firestone Park is a neighborhood we know well. What happens to that clock tower is more than a preservation story. It's a signal about where this neighborhood is headed — and if you own a home here, it's worth paying attention.
What's happening in Firestone Park right now
Several things are moving at once, and they point the same direction:
The Firestone Building reuse. In September 2025 the City of Akron issued a formal Request for Proposals for the front bay of the Firestone Building at 1200 Firestone Parkway, requiring any plan to prioritize adaptive reuse of the structure including the clock tower. The city framed the property explicitly as "a catalyst for the Firestone Park area." When a city goes looking for a developer to anchor a neighborhood, it's making a bet — and that bet tends to pull values up around it.
The clock tower preservation. After repeated council delays through late 2025, the decision landed in early 2026: demolish the plant but preserve parts of the clock tower, with the local council member pushing to fold it into a pocket park with historical interpretation about the plant's role in the neighborhood. Plant #1 was the former Firestone headquarters and a National Register landmark — losing the building but keeping the tower is the compromise that keeps the neighborhood's identity intact.
The Heintz-Hillcrest Park grant. Heintz-Hillcrest Park, in the heart of Firestone Park, is a finalist for a $150,000 grant from the Akron Parks Collaborative's Parks Challenge. (Recent winners include Waters Park in North Hill and Karona Park in Merriman Valley.) Park investment is one of the most reliable leading indicators of neighborhood momentum.
The Aster Avenue question. Longtime residents have raised concerns about the Aster Avenue business district, which once held a theater, a bakery, and a pharmacy. The former Firestone Park IGA building at 1028 Hammel Street has sat in limbo, with ownership filing extensions and an appeal working through the Ninth District Court of Appeals. The commercial spine is the piece of the neighborhood still waiting for its turn.
None of these alone remakes a neighborhood. Together, they're the sound of a century-old neighborhood deciding what its next chapter looks like.
The rivalry that built this neighborhood
Firestone Park exists because Harvey Firestone wanted to outdo his neighbor.
In 1913, Frank Seiberling of Goodyear commissioned Goodyear Heights on the other side of the city — the first planned worker community in America, designed so rubber workers could walk home to their own houses. Two to three years later, Harvey Firestone answered. Around 1915, he hired Alling S. DeForest — the landscape architect behind his own Columbiana estate — to lay out a neighborhood of curving boulevards around a central park for the workers at his tire plant.
DeForest did something remarkable: he laid the central park out in the shape of the Firestone company logo, and the neighborhood was planned mixed-income from day one — executives and line workers on the same streets, in Tudors, Craftsman bungalows, and brick four-squares. Two churches, Firestone Park United Methodist and Firestone Park Presbyterian, still sit in corners of that logo-shaped park. More than 14,000 people live in the neighborhood today.
That's the thing about Firestone Park: it was built to last by people competing to build the best worker neighborhood in America. The construction quality on those 1915-era homes is better than half of what's built today.
What this means if you own a house here
The median home value in Firestone Park sits around $105,000 — roughly tracking the Akron-wide median, which tells you the neighborhood has held its value through every market cycle for over a century. It hasn't spiked, and it hasn't collapsed. It has endured. The ZIPs are 44301 and 44306, with the plant property in 44317.
But "who's buying" is changing. As investor interest spreads across south Akron, Firestone Park is becoming a target for two very different kinds of buyer: quick-flip operators who'll do a cosmetic rehab and resell in 90 days, and long-term holders who actually intend to keep what they buy. For a neighborhood built on hundred-year construction, the kind of buyer who shows up matters for the next fifty years — not the next ninety days.
If you've owned a Firestone Park home for decades — and many owners here have — you're sitting on something built better than the market gives it credit for, in a neighborhood the city is actively reinvesting in. That's not a reason to rush. It's a reason to understand exactly what you have before you decide anything.
If you're thinking about selling in Firestone Park
We're a local, family-owned team that buys houses in cash across Summit County — and we don't flip and we don't wholesale. Every property we buy, we renovate properly (systems first, then finishes) and keep. In a neighborhood that Harvey Firestone built to last, that matters: the house you sell us becomes a long-term home, not 90-day inventory.
If you want a confidential cash offer on a Firestone Park home, our Firestone Park page has the details, or call or text us at (330) 661-9885. We respond within one business day.
You can also read our companion piece on Goodyear Heights — the neighborhood Firestone Park was built to compete with — for the other half of Akron's rubber-baron story.
