AKRON, Ohio — Nearly three years after being closed, the doors of an abandoned mall in Akron have reopened.
Retail design production company OnQ Inc., headquartered in California, has found a new purpose for a portion of the old Chapel Hill Mall.
"We've brought life back to this mall," Paul Chapuis, founder and CEO of OnQ, said Wednesday at the company's official ribbon-cutting ceremony that was attended by Akron Mayor Shammas Malik.
Quality control manager Lara Bartow is from Ravenna and was once a shopper at Chapel Hill Mall. She has many fond memories.
"It smelled like fountain. ... It smelled very clean," Bartow recalled. "It was clean, beautiful, sparkling, would reflect on that mural (that still exists where the main drag of the mall used to be), which was amazing. (It) made the mural look like it was moving,"
Now, Bartow walks down memory lane where the mall once stood, not as a shopper, but as an employee at a new retail design space she once found unimaginable.
"Now that we're here, walking through her, I just could not imagine it as anything else — until now," she said.
Chapel Hill Mall was once a hot spot for some of the world's largest retailers, like Hot Topic and Claire's. But like many other shopping centers across the nation, it faced financial hardship and the threat of online shopping, eventually closing its doors in the spring of 2021.
Now, the space that has become a business park is being revitalized with the opening of businesses like OnQ Solutions, a retail design agency responsible for creating displays seen in stores like Target and Walmart.
"A totally new design, a totally new purpose for this building to support retail that is evolving and changing," Chapuis told 3News. "To use the old space for the new space is just something poetic."
And while this might be an unlikely stanza, it's a poem that seems to be right on "Q."
"The memories hit me," Bartow said. "I'll look up at the ceiling and say, 'There was an escalator there. That was the escalator.' But no, this is entirely different. It is a new era.
OnQ says about 100 employees will work at its Akron facility.