Inventors hall of fame will move in August
Museum to vacate Broadway building for Canal Place site
By Carol Biliczky
Beacon Journal staff writer
7/22/2008
The National Inventors Hall of Fame will move by Aug. 15 to Canal Place, the office and industrial complex at 520 S. Main St. in downtown Akron.
The hall of fame's home on South Broadway is being converted into the wing of a new Akron middle school that will focus on math, science and engineering.
The hall of fame closed its museum in April after 13 years of declining attendance. At its height, 270,000 visitors a year toured the building, originally called Inventure Place. By the time it closed, just 40,000 were visiting.
Hall of fame officials said the region was not big enough to support the museum, which included a gallery of plaques of inventors and a hands-on workshop. Officials said the museum was draining money from more viable and profitable enterprises.
Without the museum, which took up the largest part of the building, the hall of fame no longer needed such a big facility.
Hall of fame spokeswoman Rini Paiva said the 20 staffers at the headquarters will move to 13,000 square feet of office space and 10,000 square feet of storage space in Canal Place.
That will put them near the 50,000 square feet of storage that the hall of fame already leases at Canal Place. The organization's most profitable program, Camp Invention, does its national distribution from that warehouse.
The hall of fame's second base of operations on White Pond Drive in West Akron is home to about 20 employees who work in the organization's educational subsidiary, Invent Now Kids, which manages Camp Invention and Club Invention. That office will remain where it is.
Akron, the University of Akron, Akron Public Schools and the hall of fame have agreed to collaborate on how to turn the workshop in the basement of the South Broadway facility into a teaching tool for students in the region. Organizers are seeking grants to fund the project.
The South Broadway facility is owned by the city and will be turned over to Akron schools. The $38 million building was constructed with city, county and state money and donations.
