Akron Life Celebrates 20 Years: Summit Metro Parks Evolves

There are over 5.5 million visits to Summit Metro Parks each year, and executive director Lisa King is behind many big improvements including the transformations of Liberty Park in Twinsburg and F.A. Seiberling Nature Realm in Akron. She added nature centers and accessible trails to both, and at Liberty Park, she also added an outdoor classroom and indoor exhibits designed for those with sensory impairments.

King started as a Metro Parks landscape architect 24 years ago, and now she seeks public input and increases inclusivity. She is overlooking projects such as connecting trails across 1,800 acres in Cascade Valley, Gorge and Sand Run parks and developing the Freedom Trail, which connects Akron and Kent and two universities along an unused railroad corridor owned by Metro RTA.

“By being in the community as much as possible,” King says, “I’m out there advocating.”

She shares how she helps make each experience with nature a journey.

“I had landed home when I interviewed here, and I saw the kind of work that was going on. … Man, I fell in love with it.

We follow the philosophy of the father of landscape architecture: The building should be of the land.

Liberty Park … there’s a little walk to get to the building — that’s part of your experience. There’s interesting things along the way. The trees open up, and there’s the building. It’s that aha moment.

We’ve continued to do that with as many of the buildings as we could.

Partnerships have allowed us to expand what we’re able to do. It helps us connect people to nature in new ways.

We’ve got some wonderful programs that anybody, including our senior population, can take advantage of.

We want to have parks that everyone can come to. They all feel safe, they feel welcome and they feel curious.”

— as told to Alexandra Sobczak