When Matt Zeiner was busy drinking sodas on the playground at Rimer Elementary School, he could never have dreamed in 30 years he’d be bottling his own beverages or starting a business.

“I first brewed beer in 1998 with relative,” he explained. “I have always enjoyed beer and cooking, so brewing is a no brainer for me.”

For the first decade, it was a hobby. Over the next 10 years, it progressively became something more. But it was when Matt and a small group of Kenmore Neighborhood Alliance volunteers designed, built and operated the beer garden for the Kenmore Better Block that the lightbulb finally went off.

“That Saturday night, I was standing in the beer garden and looked over and saw Mayor Horrigan and my city councilman and I said, “Man, there’s never been a brewery in Kenmore.”

Matt spent the next several years perfecting his craft, joining the craft brewer’s association and learning from others. But Matt soon came to a realization: “I know how to make beer: I don’t know anything about how to run a business,” he explained.

Enter the city’s Rubber City Match program, which provides education, loans and grants, and location matching for Akron’s small business community. “It was great,” Matt explained. “I started at the beginning and learned from the ground up.”

But when it came to location, there never was a question where Matt’s brewery would go.

“The Boulevard is awesome and has a really cool small town Main Street vibe in the middle of the city,” he said. “A brewery can attract people from outside the community and let them see some of the positives of this area.”

It’s an area Matt said he is committed to for the long run: “I grew up in Kenmore and have lived here for 42 years and will most likely be here another 42 or more.”

Matt is currently a finalist in the Rubber City Match cash award program. He said a Kickstarter campaign will follow once that program concludes.

For now, he’s asking people to spread the word that Kenmore Boulevard will finally be getting a brewery.

“In a few years, I see the Boulevard being a great destination for craft beer, craft food and craft music, if that’s such a thing,” he said.

Until then, people can contact kenmorebrewworks@gmail.com for more information and updates.

In January, Kenmore Neighborhood Alliance welcomed four new members to its board of directors.

Derrick Hall is the vice president of the Akron Board of Education. He also works for Summa Health Systems specializing in clinical integration and population health. Derrick said his primary goal for joining the KNA board is to work with the community to ensure Kenmore High School is filled with a community-serving school after the 2022 school year and beyond.

James Hardy is a senior program officer for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, where he uses his extensive experience in city-wide economic and community development to build healthy, equitable communities. James served six years as the deputy mayor of integrated development for the city of Akron. In his role as board member, James hopes to expand KNA’s economic development and revitalization role in the community. “There’s nowhere in the city like Kenmore Boulevard,” he said. “I want to finish what we’ve started there.”

Laura Smiley is the sales director for The Summit (91.3FM Akron/90.7FM Youngstown/90.1FM Athens Rock and Recovery; The330; KIDJAM! Radio), where she works with with local businesses, organizations, musicians and music-loving patrons to grow the local music economy and community. Laura has served on the KNA Promotion Committee since 2020 and has hosted several The Summit Presents shows at the Rialto Theatre, which she considers “the best venue in Akron.” Laura joined the board to help program and promote Kenmore Boulevard as Akron’s new music row. “At The Summit, I have a microphone, and I want to use it to help,” she said.

Wendy Zarara is the manager of the Kenmore Branch Library, where she has grown music and culture, history and health programming since joining the staff in 2019. Wendy has served on the KNA Events Subcommittee since joining the Kenmore branch’s staff, and she hopes her board service brings even more activity and programming to the neighborhood.

In addition, the board voted in four new officers: Eric Cooper, Kenmore High School graduate, realtor and team leader for RE/MAX Oasis Dream Homes as chair; John Zoilo, a development consultant with the Akron Civic Theater as vice chair; Kyle Julien, community development program officer at the Development and Finance Authority of Summit County as secretary; and Edward Michalec, owner of The Guitar Department as treasurer.

ABOUT KENMORE NEIGHBORHOOD ALLIANCE Kenmore Neighborhood Alliance is a community development corporation formed in 2016 to preserve, enhance, promote and develop the Kenmore neighborhood in southwest Akron by engaging residents and stakeholders in effecting physical, cultural, artistic, recreational and business revitalization. For more information, visit www.betterkenmore.org or follow KNA on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram @kenmorehio.

Originally published as “Reflections” in Akron Life Magazine on October 14, 2009

As Akron’s Kenmore neighborhood observes its centennial, current residents and those who used to call Kenmore home are reminiscing. Ruth Zeh dwells in the second group and, at age 96, the granddaughter of local historian P.P. Cherry is savoring memories that date back to 1916, when her parents, Charles and Mamie Cherry, moved to South 13th Street off Kenmore Boulevard.

The Cherry family moved to Kenmore from Bishop Street in Akron. Zeh was born July 9, 1911, and one of her earliest memories is being rescued by boat from Bishop Street during the devastating flood of 1913. She was the youngest of six children, but never knew three brothers who died before her birth.

“I was 5 years old when we moved to Kenmore,” Zeh recalls. “The streets were mud. The house next to us had farm animals. We had a chicken coop. I had to hold the chicken (when it was time for slaughter). At the corner (on the boulevard) was a grocery store with a meat market. It was Ritzman’s grocery.”

The mention of Ritzman’s name triggers a special memory about the grocer, who often gave candy to his customers’ children. “Mr. Ritzman knew I didn’t like candy, so he gave me a dill pickle,” Zeh says.

Across the street from Ritzman’s were a bakery, a flower shop, a milliner and the Ideal Café, a restaurant whose owner also ran a poolroom. Next to the Ideal was the Boulevard, a movie theater, and nearby was McDowell’s Drug Store, a meeting place for teenagers. “That’s where I met Steve,” Zeh says of the man she would later marry. “Steve lived on 15th Street.”

Kenmore also had another movie theater, the Rialto, which Zeh says she didn’t like because the place was crawling with mice that “ran all over our feet.”

Zeh spent many Saturday afternoons at the movies. “We stayed and stayed until my mother came looking for me,” she says, adding that she knew it was time to go when she heard her mother coughing at the back of the theater.

Other pictures from Zeh’s memory book include watching hobos line up for handouts and a vegetable vendor and a ragman who did business from horse-drawn wagons. “I sold aluminum foil balls to him,” she says of the ragman. “Sometimes they’d fall off the wagon, and I’d sell them to him again.”

The Cherrys had the first telephone on 13th Street. “Mom charged 5 cents for the neighbors to use our phone,” Zeh recalls.

Zeh’s father, a volunteer fireman, died when she was 14. After his death, Zeh’s mother drove with her daughters to Palo Alto, Calif., in the family’s Model A Ford in search of employment. When none could be found, she sold the car to raise train fare back to Kenmore.

“The neighbors were very good,” Zeh says of the time after her father’s death. “I knew all of them. I was a busybody. I used to go to the grocery for a lady on our street. My mother asked me what she paid me. I told her 2 cents. She said, ‘No more!’”

Zeh and her sisters, the late Pearl Witwer and the late Bessie Zembrodt, performed around town as the Singing Cherry Sisters. “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” was one of Zeh’s favorite songs.

A highlight of Zeh’s teen years was when the bridge over the Ohio & Erie Canal was completed, facilitating traffic to the Northern Ohio Traction & Light car barns. The community celebrated with a parade in which Zeh was crowned Miss Kenmore Car Barns Bridge.

Looking back some 80 years later, she says, “I went to different merchants and asked, ‘Will you vote for me?’ That’s how I got to sit on a cart or something in the parade. It was just very funny. Emma, my friend, was mad at me because I beat her out.”

In 1928, the year Kenmore was annexed to Akron, Zeh was a salutatorian of Kenmore High School’s January graduating class, and her future husband was valedictorian of the June class. Both went to work for Goodyear, she as a secretary for 18 years. The late Steve Zeh enjoyed a 48-year career, rising from stock boy to assistant vice president.

They were married on Feb. 13, 1937, had four children and lived for the next 17 years on 13th Street. In all, Zeh lived 40 years on 13th Street, a vantage point from which she concludes, “I saw Kenmore grow up.”

Freedom Tax Service, which specializes in providing tax and financial services to small and medium sized businesses, musicians, artists and other independent contractors, kicked off 2022 by moving into its new home at 988 Kenmore Boulevard between The Nite Owl and Stone’s Kenmore Mattress & Furniture.

“This [move] gives us a great building that is well suited for our growing business,” Freedom Tax Service owner Jeffrey Vujevich said.

But the move to a new location isn’t the only change at Freedom Tax Service.

Vujevich has merged Freedom Tax Service with Tax Prep Medina, Inc. – a business he co-founded in 2021 in Brunswick, Ohio. The merging of the two businesses has enabled his Kenmore office to offer more financial planning resources to the community than ever before, and Freedom Tax Service has assumed the Tax Prep Medina moniker.

In addition to providing expert personal and business tax preparation, financial planning, payroll, bookkeeping, and accounting services, Vujevich is a licensed insurance agent and Tax Prep Medina offers Medicare supplements and Medicare Advantage plans through United Healthcare.

“Taxes impact everything we do, so it makes sense to plan your finances from a tax perspective,” Vujevich explained. “We now have more financial professionals to serve our client’s tax planning, financial, and other needs. With higher taxes returning in 2026 when the 2017 tax cuts end, it’s important for everyone to know how taxes will impact their incomes both while they are working and as they retire.”

Need help filing your taxes or have questions? Tax Prep Medina is ready to help.

Medina Tax Prep is located at 988 Kenmore Blvd. and is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and other hours by appointment. For information, call 330-753-5000 or visit taxprepmedina.com today!

Akron Black Artist Guild members. Top row: Josy Jones, Bronlynn Thurman, Diane L. Johnson, Dominic Moore-Dunson, Dara Harper, and Kenmore resident Charlee Harris. Seated: Floco Torres and Ashley Pippin [Dara Harper/Ideastream Public Media]

The Akron Black Artist Guild (ABAG) launched in 2021 as a mission-driven and value-centered organization dedicated to fully realizing the shared vision of a more diversified arts and culture scene in Akron. Among those cultivating, amplifying and advocating for the work of Black creatives is Kenmore’s own Charlee Harris.

Harris, co-operator of So Fresh Used Auto Sales, jokes that being surrounded by family members and friends who are artists meant that she had to become an organizer. In 2017, Harris joined her artist mother in leveraging their large commercial space, relationships with creatives, and Harris’s business savvy to create East Ave Flea Market, a small group of traditionally underrepresented makers and entrepreneurs.

Harris’s work was on the leading edge of creating a community for Akron’s underrepresented artists. It is a concept that crystalized in 2020 after the Akron Cultural Plan uncovered a perceived lack of connection and diversity within the arts sector and a sense of isolation among Akron’s Black artists.

As the Black Artist Guild began to form, and after Harris worked on Kenmore First Fridays as an AmeriCorps VISTA, she had the idea to renovate the family’s commercial space to host a full-fledged, multi-media art gallery. That, combined with their makers market, evolved into what is today East Ave Market & Galleries, the first facility of its kind in the Kenmore community.

“We wanted to have an art space where local artists who maybe can’t get into those institutions, or maybe don’t qualify to have a space, that they can use and present their art,” she explained.

On the second Saturday of each month, the space features a new installation by an Akron-area artist, and the market is now open for shopping during business hours and gallery events.

Harris’s ingenuity is one example of what the Black Artist Guild hopes to pass on through their 2022 Reimagine Fellowship, which will commission three local Black artists to create original works that reimagine and investigate the intersection of creativity in Akron’s non-art sectors. The ultimate goal will be to build thriving communities, foster artistic, educational and professional development, and connect Black artists to opportunity and resources.

“I’ve been in Akron my whole life and part of the arts my whole life and there’s never been anything like it” Harris of the Black Artist Guild.

Fellowship staff like Harris will support Reimagine Fellowship artists, who will be paired with mentoring organizations in West Akron, East Akron and Kenmore. Selected artists will create original works that reimagine and investigate the intersection of creativity in non-art sectors through collaborations with residents and organizations like Kenmore Neighborhood Alliance.

“Akron has a past, but it also has a future,” Harris said, “and I think it’s a bright one, especially for young black creatives and young black artists.”

For more information about the Akron Black Artists Guild and the Reimagine Fellowship, visit www.abaguild.org. For more information about the East Ave Market & Galleries, visit www.facebook.com/eastavemarket.

(Photos by Jason Chamberlain)

Hundreds of music lovers flocked to Kenmore Boulevard December 17-18 for some of the region’s finest musicians during the Rialto Theatre’s first-ever Kenmore Winter Break Music Festival.

The event hosted to a variety of well-known bands like Big Pop, JD Eicher, A Band Named Ashes, Cincinnati’s The Heavy Hours, Detention and Youngstown up-and-comer Candace Campana. Acoustic acts Brian Lisik, Jeff Klemm, Chrissy Strong, Madison Cummins, Jim Ballard and Barry Carroll graced the brand new Rialto Living Room stage, and Vince “DJ Vinnie G” Giles kept concertgoers dancing until closing time.

“We wanted to do something special: bring a lot of our favorite artists together for a new kind of music festival,” Rialto Theatre co-owner Seth Vaill explained. “By December, people are really starting to miss summer festivals, and many are home for the holidays, looking for something fun and different to do.”

The event was organized and presented by The Rialto Theatre and The Summit FM along with sponsors EarthQuaker Devices, SIT Strings, The Guitar Department and Lay’s Guitar Shop. It was such a success, the Rialto and The Summit are planning other festivals throughout 2022, including Kenmore Spring Break Music Festival to be held April 1-2.

“The ice and snow will be melting, and people will have a good case of cabin fever,” Vaill said. “They’ll be ready to get out and see some shows, and we’re going to give them two great nights of music.”

The Kenmore Spring Break lineup is currently in the works. For updates and ticket information, stay tuned to therialtotheatre.com and follow @therialtotheatre on Instagram and Facebook.

If you’ve visited The Rialto Theatre during the last several months, you’ve likely been treated to some exciting new offerings: hot coffee, tea and baked goods, plus free acoustic concerts courtesy of The Rialto Living Room.

The Living Room is an intimate performance venue with a stage accommodating solo and duo performers. The bar doubles as a coffee shop operated by SRINA Tea House & Café. Every Tuesday through Saturday from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., SRINA serves up organic coffee, tea and pastries made in Kenmore by Summit Croissants’ Sally Ohle.

The welcoming space has already earned its share of regulars, including Joseph Baker, a freelance graphic designer and the frontman of the local band Akronauts.

“I work at coffee shops exclusively when I’m not on location with a client,” Baker said, continuing, “I get tired of going to the same cafe over and over again and The Rialto Living Room is a fresh, cozy, relaxing spot to work.”

The Living Room hosts free midday acoustic concerts Fridays 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., which feature regional performers like Ben Gage and Chrissy Strong. Rialto owners Seth & Nate Vaill say they will expand to free early-evening performances Wednesday through Saturday.

“The Living Room is a place where you can meet a friend after work, chat over a drink and hang around for some quality live music,” Seth said. “It’s a way to keep our doors open to the community more often.”