Outgoing Akron city planning director Marco Sommerville isn't leaving City Hall next year.
He'll fill a new role as Deputy Mayor for Intergovermental Affairs, and serve as a senior advisor to new mayor Dan Horrigan. He says Horrigan "likes to listen more than he likes to talk".
One issue that'll be on the city's plate is the long-vacated Rolling Acres Mall, no matter if it's finally sold, or goes back to the city.
Whatever happens, Sommerville says the main priority for the former mall is to bring in new jobs.
"We in the city are landlocked as far as land, there's not a lot of land left in the city of Akron," Sommerville tells WAKR's Jasen Sokol. "And if we could have that land to develop it for jobs, that would be priority number one."
Sommerville says he'd like to see light industrial space or office space at the former mall site.
But he says the city will have to work with the owners of space once taken by the mall's former department stores. Those buildings won't be directly involved in any sale or sheriff's sale of the main part of mall itself.