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Frank Quirk receives Downtown Akron Partnership award

RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter

Published: September 13, 2017

The Downtown Akron Partnership recently presented local attorney and DAP founding member Frank Quirk with it’s first-ever Emeritus designation.

A long time leader in both the local and state bar, Quirk, who will be 85 in November, is of counsel to Akron law firm Brouse McDowell, and was one of Ohio’s first experts in law firm cybersecurity and the effect of the Internet on the legal profession.

In a conversation, Quirk said that he is now “completely retired” after an extremely active and lengthy professional life.

DAP was founded in 1995 to help drive business to the downtown area by creating a “special improvement district.”

Quirk said the founding members included 15 Akron CEO’s, an urban planner and several other interested parties, including himself. The SID is a 42-block area downtown administered by the DAP under a management agreement that includes the owners of businesses located within that area.

“The goal was to initiate private activities downtown and develop a partnership with the city of Akron,” said Quirk.

Quirk was asked to be the first chair of DAP.

“We started from scratch,” said Quirk. “We went to the property owners to try to raise $500,000 to $600,000 on a leap of faith. Seventy-five percent of them approved of what we were trying to do.”

A little over 20 years later, he was named as the organization’s first emeritus board member, and the announcement that coincided with the organization’s receipt of a $1.5 million grant from the Knight Foundation to “improve Akron’s public spaces and increase downtown’s vibrancy” to help develop a downtown business corridor.

“We never dreamed that something like that would be possible (when DAP was getting started),” said Quirk. “In fact, what has happened in downtown Akron has been well beyond what we could have expected.”

Quirk said that the turnout at his ceremony was also “beyond what I expected. There were lots of people there.”

Noting that the emeritus category was created for him and that he was invited to be the first emeritus board member, Quirk could only say, “I was very honored. It was a singular honor.”


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