AKRON MALL LENDS SPACE TO NONPROFITS ROLLING ACRES LOCALE LETS GROUPS PROMOTE CAUSES

Gloria Irwin

Akron Beacon Journal

Prime retail space just inside the main entrance of Rolling Acres Mall is being turned into a Store of Dreams for community groups.

Local Boy Scouts showed up yesterday to perform a special induction and flag ceremony for the 2,000-square-foot space, which has been unused since a tax preparation service moved out.

The store for nonprofit organizations is seen by the mall's managers, Schostak Brothers & Co., as a way of giving back to the community.

"It's just something that we wanted to do to help them promote their organizations," said Sharon Texter, marketing director for Rolling Acres.

The Boy Scouts of America were setting up yesterday in the Store of Dreams, with plastic beverage containers, tins of popcorn and promotional clocks spread out on tables awaiting browsing customers.

The Scouts will be looking mostly to raise awareness, not money, said Christavus Dominic, head of the Great Trail Council's Pathfinder program, which is aimed at attracting minority and inner-city youth to scouting.

Dominic sees the store as a way of making the black community more aware of what scouting offers. He's also hoping to recruit more adult volunteers.

The Scouts will leave at the end of the month, and will be followed by A Child's Waiting adoption agency and the Humane Society of Greater Akron.

Schostak successfully put the Store of Dreams concept into place at four malls in Detroit in August, said Cindy Ciura, vice president of marketing for Schostak.

One of the users in Detroit, a literacy group, anticipated distributing 2,000 reading-readiness kits at each mall, Ciura said, but instead gave away 10,000 to 15,000 kits.

The groups that have signed up to use Rolling Acres' Store of Dreams are hoping for a similar boost in the public's awareness.

Jennifer Bessemer-Marando is co-director of A Child's Waiting adoption agency in Copley Township. The private agency has a contract with the state to help place special-needs children, which includes disabled and foster-care children.

Her agency hopes prospective adoptive parents will stop by the Store of Dreams to browse through catalogs filled with photos of children waiting to be adopted.

She also plans to conduct weekly informational sessions for families who think they might want to adopt.

"We're pumped" about the Store of Dreams, she said. The agency will use some of the space as a temporary office, and rotate its 16 employees to work there during the month of November.

Each weekend in December, the Humane Society of Greater Akron will be at the store trying to find homes for unwanted animals.

Texter said the mall is willing to keep the Store of Dreams open past December, but only got three takers from its initial mailing to 50 to 60 community organizations.

"We're certainly open to having it continue," she said. Interested groups can contact her at 330-753-5045.

Many community organizations indicated they couldn't find enough volunteers to operate the store, she said.

Even some of the groups that signed up for the store can't keep it open during regular mall hours, she said. The Boy Scouts will be there only on the weekends.

A sign at the front of the store will alert shoppers to the varying hours of operation.