changes were made to the alignment of SR 59 as various projects were completed. The western end of SR 59 was rerouted onto the SR 8 Expressway and Akron Innerbelt as the Innerbelt, later named the Martin Luther King Freeway, was completed in phases between 1972 and 1986. The portion of SR 59 on Perkins Avenue was originally intended to be temporary until the northern leg of the Innerbelt was completed, and was officially designated at State Route 59T until August 2007. The section through Kent was rerouted onto the new Haymaker Parkway in 1975 after previously following West and East Main Streets through the city. The Innerbelt Designed after almost all other highway projects in Akron were completed, the Innerbelt, later named the Martin Luther King Freeway, was envisioned as a stretch; however the only portion that was ever built was a stretch near downtown Akron. The freeway is designed with six lanes and right-of-way for eight. It includes two collector streets along the entire corridor which, combined, are at some points as wide as the freeway itself. Planning and property acquisition began as early as 1968 and displaced thousands of residents, many of them minority and low-income residents, and over 100 businesses. The first portion of the freeway, between Exchange Street and Market Street, opened in 1972, while the next section, between Exchange Street and Howe Street, opened in 1978, and the interchange with I-76/I-77 in 1986. In 1999 Akron mayor Don Plusquellic suggested ripping up the northern end of the freeway, making it a city street, and developing the surrounding land. The idea was fostered by a trip to Milwaukee, in which Plusquellic saw the much-maligned Park East Freeway spur in that city's downtown removed in order to reuse the land. A similar plan presented in late 2014 proposed removal of the freeway north of the West Exchange Street overpass with an upgrade of the adjacent frontage roads to compensate. Construction relating to this plan started in early 2017. The city of Akron acquired the land with the abandoned roadways in 2021. In July 2001, the city announced that the Innerbelt would be closed for several days while a commercial was being shot. The highway was also surveyed by the producers of the movie The Matrix Reloaded as a possible shooting spot of the highway scene. The idea was eventually scrapped, because in the event that the