Rodent Control in Highland Square and West Akron
Highland Square is the lively stretch of West Market Street around the Highland Theatre, with apartments over storefronts, bars, coffee shops and side streets lined with old doubles and frame houses. Cross Portage Path, where the statue marks the old Native American carrying trail, and the lots get bigger. Wallhaven, Sunset View and Fairlawn Heights hold homes built mostly from the 1920s to the 1960s, a lot of them on wooded hillsides.
So rodent control in Highland Square and West Akron covers two pretty different situations. Near the Square it's mostly mice in rentals and doubles, plus rats behind the restaurants. Further west it's mice in big basements and attached garages, and the odd rat under a backyard shed.
When the mice live next door too
Doubles and apartment buildings share walls, basements and pipe runs, and mice treat all of it as one house. Somebody upstairs sets traps, the mice drift downstairs for a few weeks, and then they're back. If you rent, put what you're seeing in writing to the landlord. In the city of Akron, housing complaints go through 311. If you own a double, it's worth handling mice on both sides of the wall in one go rather than chasing them unit by unit.
Bars and kitchens along West Market have their own version: dumpsters in the back lot, deliveries through a rear door and old basements under the dining room. That's ongoing rodent service for restaurants and shops, with outside stations and regular checks. The frame houses on the side streets, meanwhile, have the classic old-Akron basement, with stone or block walls, a sill line full of gaps and a coal chute that was boarded over sometime in the 1960s. Closing the foundation gaps does more there than any number of traps.
Big basements and wooded lots west of Portage Path
The larger homes out toward Fairlawn Heights have a lot of house to check. Full basements, finished attics, attached garages, sunrooms and porches that were added over the decades each come with a seam where mice can work in. Wooded hillsides and leaf-filled ravines bring white-footed mice right up to the foundation in fall, and they often turn up in the garage first, nesting in a bag of grass seed or the patio cushions.
Streets that drop toward Sand Run feel more like the Merriman Valley than the Square, with deep woods behind the house. To the south, the older blocks run down toward Kenmore and Summit Lake. Wherever you are on this side of town, the Akron fall mouse guide is worth a look before October, and a call is the quickest way to get someone out to look at the house.
Not sure if it's rats or mice? You don't have to know. Describe what you're seeing.
Call (330) 300-0969Old mansions, front porches and mice around Highland Square
Market Street from Portage Path out to Elmdale was once called Millionaires' Row, and many of those big houses are still standing. Sunset View, Castle Boulevard and Hunters Lodge filled in around them, mostly between 1920 and 1935. Homes that size have more rooflines, more chimneys and more additions than a typical Akron lot. Every spot where a newer roof meets an older wall is a seam a mouse can work open. Ivy and climbing vines help them along, since mice and squirrels use them as ladders to the eaves. Trimming vines back from the roof edge and sealing rooflines and additions matter as much here as anything done in the basement.
Closer to the Square, the apartment complexes on West Market and the porch-front houses that fill up for PorchRokr have a simpler story. Mice come in low, under porch steps and through loose skirting, then follow the pipes upward. Start your search at the porch and the gap under the front steps. If you're finding droppings up high, in a closet ceiling or a third-floor storage room, the attic needs a look too. Our page on attic cleanup after mice covers what that involves.
Around Highland Square and West Akron: West Market Street · Highland Theatre · Portage Path · Wallhaven · Fairlawn Heights · Sunset View · Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens (ZIP 44303, 44302, 44313)
Questions Akron-area homeowners ask before they call
My landlord says the mice are my problem. What can I do?
Write down where and when you see signs and send it to the landlord in writing. Inside Akron city limits, housing complaints can go through 311.
Do the big 1920s houses near Portage Path need a different kind of inspection?
Mostly a longer one. A large West Akron home can have a full basement, a third floor, a sunroom and an attached garage added decades later. Each addition has its own seam with the original house, so a good inspection walks the whole outline of the home, roof edges included, not just the basement.
I rent an apartment above a shop on West Market. Where are the mice coming from?
Usually from below. Mixed-use buildings share a basement and pipe runs with the storefront, so mice climb along plumbing and heating lines. Note where you find droppings, tell the landlord in writing, and ask for the whole building to be checked rather than only your unit.
Also serving Firestone Park, Goodyear Heights, Kenmore, North Hill, Ellet, Merriman Valley, Cuyahoga Falls, Stow, Barberton.