Hey Folks! Check it out: New ideas for a stronger downtown Dayton!!! :) (Dublin: lofts)

[nickolaseposter]

So I had some ideas for downtown dayton. As I become increasingly involved in the downtown community, I have a few ideas and I'd like to get your thoughts and opinions on them. I'm not saying they're funded or anything. But I'm curious to see if people like the possibilities that have flaoted through my head.

-I think a great option for the Arcade would be to turn it into a casino.
-The Transportation Center, formerly Greyhound would be an awesome mainstream movie theater across from our Indie Theater THE NEON.
-Turning the building above MJ's Cafe, Clash Consignment, and The Right Corner into lofts. (This is on Merchants Row aka E. 3rd)
-Turning the Price Store Building into a mixed-use building that would have a grocery/kroger marketplace at the bottom
-Repaving and adding lighting effects as well as jumbotron signs to the Courthouse Square
-Turning the Leigh Building, now a parking garage, into a fitness/wellness center at the first two floors.
-On the NE corner of Wayne and Fifth on the edge of the Oregon District (Across from Dublin Pub) would be a cool location for a park with a fountain.
-The parking lot by the Cannery Lofts on Wayne Avenue that is by Garden Station would be a neat spot for a skate park.
-Turning Memorial Hall into a Comedy Club.
-Turning some of the older buildings around Sinclair into student housing.

Some of the ideas are inspired by the Greater Downtown Plan but I came up with most of them! Tell me if you think any ideas are interesting, orginal, pointless, or a great idea! Thanks!

[joe from dayton]

We already have a comedy club--don't know if we need two.

Where is everyone going to park, especially to go to a big and presumably crowded movie theater?

Most Sinclair students are commuters, so I don't know if there is much of a demand for student housing downtown. I am sure there is some, but I don't know how much.

I don't see anyone willing to sink the kind of money you are looking at into a shrinking city.

I think downtown could use a grocery store, but no one wants to be the first one to risk their investment in case things don't work out. Shrink would be a huge problem.

[Ohioan58]

A time machine would do the trick. Nothing else is anything except window dressing.

The real problem is that the entire region has declined significantly in population and economic vitality, and there is no urban culture inherent in the Dayton market area anymore.

When I was a kid in the 1960s, everyone came to downtown to shop, socialize, go to the library, sightsee, watch events like parades, drink and eat, pray, and get entertained. Everything you'd like to see and do was in a tight core area that was quite walkable. Even the convention center area was a fringe and not a main part of the core downtown.

It was a tightly interwoven ecosystem, which also pervaded the social climate of the region. You went to Rikes if you wanted to buy top quality merchandise. You went downtown to people watch. As a kid you could ride the bus downtown and find plenty to amuse yourself. People would plan day trips downtown to shop. To hundreds of thousands of regional residents in, say, 1965, Downtown Dayton was THE CORE, the place, the center where big and good and interesting stuff happens.

That "mind share" has been absolutely dismantled. That dismantling started with the shopping malls becoming the hip places to meet and gather. Downtown slowly declined, some stores closed, and the chicken and egg equation started to feed on itself. At the same time, downtown started to be regarded as an old fashioned, geezer destination.

Except for hipsters and other self consciously trying to act/be unique, Dayton is in nobody's sights today as a destination.

Dayton bungles every opportunity for seeding this kind of development. Example: the market part of the 2nd Street Market, again, definitely not part of downtown, should have been established in the Arcade. That would have been a wholly appropriate use of that space and would have been the element that made the Arcade good to invest in. The Arcade could have been the nucleus of a culture shift back toward downtown by capitalizing on an existing, ancient element that is useful once again and appropriate to 21st century tastes.

Instead Metro Parks apparently dumped millions into a refit of a freakin' warehouse that has no emotional connection to anything whatsoever except perhaps 1930s manufacturing. A crappy old warehouse one mile out from downtown that absolutely nobody cared about to the same extent. Maybe it's the suburban like parking that was considered "necessary". Of course it's off most of the bus routes.

Brilliant freaking move, D8n.

In the 70s, downtown was a geezer place to visit - mainly for older housewives and the elderly. By 1985 or so Dayton's downtown was considered declasse' and the place to run away from, and lots of downtown businesses had shuttered. By 1995 downtown was little more than a historic district with some offices and high rises.

Today, pasty-white corn fed fat suburbanites consider anything closer to downtown than Patterson Road or Woodman Drive to be inhabited by flesh eating Morlocks. (The Walking Dead needs a Dayton based edition.)

[nickolaseposter]

Well the idea for the movie theater inside the old Greyhound Station would work bcause tehre is already a large parking garage that rarely gets used on top of it. Its the one that lights up rainbow colors.
And I think alot of students are commuters because there aren't housing options downtown. Example, look at Wright State. In the 1990's, no one really lived on campus. Now over 5,000 students do.
The grocery is a big risk, but I have noticed a lot of mini markets opening up recently. There is one on Main Street called the 'Downtown Dayton Grocery and Cafe" that just opened up and there is also a mini market by the rta hub. A third one isn't downtown but is nearby in the Oregon District.
Lastly I would say that you need to look at the population of downtown...not the city. yes, surrounding neighborhoods are being devastated by urban decline. But downtown Dayton's population trend has been on a slow rising trend since 2001, and since 2009 has actually increased dramatically. Charles Simms Development, JZ Company, Litehouse, and several private builders have began high quality residential projects this year.
According to the Dayton Homebuilders Association website and the Dayton Realtors Association website, Downtown Dayton has the highest turnover rate right now in Montgomery County. It also has two other neighborhoods in the top 5, which are South Park and Rubicon.
Another interesting fact shows that greater downtown Dayton's population sits at around 20,000. (see A Greater Downtown Dayton Plan - Overview) And Downtown Dayton's primary population is at 5,570 which is an uptick because its population was at 1,940 in 2000 and 3,070 in 2006. Slow growth is happening but overall I think if population projctions continue downtown Dayton will have the population base of middle class citizens to support things like this around 2020 which is only 8 years from now.
The important part, though, is talking to the people on here concerned about our city and please staying positive. If you haven't been downtown, or have heard of a venue downtown! Visit! Suport local business! And keep trecking through! We will make this city better!

[Jock Joubert]

Interesting comments from a number of people who I may be wrong, but I suspect, never lived in downtown
Dayton. Being a resident of Dayton since 1971 and living never more than six blocks for the center of Downtown was able to observe the decline and rebuilding of downtown Dayton. Since the early 2000’s, Downtown has been rebuilding into a vibrant, active, urban professional environment. With University of Dayton and Sinclair College in town and an active Arts Community. The addition of Riverscape and the Dayton Dragons, Downtown is an active environment. Several times a week, when the Dragons in, 8 to 10,000 people travel downtown to see the Dragons play. With the Oregon District and many great restaurants their is a lot to enjoy. Downtown is slowly coming back but it is hardly dying.

[blue j]

Originally Posted by Jock Joubert

Interesting comments from a number of people who I may be wrong, but I suspect, never lived in downtown
Dayton. Being a resident of Dayton since 1971 and living never more than six blocks for the center of Downtown was able to observe the decline and rebuilding of downtown Dayton. Since the early 2000’s, Downtown has been rebuilding into a vibrant, active, urban professional environment. With University of Dayton and Sinclair College in town and an active Arts Community. The addition of Riverscape and the Dayton Dragons, Downtown is an active environment. Several times a week, when the Dragons in, 8 to 10,000 people travel downtown to see the Dragons play. With the Oregon District and many great restaurants their is a lot to enjoy. Downtown is slowly coming back but it is hardly dying.

Good to see a voice of reason, historybuff.

I appreciate the ideas put forth by the OP. I do think that the Arcade is a fairly long way off from being able to be occupied by business tenants, but that is something I would love to see happen in my lifetime. Unfortunately the current property tax situation and the amount of renovation needed is costly.

But these things you cited that are happening downtown right now- even though they've been developing as a part of local culture for nearly fifteen years now, I see them as just one component, only a beginning, of all that is possible. There could be many more uses for the existing buildings, and the existing geography, if the city leaders and interested investors in the area have the desire and the means to do so.

But yes, there are many things about downtown to be enjoyed now, that we didn't have even as recently as the 1990s. It has been coming back, fairly reinvented, slowly but surely.