Olde Sterling Way (Cleveland, Akron, Dayton: fit in, apartments, foreclosure)

[maplelady]

Someone is still picking up their 5 dollars a day from the paymaster.

This is a sruggling city ? Not to oversimplify the complex issues but there seems to be as much of this as there is brownfields and blight.

[wrightflyer]

Originally Posted by maplelady

Someone is still picking up their 5 dollars a day from the paymaster.

This is a sruggling city ? Not to oversimplify the complex issues but there seems to be as much of this as there is brownfields and blight.

Many of the suburbs of Dayton are doing quite well. A similar situation is apparent in Detroit and many other rust-belt cities. Heck, even in cities with the brand "new" stamped on them (think Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix) have this trend of blight in good portions of the inner core but the suburbs for the most part are doing very well. It's a trend that's been going since the late-'60s/early-'70s but is only now starting to turn around. The rust-belt gets a bad shake because of its loss of industry, especially manufacturing. In Dayton, the money is with the Feds, Meds and Eds (better said as Federal Government [WPAFB], Hospitals and Higher Education.

Of course, all that being said, many suburbs in places like Atlanta and Phoenix have born the biggest burden of the suburban foreclosure crisis, right up there with places like Detroit and Cleveland.

[maplelady]

can it really be as bad as Detroit , on a smaller scale. really ? This is not what i see from afar. The core in Dayton seems much more intact. I have been to Detroit and it is criminal. It should never have been allowed to get that bad. When we lived in calgary in the 1980's we got Detroit Tv and i watched their news while I made dinner. The news anchor was Bill Bonds and he loved that city. They new it was coming. The line was " last one out of Detroit tun off the lights.

And I don't see Cleveland as nearly as bad and well on the rebound. I am very impressed with that city.

Dayton has it all over cities like Younstown, Rockford Il and even Akron. As you said, Dayton has meds, feds and some eds. This is great. And as they said on other threads, it has to adapt but it sure does have an amazing history for a small city in the midwest.

[dxdtdemon]

One thing to consider is that until the government took over General Motors, the GMAC financing as well as a big portion of the software designers who dealt with the manufacturing software, the infrastructure software, and the "in-the-car"/telemetry software were being done around here, and there were many people who retired/couldn't move/couldn't find a job who had their house paid off from their old prosperous job who are still alive and occupying those houses.

[SWOH]

Originally Posted by maplelady

can it really be as bad as Detroit , on a smaller scale. really ? This is not what i see from afar. The core in Dayton seems much more intact. I have been to Detroit and it is criminal. It should never have been allowed to get that bad. When we lived in calgary in the 1980's we got Detroit Tv and i watched their news while I made dinner. The news anchor was Bill Bonds and he loved that city. They new it was coming. The line was " last one out of Detroit tun off the lights.

And I don't see Cleveland as nearly as bad and well on the rebound. I am very impressed with that city.

Dayton has it all over cities like Younstown, Rockford Il and even Akron. As you said, Dayton has meds, feds and some eds. This is great. And as they said on other threads, it has to adapt but it sure does have an amazing history for a small city in the midwest.

The core of Dayton itself is very intact as of now... hopefully it stays that way!

The demolition issue lies with the neighborhoods, particularly those on the north and west sides. Do a Google Streetview in the Wright-Dunbar district just south on Broadway of 3rd Street and you will see what I mean. We've got our issues, but it's worse elsewhere. The best way to sum the metro up economically is we are Colorado Springs (to our east and south) stuck on the side of Youngstown (to our west and north).

However, I personally believe that Youngstown part of us has a lot going for it. Just needs a little vision (and protection from demolition) to realize its potential.

[maplelady]

Yes I am just learning how much Dayton was connected to the auto industry. Yes, I imagine many people just stayed. When you say" in those houses" do you mean the crackerboxes, the marginal areas or the exec areas or all of these ?

Unfortuantely there was not much job portability when all the plants were closing but I am preaching here to the converted, which I do not wish to do.

It reems manufacturing in China is not all that the companies thought it would be and there are reports some are moving operations back to North America. It will never be the same but there could be a new normal.

So I did look at the area at west 5th and s. Williams. OK, so, looking a little bare BUT I see good things. This brings new meaning to "the gaslight district." All humour aside, the fact that the gaslights are still up and not smashed is a great sign. The street view and the satellite must be from different years. In the street view the corner shows an end life blighted set of buildings, I think four houses and one commercial building on the corner. In the satellite shot, only the corner building remains. Perhaps it was determined to be viable or of historic significance.

In most municpal units in Canada, they never would be allowed to remain in that condition. They are fire traps, for starters. Adaptive re-use is always preferable. I see this area as ripe for the kind of infill development of market rate and mixed HUD housing like that which has made an amazing renwal of the Hough area in Cleveland. Middle class professionals and business people are building suburban style and urban revivialist homes. They want to live in quality housing close to University Circle, downtown, etc. Is there a new urbanist movement in Dayton strong enough to support this ? Tge entire area of bike trails is a good forshadow, as that is what brings ib the so=called artistic class revive love inner cities.

[dxdtdemon]

What I'm saying is that there are people who can still afford to live in the more expensive houses at the moment because they had upper-middle to upper class jobs doing car financing or car-related IT and engineering before the government took over GM in 2009 and either got rid of the job altogether or moved it somewhere else. You are right that the people in manufacturing lived in a lot of the crackerbox houses before those jobs moved elsewhere, but I had thought that your question was how people could afford to live in the big houses in this area. There has been some adaptive re-use of buildings on the east side of downtown, like the Cannery apartments and the 2nd St. Market.

[dxdtdemon]

Also, the bike trails happened sort of by accident. At one time, there were two railroads called the Pennsylvania RR and the New York Central RR that had tried to buy as many railroads as they could in the northeast and eastern midwest to remove competition. In the 1970's, they and a bunch of other eastern railroads failed, and the government created the Consolidated Railroad (also known as Conrail) to run the freight on all of those lines. In the 80's, Congress passed a law that allowed some of the duplicate lines to not be used but also made it a very long process to totally get rid of the land the lines were on but didn't require the rails to still be there. Eventually, in the 90's, someone came up with the idea of turning these abandoned rail lines into bike paths.

[maplelady]

Actually, my observations about the nice homes near the golf courses circa 1960's was really to say that it seems that Dayton was doing so well that, yes, most of it is survivng well. I understand the homes are mostly owed by retirees , etc. Now, lets say someone paid 50 k for a nice house in Brittany hills in 1965, and they wanted to sell it now to give money to grandknids or great grandkids, or pay fro a nursing home in Florida, they could still get 300 k at least, right.

I agree there are probably many who worked on the line who own their brick bungalows mortgage free. but who could not afford to sell them and move elsewhere. But Dayton seems like a nice place to live out retirement. also, it has been at least one genration since the auto industry failed, right ? Anyone unde 40 really is not expecting to work in those industries. There is excellent housing stock for newcomers and young hometowners.

The bike trials do fit in nicely with the Wright Cycle Shop heritage. I saw that Wright Cycle condo development near Xenia. One can't buy that kind of branding.

[SWOH]

Originally Posted by dxdtdemon

Also, the bike trails happened sort of by accident. At one time, there were two railroads called the Pennsylvania RR and the New York Central RR that had tried to buy as many railroads as they could in the northeast and eastern midwest to remove competition. In the 1970's, they and a bunch of other eastern railroads failed, and the government created the Consolidated Railroad (also known as Conrail) to run the freight on all of those lines. In the 80's, Congress passed a law that allowed some of the duplicate lines to not be used but also made it a very long process to totally get rid of the land the lines were on but didn't require the rails to still be there. Eventually, in the 90's, someone came up with the idea of turning these abandoned rail lines into bike paths.

Besides these reasons, a lot of the reason why Dayton specifically has a good, expansive bike trail network is because of excessive lobbying from Huffy Bicycles, which is based in Dayton.

Genius idea on their part - convert the old rail lines to bike trails, get Daytonians out and active, and drive up their sales! Regardless, the bike trails are a tremendous asset to our community, and I know I personally have utilized them countless times during my life....