johndewey

Check my latest post to Jeffrey's follow-up Arcade post from 2007. Had Tom Danis not been the protector/steward for 10 plus years, I believe we would have lost this precious, irreplaceable future opportunity.

An important Thank You to Jeffrey for his chronicling this phase of the Arcade. Some randowm thoughts and observations: 1. Leo McGarry's insights - Food - at the street level, food was always the driver here. Providing food & beverage options/opportunities for those who live, work and regularly visit and populate the downtown has always part of the key to the street-level vibe of this special center of Dayton. The second key was/is the multiple street-level access point into and out of the Arcade - that is critical to creating the robust vibe that complements the food/beverage and the daily inspiration/respite that elevates the experience because of the stunning, beautiful architecture. It was designed and stood/stands as a cathedral to the spirit of the everyday Daytonian! 2. Interestingly enough.............. While generating enough revenue to keep the Arcade afloat and operating in the time period between 1980 - 1991 was needed, the retail never paid its way. That was not a surprise, the ebbing of the postwar downtown retail/shopping experience started in the late 1950's when the early shopping centers (Northtown, Eastown, Westown, Town and Country) followed by the first phase malls (Dayton and Salem Malls) followed by the second phase malls (Fairfield Commons followed by The Greene - facilitated by the construction of I-675) and Austin Landing (facilitated by the construction of Austin Boulevard interchange). Footnote - most of this retail expansion was not necessarily fueled by real market demand (the Dayton region has not netted additional population since the 1970's) but was fueled by real estate development occurring with easy access to capital - all but blew up in the Great Recession bubble of 2008/2009. 3. Meanwhile back downtown ..................... the City of Dayton made a political decision to construct a new office tower in 1994. This came about as Webb-Henne came into town and wanted to build a new office tower at the southeast corner of Third and Main Streets (to redevelop the old Elder-Beerman property that surrounded the historic American Building). That interest was channeled to the southwest corner of Third and Main. The in-house development team (at the time) imagined that a new major office tower filled with hundreds of employees would sustain traffic needed to keep the street-level of the Arcade sustainable (what in fact happened was, with the completion of 675, the reverse occurred - I was downtown planner at the time and tracked close to a 1/4 to 1/3 of the downtown job base out to the new 675 corridor). I did want to add here that, while bankruptcy and a business decision to close the Arcade for some future redevelopment team, up until the very last day, it was the food/beverage vendors that paid their rent (they kept the ship afloat for the rest of the passengers until the last day). The planners (Jack Becher mentored John Gower in this second phase) were given the assignment to craft a second phase urban renewal plan/project to make this happen (setting the record straight here - the planners did not think that this would work given the ebbing of the\ office market due to 657 sprawl - and - removing the remaining successful retail (the remaining retail in the block continue to succeed - partly because of very low rents or ownership of buildings - and a thriving part of the remaining ecosystem of retail whose demise was accelerated with the completion of 675 and the shifting of retail supply chasing rooftops to southeast Dayton). The fundamental of the plan requirements were that the street-level of the new tower would be filled with market-driven lifestyle amenities that would complement the street-level of the Arcade. Critical to the reshaping of the function of the block would be a Main Street front door' to the Arcade that would occur as part of the tower concourse (if you walk into the concourse of the tower today, you will see a pair of doors on the west wall - this would have created a direct connection with the street-level of the Arcade). Unfortunately that Arcade transferred ownership to Danis and was closed prior to the opening of the new office tower. Linked to both the first and second Arcade urban renewal plans was the linkage to Courthouse Square. The Courthouse Square Urban Renewal Plan/Project occurred prior to the Arcade. Critical to functional layout of the new Courthouse Square was the strengthening of a mid-block, north/south spine that would functionally link/tie the street-level of both blocks to fuel robust/vibrant foot traffic that would support urban lifestyle uses that, in turn, would strengthen the value proposition for the 2 new towers of Courthouse Square and the future redeveloped Arcade block. The good news for the 1974 to 1976 CHS redevelopment was that the street-level layout for the Square would support that vision. The bad news for the CHS redevelopment is that the new corporate tenants of the 2 new towers did not want to 'clutter' the new image of their towers with traditional active urban uses. They had the architects design the 2 new towers with protective landscaped moats around their bases (to keep whomever away from their buildings. The ground floors of the 2 new towers had bank lobbies and airline ticket offices as the new image for the downtown street-level. The good news about this bad news is that there is great opportunity to reimage/redesign/remake the street level of the towers and the square into a 21st century vibrant lifestyle campus. 4. Back to the Arcade - Danis did an exceptional job of stewardship and care for the Arcade. Mr. Tom Danis had said that he did not know (as a developer) how to make that work. However, as a lifelong Daytonian (and former Chaminade graduate) he knw the importance of this landmark and that its next redevelopment would be critical to the overall success/value proposition to the core of the downtown. Had this not happened, the Arcade would have (absolutely) succumbed to demolition and not allowed for it to be reimagined as a learn/live/work/play/create 'city-within-a-city' that is occurring before our eyes. 5. Referencing the earlier comments made the integrated functional linkage between Courthouse Square, that mid-block street-level pedestrian flow, observed by William Hollie Whyte (cam to Dayton 3 times on the late 1980's) was equal to any New York vibrant sidewalk - he took his count during lunchtimes mid-block in that north/south Arcade footpath. Jim Nichols (lifetime downtown enthusiast, optimist, evangelizer, journalist, resident), just before he retired and the Dayton Daily News brought the weekly publication 'The Downtowner' to a close, opined (to my recollection) that while there was always new progress, sustained investment, enthusiasm and hope for downtown Dayton, it could never be fully realized while the Arcade remained dark. I have never forgotten his comments. To be a urban design/placemaking clinician here, it was his basic understanding of the experience and vibe of that flow of dense flow of vibrant Dayton humanity of this magical path would mean to a new vibrant downtown core. humanity of how important and vibrant the expewrince of the robust activity

Jeffrey has done a masterful dissection/decoding of this chapter on the life of the Dayton Arcade. I wanted to add a single tidbit. Jeffrey mentioned/pointed out how critical every penny of revenue generated from leases was to keeping this initial phase of the Arcade out of bankruptcy. The third floor rotunda tenant that he referenced was Bell Publicom. I believe they were marketing/advertising company. While their space was renovated to the specifications, a tragic private plane crash took the lives of both the CEO and CFO shortly before they were to take possession of the third floor space. That unfortunate event triggered the cascading series of revenue shortfalls that eventually brought about the foreclosure. Additional perspectives: - This project was viewed by the Downtown stakeholders/investors to be a critical amenity to retaining the approximately 30,000 downtown office workers. - The success of the amenity (Arcade) was an investment that would payback building owners and developers by a value proposition that would continue to keep office building rents high because of the demand for the overall downtown location and experience - this was a 1980's version of retaining, expanding and growing the downtown employment base for workers. The RTKL plan component of building an ecosystem of core downtown assets/amenities (fundamental to the place-based value proposition) was key tpo retaining, leveraging and growing economic activity. - Everyone knew going into this that this was an amenity investment. The short-term investment strategy was to keep it above water for 5 years (60 months) in order for the equity investors to keep their federal tax deductions related to the project (at the time, the federal tax incentive for investing in a National Register Project was accelerated depreciation. My understanding that, in order to fully take advantage of the tax incentive, the partner in investors needed to keep the project out of foreclosure for 5 years (60 months). Aetna and the local banks foreclosure action caused the initial tax equity investors to repay their benefits back to Uncle Sam. - The City of Dayton went big in this (relative to scale of investment at the time) because it was a critical piece of the north/south street-level mid-block vibrancy strategy. - Last tidbits: 1. The upper floors and exterior of the project was to have been covered with an additional federal grant. That grant was competitively captured by the local school system to build the DPS Career Academy (stood on the site that we know today as Water Street). The Career Academy did not succeed for the long haul, was vacated by DPS, later demolished, transferred/sold to the City of Dayton. The Water Street apartments now stands at that location. 2. Partly because of the above, the project was launched because of the role it was to play to retain the downtown employment base. The launch of a partially completed project resulted in a development project that was over-capitalized and under- capitalized at the same time. UNDERCAPITALIZED - only a portion of the 400,000 plus square feet became revenue producing. The vacant floors never produced any revenue and could be argued facilitated the UNDERCAPITALIZATION of the project. OVERCAPITALIZED - The renovated portion of the project (retail/service/marketplace) had to carry the entire debt load. The rents were required to be as robust as suburban mall rents on daily foot (office generated) foot traffic - arguably the financial Achilles heal here - Nevertheless, the courage of the downtown stakeholder investors moved forward - looks like an incredible effort efforts from the perspective of 2021............