Jeff

I think their approach makes sense. New companies and if they are growing. Toledo and Columbus did well in these rankings.

Is this the neighborhood where Last Exit to Brooklyn was set?

In Ohio we have our own ritual space. The corn maze.

LOL...Wittenberg is Lutheran, and if its affiliated with ELCA it will be pretty moderate. Now Cedarville, well, tune into their college radio station WCDR and check it out....

When I was living in Kentucky people said Case-Western had a real good engineering school. I don't know if that's true or not. For community colleges, Sinclair here in Dayton is supposed to be pretty good. They have a lot of tech training programs.

Cedarville College?

^ you must be joking.

The Dance! Dayton would be a great visit for a confirmed balletomane during the performing arts season. Elbos is no more. But Canal Street Tavern is indeed a reason to visit (and people have come there from Cincinnati and Columbus for shows). The Air Force Museum and now the Wright Brothers national park sites are worth going to. The visitors centers in Wright-Dunbar and over at the Wright Brothers monument are free and really worth the trip if one is an aviation buff. The Air Force Museum is probably a collection of old military aircraft of world signifigance as they have European planes as well as US ones.

Sounds like you followed the river! I've done that, too, on my visits down to Louisville. There is a really quaint town between Rising Sun and Madison called Vevay. It is similar to Madison, but smaller and maybe less touristy. The big difference is that it doesnt sit right on the river, but back on off on a low bluff. In the 1970s there was a sidewheel ferry that connected it to the Kentucky side, but that closed when the bridge across Markland Dam opened. Vevay also used to have a "Swiss Wine Festiva" as the place was founded by Swiss who tried to start a wine biz there. You did some good work on this Aurora thread. Looking forward to Madison, which was a favorite destination for Louisville folk for a weekend execursion.

What could happen is sort of a domino effect, where B/C becomes vacant or need to reduce rents to the point of the buildings hitting break-even or below that. End result could be vacant or empty Class B/C space. Which means that the market for downtown space is downtown buisenesses. Only 20% come from outside of downtown. Isn't that a bit of a concern?

I am really really looking forward this opening!

^ yeah good call on that, ColDayMan. Also, Fairfield Commons and The Greene don't have RTA service. The DDN is doing a lot on The Greene. Check out this special page on their website. Heres a story where Steiner pitches the economic postives of the Greene (hmmm) The Greene could be the area's needed shot in economic arm By Ismail Turay Jr. Staff Writer BEAVERCREEK | Developer Yaromir Steiner believes he has a partial solution to the area's job-loss problem. The owner of Columbus-based Steiner & Associates development firm said The Greene town center, his latest project and the Miami Valley's newest shopping destination, could help reverse the area's job-loss trend while giving it a $392 million economic boost when it opens at 10 a.m. Thursday. The entertainment complex — it's not a mall, Steiner said — is at Interstate 675 and Indian Ripple Road.

Well there you have it...parking! Inexespensive, as in "free". I think that "downtown ambassaodrs" program provides the good policing already. That is actually a sucessfull working program for downtown.

Downtown Partnership to assess its direction An impending change in the presidency gives business group a pause to air concerns, look at goals. By James Cummings Staff Writer DAYTON | Private companies and public institutions such as Sinclair Community College have invested more than $575 million downtown over the past nine years, and more people are living downtown, according to the Downtown Dayton Partnership. But Partnership figures also show the number of people working downtown continues to slowly decrease and office vacancy rates downtown are up. www.daytondailynews.com

Well, I can imagine a drop but such a drastic one would be very noticeable. But, yes, that is good question. How far down can a city decline in population? Is there a bottom or floor to urban population decline and abandonment? I think I read that Butte Montana used to have over 100,000, and has declined to 30,000, where it pretty much remains. Butte is a special case as it used to be a big mining town, but it also shows that larger cities never completely disappear. I don't think there is a case in the US where a city has reached 100,000 or over and completey disappeared.

Some think "Detroit", but Grand Funk Railroad was from Flint. I am pretty sure this was a 1 day fetival held at the old baseball stadium & was broadcast on TV. Alice Cooper played & was billed as a female folk singer. Traffic played there, too. Female folk singer! Yeah no one knew where old Alice was coming from (I think he was riffing on the UK "glam" movement). Traffic would have been worth seeing.

link The Grand Opening of the Future Energy Centerwill be from 3:00 to 8:00 p.m. on Sunday, August 27 at a new visitor’s center located on the Dull Homestead Farm near Dayton at 10404 National Road, Brookville, Ohio. Located beneath a skyline of six 120’ wind turbines, the Future Energy Center, the environmental branch of the Dayton International Peace Museum, will feature exhibits on alternative energy technologies and ways to conserve resources and the environment. The facility will be partially powered by an innovative, residential hydrogen unit, which has been developed in the Dayton area. Exhibits will give insight into: * Solar * Wind * Hydrogen * Geothermal * Ethanol * Green Building Design * Bio-diesel * Biomass * Methane * Farmland Preservation * Hybrid Vehicles * Open Space * Peak Oil * and More! A boardwalk around a 200-year-old oak tree along a regional bikeway has been constructed by Dayton’s MetroParks in the Dulls’ old growth woods. The international Heifer Project will have some animals at the Center. Entertainment will be provided by the contemporary blue grass band, the Corndaddies, and refreshments will be available. Experts on environmental issues will give talks, including Chris McWhinney, President of Residential Hydrogen Power, Preston Mote, Larry Frimerman of Farmland Preservation, Jim Dillon from Soil and Water Conservation, and Norma McDonald on methane energy. Grand Opening open house: On Sunday, August 27, from 3:00 to 8:00, the public is invited to attend a host of festivities. Not only will you be able to talk with energy experts, but you'll also be entertained by the wonderful and popular Rockabilly band, the Corndaddys! It's an event for the whole family, with food, tours, a "peace train" for the kids, and speakers on exciting energy news. Directions: Located on Route 40 (take I-70 to Exit 21 north to stop sign, then turn left and go one mile to the wind turbines on the Dull Homestead Farm, 10404 National Road (Route 40) in Brookville. One wonders what the "International Heifer Center" is. This place sounds like something right out of the 1970s. Seriously.

They are really pitching to an affluent market. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ The Dayton Mall Area. Hmph. In some ways it mimics a traditional downtown. There is the "Main Street" with all the name brand retail and department stores (the mall proper). Then there are the secondary streets which used to have the minor retail, cheap hotels, discount places, cheap theatres, and short-order lunchrooms and bars and such. Thats what Kingsridge and OH 725 and Springboro Pike are in relation to the Dayton Mall...where there was Jokers. That strip has fast food places, the second run theatre (Danbury Dollar), pool hall, things like a dancewear and carpet shop, Click Camera, and so forth. So its a lot like an exploded version of a traditional downtown...an exploded unplanned version.... Whats happening in the Dayton Mall area though is decline....there are more vacanys in these peripheral retail areas...the empty former Borders, the empy K-Mart, the soon to be empty Jokers, and so forth. I'm thinking the Dayton Mall area will be going into a slow decline as The Greene and the Fairfield Commons area will be the new retail centers for the region.

I don't know much about Hurley other than its reputation as that was more my dads and grandads time (they lived in northern Wisconsin, but further south). The neat area up there is the Apostle Islands, up around Bayfield. Bayfield is a very upscale little resort town on Lake Superior. Sort of preppy/L L Bean style. Madeline Island, offshore, is supposed to be pretty nice, but I never made it on that island. That is the largest and inhabited Apostle Island..the rest are a national lakeshore.

The Dayton Daily News has done investigative journalism in the past...I recall they won a Pulitizer for a series they did back in the early 1990s (don't recall the topic). I think the paper was into some sort of "civic journalism" when Brad Tillson was editor, too, as he was a big proponent of regionalism on the op-ed page.

I wonder what accounts for these rural districts having such high scores.

In that mug shot she looks like one of Drexel Dave's subjects. In any case the tragedy here is for the Studebaker children, given what we might assume their home life is like, and that they may be taken away from their battling parents and placed with a relative or foster home.

^ Photos From the Streets of Dayton

she looks like a crystal meth addict. Very East Dayton. There is quite a bit of hubris in running for public office and to have a screwed-up private life.

I you sure it wasnt Ironwood, Michigan? That town is closer to Duluth. Iron River, Michigan, is further to the east. There is an Ironwood, Iron River, and Iron Mountain. They are all old mining towns. That whole area up there is sort of a northwoods version of Appalachia, except its iron and copper rather than coal. Ironwood was somewhat famous in the northwoods for its neighboring town across the state line in Wisconsin, Hurley. Hurley was "wide open"...sort of what Newport used to be like in the old days. Anyway, Duluth has that sister city across the bay, Superior, which was a shipyard town. The Duluth/Superior metro area was also the nearest big city for a lot of northern Wisconsin, though Ashland, another ore port on Lake Superior, did provide some competition.