Jeff

I was for this amendment, until I see it applies to the localities. I'm for local control, so I would prefer this amendment be limited to state government, and let the localities determine their own policies on spending caps. Perhaps the best restriction on local spending is a requirement that local budgets have to balance, that there not be any deficits. I think this already is either state law or a provision of the state constitution.

If I recall right, the Music Hall/Washington Park area was going to be the orginial focus for restoration/gentrification in OTR

Well, open air shopping can be pretty miserable in the high heat/high humidity Ohio summers, too...

This sounds like a major demolition effort...are there any graphics or maps showing what kind of impact this will have on the character of the neighborhood.... One of the things that makes OTR special is not the individual buildings but the dense urban ensemble, but also with a lot of variety to the buildings, too.

Cost Plus! I remember them when I lived in the Bay Area..they are sort of a better Pier One. The Track and Trail place sounds interesting. I also see a bit of retail musical chairs, too...the Borders will be moving from that South Point or Southtown shopping center just east on 725, which is where that dead K-Mart is. Bravo is in an outlot in the same shopping center. Too bad we are not getting a Joseph Beth. With the decline Books and Company (which has really went downhill) Joseph-Beth is the best in the region (yet the Wexner gift shop is still tops for design and architecture books/mags). In any case, the Dayton Mall needs all the help it can get. It was one of those DeBartolo malls, which are very utilitarian, even for the times they where built in.

...although I have heard nary a word on this. I have seen quite a few Bohardt signs around the city during my travels, so he does appear a viable challenger to Rhine McLin. Bohardts name is cropping up in some interesting places. I was trying to google to see if he had a campaign website, and came acorss this "smart growth" smart growth news site that mentions Bohardt in connection with something called "Greater Ohio", which seems to have alot of NW Ohio players, but Bohart is on the steering committee... Having secured almost $500,000 from the Cleveland-based Gund Foundation and other donors, reports Akron Beacon Journal writer Bob Downing, Greater Ohio steering committee chairman and EcoCity Cleveland founder David Beach says the next governor must take a firm anti-sprawl stand and lead as former or present governors in Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan and Pennsylvania have done. His diverse 26-member steering committee represents a whole spectrum of interests. It includes Ohio Environmental Council leader Vicki Deisner, Scenic Ohio head Christine Freitag, AFL-CIO Cleveland Federation of Labor representative John Ryan, Catholic Diocese Commission on Catholic Community Action representative Len Calabrese, Greater Cleveland Growth Association member David Goss, Home Builders Association of Dayton and Miami Valley official David Bohardt, and retired Akron public relations expert David Meeker.

Oh..ok, I went back under "projects and developement" and saw Grasscat had posted the full article....I recall us talking about the Eckli Building, but forgot about that other thread....that was a good backrounder and explains the context. It seems Midland tried to do it the normal route, failed due to the holdouts, and now it looks like the City is going to step in and 'make it happen' as an urban renewal project. From what I found out studying that Dayton Towers effort the city can aquire the property, do the demolition and site prep, and then sell it off to private developers (I guess the recent USSC "eminent domain" ruiling is relevant here). Actually, this would be a good candidate for a TIF as they use the TIF mechanism in Chicago for commercial development...could be the state laws are different. But that is a good question....what happens to the "old" Kroger up the hill?

”The area certainly seems to have substandard infrastructure. There is a burned-out building, vacant houses, vacant lots with high weeds, Essman said. “If blighted the city commission may act, at its discretion, to declare it an urban renewal area and acquire the property. The city tentatively set boundaries for the urban renewal project as Pierce Street to the north, Wyoming Street to the south, Hawker Street to the east, and Wayne Avenue to the west. Well, it looks like another little local history project for me. I had some time today, and went down there and shot that neighborhood, and am researching it a bit now. It looks like this is the old "Bachelors Alley" that is referenced in city histories. The neighborhood was subdivided in 1870 and 1875, so some of the housing may date from the late 1870s/early 1880s. Pierce Street, mentioned as a boundary in the article, covers, in part, the "city drain". This was perhaps a natural watercourse or intermittent creek that drained the hills off of Wyoming (Ohmer Park and Linden Heights), running evnetually to the Miami River. It was put into an open drain, wich ran down the middle of Park Drive, and eventually covered over. Perhaps there is a big storm sewer under Pierce that is whats left of the 'city drain'? Anyway, stay tuned for a pix thread on this soon-to-vanish neighborhood sometime soon...

I think Sacramento started with a small, bare-bones line (it was actually single tracked in parts, with sidings), and then expanded the system.

It would be nice if the MVRP puts this online, the way they did the Miami Valley Metropatterns study. I would like to see how it jives with what I was finding out when I was looking at the vacancy and abandonment numbers in the census as part of that Wright-Dunbar thread I posted a while back...

Urban renewal has made its mark on Ohio's urban landscape, and it was parented, in part, by a leading Ohio politician. Senator Robert A Taft, "Mr Republican", was the chief sponsor of the Housing Act of 1949, of which Title I was the provision for urban renewal. While Akron probably engaged in one of the more drastic urban renewal programs in the state, radically changing the face of its downtown, Dayton wasn't far behind. This will be a series of threads looking at Urban Renewal in Dayton. I will start with an introduction, then explore three neighborhoods; the Haymarket and adjoining areas, Hells Half Acre, and a later example, a small area near the former Hydraulic canal. Perhaps part of the sucess of these programs is that you have never heard of these neighborhoods as they have been "renewed", largely cleared and redeveloped. I might explore the downtown urban renewal projects at a later date. Urban renewal started out before 1949 in Dayton, probably with progressive era concern with slums, but certainly with the 1933 Housing Survey of Dayton, which was an in-depth and fine-grained (at the voting precinct detail) investigation of housing conditions in the city, which dovetailed with the forthcoming New Deal interest in public housing and social reform. As an example, this map shows that even in the 1920s and 1930s inner city areas where falling apart, illustrated by this map showing demolitions. The deteriorated and dilapidated housing stock of the city was already beeing culled, albeit on a peacmeal basis. The 1933 housing survey also generated this housing condition map, wich also enumerated "shacks" and "vandalized units" as well as being a composite of various housing condition indicators: ...which led to this recommended that meshes zoning with early proposals for slum clearance: ...two areas where proposed for immediate clearance and redevelopement, "Project 1" in West Dayton, and "Project 2" in East Dayton, with additional clearnce and redevelopement later. This never happened as land aquisition costs where too high, so the first public housing in Dayton, Desoto Bass and Parkside, where built on more peripheral areas that were easier to aquire. Also, note that alot of residential areas were re-zoned industrial. Around 20 years later as part of a major comprehensive planning effort planning consultant Harlan Bartholomew also did a housing study, pretty much recapping the 1933 study. This map shows the aging housing stock of Dayton. Whats interesting is the east-west orientation of the 19th century city as shown by the older housing, wich contrasts the north-south developement trends of today... ...and again, the worst housing areas in the city, the areas of "urban blight", which would become the candidate areas for urban renewal. This amazing population density map shows how overcrowed and dense Dayton was during the immediate postwar era. This was the era of housing shortage that prompted the 1948 Housing Act, and other housing acts too (like the Wherry Act, that led to Page Manor). Many of the "black" areas would be depopulated during the next 30 years by urban renewal and the processes of suburbanization and changing land use: And a bit of cultural studies digression. Noir City....lit and film crit meets cultural studies meets urban history. Writers have been making connection with the aesthetic of Hollywoods "film noir" and the urban renewal era, or the American city just before and during urban renewal and suburbanization. This was the city of Nelson Algren and the Noir detective/crime movies, the "City of Night" of John Rechys gay hustler novel....this pix juxtaposes the murals inside the Talbot Tower of Dayton as the "City of Night" and a movie poster with a street scene similar to the mural...the mural would be contemporary w film noir, too, from the late 40s/early 50s. "Although noir’s seductive style and aesthetic innovations have drawn much attention from film scholars, few have situated noir in a sociohistorical framework. As white flight and industrial decentralization denuded the physical and social landscape of the inner city, Hollywood marketed spectacles of urban decline as mass entertainment. Set amid the littered streets, dark alleys, and decaying buildings of the downtown, film noir represented the postwar crisis of the public city through its narratives of social disorder and psychological malaise…" Eric Avila , Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight "Urban transformations are the burden of Edward Dimendberg's fitfully brilliant study, Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity: the passage of a historical city of old neighborhoods, traditional if often menacing public spaces, and anonymous crowds into the postwar suburbs, highways, shopping malls, and industrial landscapes...Dimendberg's animating insight remarks the coincidence of this radical reorganization in American space and the film-noir cycle--from 1939 to 1959" ..from a review of Film Noir and the Space of Modernity Playing with the cultural studies turn in a Dayton context...Dayton as Noir City, cutting stills of film noir with scenes of Daytons downtown fringe areas...the stills are from "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" (Paramount, 1946) and "Fallen Angel" (20th Century Fox, 1945)...the pix is also a stand in for the crime maps from the 1933 housing study that maps juvenile delinquency, murder, robbery, vice, etc, onto the housing maps of the city, showing the connection between "urban blight" and crime...a connection made explicit in this statement from a 1960 planning document: “No neighborhood is completely safe from blight which creeps out from its starting point like a grass fire…The records of the public health service, fire division, police division, and welfare agencies all show higher rates of disease, fire, crime, and human suffering in blighted neighborhoods.” 1960, Workable Program for Urban Renewal So, what to do? Why, rebuild the city! The following two maps shows a regional approach to slum clearance and reconstruction, and a close up of the inner parts of Dayton. Note that blight was also out in the suburbs too, such as in Little Kentucky in Fairborn, "Roherers Little Farms" in Mad River Township, and "Dogpatch" in Moraine. Drexel shows up too. As in the 1933 recommendations, clearance and reconstruction was proposed for West and East Dayton, but in an expanded plan. Here is a before and after proposal for West Dayton, todays Wright-Dunbar neighborhood. This was never executed, and Wright Dunbar was partially demolished by highway construction, and eventually deteriorated to the point of abandonment and demolition, and was recently reconstructed as a neotraditional neighborhood, not a modernist housing project. The focus of this thread will be in East Dayton, in three neighborhoods or project areas that perhaps better illustrate the intentions of Daytons urban renewers. This thread will focus on the Haymarket and vicinity as this area is probably the best example, the most fully realized instance of urban renewal in the city. Recapping housing age, conidtions, and proposed urban renewal treatment of the neighborhoods, via blowups of the previous maps To set the stage, a brief historical discussion. The east side areas are some of the oldest in the city, and were the first areas platted outside the original city plat, after the Miami and Eire canal was built. This map shows the subdivided areas around 1830, on top of an 1872 map. This was "suburbia" in antebellum Dayton. And suburbia was not particularly fashionable as it was the home for immigrants and blacks...including the first black neighborhood in Dayton, "Africa", which was apparently destroyed in an 1841 race riot. The first Catholic parish was also in these marginal suburban areas. Also note "Seelys Ditch". This was a canal built on the east side of the city, roughly parallelling the low bluff that is St Annes Hill and Fairgrounds Hill, partly as a real estate speculation, by Morris Seely, a mechant, mayor of Dayton, and sometime real estate developer (who platted the areas around Steele High School). It apparently sparked a number of plats on the east side of town. With all these canals cutting through town Dayton was a vertable "Venice of the Midwest"...well, maybe not.... Seelys Ditch was a failure and the northern part was filled in in stages, and a market house was built over it on Wayne Street. One of the northern areas filled in became the Haymarket. The lower part apparently was intact until the 1890s. About the only memory of this canal in Dayton's urban landscape is Burns Avenue, with the median to the left of the pix below being where the canal was. Probably a good photo as it looks somewhat open and rural, as this area was in the 1830s and 40s... By the 1870s the area became the Dayton version of Over The Rhine, the 19th century home to Daytons "Deutschtum", or German community, with a concentration of German churches, a German newspaper, a brewrey. The local Turnverein built their hall here. The Liederkranz singing society had a hall on Wayne Avenue, and there was also a Jewish synagogue on Wayne. One of the landmark churches in the neighborhood, Holy Trinity, dates to 1860, and was the third Catholic parish in the city. Around this time the market house was built at Wayne and Burns By the early 20th century the area had become somewhat congested, and was selected as the site for playground by the Olmstead Park Plan of 1911, as Bomberger Park was too small. The plan seemed to envision this playground park working with Burns Avenue as sort of a park system, with Burns functioning as a boulevard leading to the playground. “The Wayne Avenue end could be treated ornamentally with walks lined with seats and with trees and shrubs and enclosed lawn … The plan also envsioned this playground as a driver for improved developement in the surrounding area, as an example of the first attempt of "urban renewal" in the area.. "It is quite possible that the value of the adjoining private lands will increase with the laying out of this playground, as it will come into demand for tenement houses for respectable families ho will pay a good rent for even the fourth floor rather than go out further from the center of the city. The increased taxes thus received should go far toward meeting the interest on the cost of the playground.” A close-up of Bomberger Park, which predated the Olmstead Plan. Holy Trinity church is visible in the backround. This verision of the park was demolished during urban renewal, and an expanded park was installed. Around this time Dayton was recieving the "second immigration" from eastern and southern Europe. This neighborhood recieved a scattering of Italian immigrants, who worshipped at Holy Trinity. Though this area never became a "little Italy", the Italians did have their social hall in a large victorian building at the corner of Wayne and Fifth, later renamed Pirelli Hall. The 1933 housing study identified this area as project #2 for slum clearance, and this map from that plan illustratest he density of the neighborhood. The red circle locates a house that will appear later, in another map, to show how drastic the change was in this area. This area was also becoming home to alot of Applachians, including my barber...who moved here from Tennessee. He told me some interesting stories about what this the area was like when he was young. There where alot of shops along 5th east of Wayne, including the American Lunch, Fifth Street Smokery, beauty shop, a "jot-em-down" store (corner grocery store). The market house on Wayne & Burns was still being used, too... I don't have a good map of what the revedelopement plan was, but here are some grainy pix of some of the proposed housing, which was somewhat typical of public housing in the 1930s..it reminds me of some "New Deal" era housing in Louisville and Chicago: After WWII the City Plan Board kept on reworking the redevelopement plan. This is a model of the plan from the late 40s showing a more modernist design, with Fifth street being the north-south street in the pix, and Wayne the diagonal at the bottom. An expanded Bomberger Park is in the upper left hand corner of the model. The city finally finalized a plan, and the following is the chronology of execution of urban renewal for the Haymarket, and the area north of Fifth between Wayne and Dutoit around Holy Trinity (to be developed as an industrial park). Next to be rebuilt was the "Burns-Jackson" area, todays Oregon District. 1957 Planning complete, federal urban renwal funds requested 1958 Approval of project, Acceptance of Federal Contract, 717 relocation units built as "Allendale Homes" (?)(the pix looks likes a suburban developement) 1959 1/2 of properties aquired for clearance by year end 1960 Clearance nearly complete, parcels readied for resale. 1961 Haymarket has been cleared and land sold. Sales of industrial property north of 5th proceding. US 35 Expressway under construction. 1962 Groundbreaking for Dayton Towers. Plans for a second tower and a shopping center being developed. 1963 Dayton Towers complete 1964 New post office plans for the area north of 5th, New commercial center, and beginning of demolition/redevelopement in Burns/Jackson (Oregon District) The end result was a dramatic reconfiguration of the neighborhood. Refer upthread to the 1933 current conditions map to see how much has changed in this area ..the red circle is the same house/location as in the above map. The Oregon District public housing is also visible to the west of Waune, and the industrial park to the north of 5th. Keowee has been cut through, and the US 35 expressway, too. Now lets walk around the neighborhood... The classic shot..Dayton Towers...the tower in the park right out of Le Corbusier. Possibly one of the better realization of this vision of urban developement And Keowee Street, developed as an inner city crosstown route to the US 35 Expressway Fifth, the new Post Office, and Holy Trinity Keowee looking north to the railroad. This was mostly residenial, now all industrial... Dayton Towers, and the "second" high rise (elderly housing, I think) close up of second high rise. The expanded Bomberger Park, w. St Annes Hill in the distance...this was all housing. Eagle and McClain, following an old sidewalk on the alignment of Eagle Street, walking toward Stivers High School... The new Bomberger park rec center, Stivers in backround looking back from where we came from Looking at downtown, from the hill at St Annes Hill, across the parklike urban renewal zone. Dayton Towers across Bomberger Park The second tower again... Entering into the parkland surrounding the Dayton Tower and its sister tower, a suprise...an ghost street (the old Haymarket itself?) still remains as a landscape feature, a path into the heart of the urban renewal site.... The ghost street leads to the second tower....(this is almost rural or suburban in feel)..... via a little plaza and garden frisbee field... ...the grassy knoll..expressway as landscape feature and urban renewal feature. One would never know one is in the heart of the city On to Dayton Towers Straight out of Le Corbusier... architecturally, though, this tower is a bit "project-esque" cooling tower with the logo.... cocktales by the pool wall around pool & parking... snazzy entrance. Very '60s. Very "New Frontier". Views out of the project area toward some of the surroundings... Now lets look at the commercial part of the Haymarket developement. Plenty of parking. Modernist space This used to be a modernist Shell gas station, and could have been remodelled into an interesting retro venue, but has been transformed instead into an Irish pub. This was the site of a rather grand & tall 3 story brick victorian "flatiron" block, w. a corner tower. Modernist shopping center, w. chinese and italian restuarants. This was like a continuation of 5th Street in the Oregon district. Commercial/Industrial developement. I wonder what a "Print Prod" is? It sounds very space age. Urban renewal on 5th. I get the feeling beatlemania is just about to hit... The beginning of the urban renewal of Burns -Jackson..modern storefronts, projects in the backround.. A little of "old Wayne Street" is left..this the 1880s Dietz Block. The corner building on Wayne & Fifth was a more elaborate and taller version of this (w bigger windows)... This project was probably going to be the fate of much of the rest of the Oregon District. Probably the last straw for the presevationists. Also, by this time, there was alot of critique of urban renewal coming from people like Jane Jacobs, and alternative examples, like German Villiage in Columbus... ..but, as housing projects go, this is a nice project! Expressway as a park feature, w. Burns-Jackson playground in South Park in the backround. This was all houses, too... ..looking back out of the project to Wayne.... Now, a quick tour of the urban renewal area north of 5th, "Queensgate Junior". Most of this area was housing, but also industry closer to the railroad. So it seemed logic to make the whole area industrial. Holy Trinity on Bainbridge Street, neighborhood landmark....this church now has a Spanish language Mass for the latino community. Parish school... The area has been redeveloped as modern low factory and commercial buildings, and the central post office... and, finally, back at the "new" crosstown Keowee Street... ..the area east of Keowee was redeveloped into commericial/industrial, and as playing fields for Stivers High School. Dutiot Street houses & Blosser Mansion visible on the hill in the distance. So, urban renewal. This was the first big project Dayton undertook (aside from early public housing)...as this was fairly sucessfull, the city soon embarked on much grander schemes downtown. Yet, it probably kicked off the urban preservation movement here, too, as Burns-Jackson (the Oregon District) was going to be next in East Dayton. 1960 was the peak population for Dayton, after which it dropped drastically. Perhaps this urban renewal response to "urban blight" was partially a cause, replacing people with buisnesses and industry? Yet, with two high rise towers, is this area is any less dense than when it was the "Haymarket", even though it looks like a suburban park? I would say this is one of the more sucessfull "tower in the park" urban renewal schemes that I am aware of (perhaps Lafayette Park in Detroit is another good example), due to the lush landscaping. Next, a look at urban renewal, or recycling, via "downzoning" in Hells Half Acre.

Well, Locutus, tell them Ohio is Americas answer to Lancashire or the Midlands. Billy Bragg is sining about this area in his song "Northern Industrial Town", and it could describe Ohio at times.... It's just a northern industrial town The front doors of the houses open into the street There's no room for front gardens, just two-up two-down In a northern industrial town And you can see the green hills 'cross the rooftops And a fresher wind blows past the end of our block In the evenings the mist come rolling on down Into a northern industrial town And there's only two teams in this town And you must follow one or the other Let us win, let them lose, not the other way round In a northern industrial town And the street lights look pretty and bright From the tops of the hills they rise dark in the night If it weren't for the rain you might never come down To your northern industrial town And on payday they tear the place down With a pint in your hand and a bash'em out band Sure they'd dance to the rhythm of the rain falling down In a northern industrial town And there's plenty of artists around Painters steal cars, poets nick guitars Cos we're out of the black and into the red So give us this day our daily bread In a northern industrial town But it's not Leeds or Manchester Liverpool, Sheffield, nor Glasgow It's not Newcastle-on-Tyne. It's Belfast It's just a northern industrial town Merry Christmas, war is over In a northern industrial town

Honda here in Ohio, and Toyota in Kentucky, has caused Japanse parts suppliers to construct plants in Ohio, too. So this Japanese investment in the region has been a real boon, as Dflys post points out.

I know there that is...sort of an odd location as this is sort of a bridgehead suburb of Sacto. Yet I guess the areas to the west, across the Yolo Causeway (this is a long bridge over this very wide floodway...West Sac is sort of an "island" when there is a flood) are booming.... ...and one of the booming areas is Davis, which is a college town, originally the "ag" campus of the University of California campus...The UC Davis Aggies....I guess the relationship to Sacramento is sort of like Bowling Green and Toledo.

The story of steel and ironmaking in Appalachian Ohio is an interesting case of industrial and technological history....one usually thinks of this industry more along the Ohio River (Steubenville and vicinity) or up in Youngstown, but the industry was big, earlier, in western Appalachia..the so-called Hanging Rock Region. This was orginally a charcoal-blast furnance based industry, which had interesting implications for landownership, but the steelmaking actually survived into the 1960s and 70s, with a few stand-alone furnaces still in existence (of course by modern times they used coke, not charcoal) The last steel/iron making operation on the Ohio side was in Portsmouth/New Boston...and the last blast furnace left in the Hanging Rock Region is the AK Steel furnaces in Ashland, on the Kentucky side. There is a good site on the history of the industry at the Olde Forester website (as well as other lore from Appalachian Ohio. Hillbilly Bears Regional History of Appalachain Ohio is also alot of fun to surf around in.... There was also a large Welsh community that settled in a part of Appalachian Ohio..in Jackson County....there is even a Wesh-American Heritage Museum there. There where Welsh singing festivals in Jackson as late as the 1930s. You don't hear much about coal, and alot of it is strip mined, but I swore I drove by a working deep mine on a road trip to Wellston and the Buckeye Furnace a few years ago.

What I find interesting is that Covington is dropping the way the older inner ring areas on the Ohio side are. One would expect the same phenomenon to be occuring in Convington and Newport as is occriing in places like Elmwood Place and St Bernard.

Good grief..."Der Grosse Mobelhaus aus Schweden":, as the German ads used to say back when they where penetrating the FRG market (and they had this talking cartoon moose, too, as their "mascot"....of course the Rocky & Bullwinkle connection didn't register w. the Euros). They are located is some decidedly unhip locations in Germany, like Siegen (sort of like being in Huntington/Ashland or Wheeling), and Saarlouis (the German version of Flint or Lordstown...tho that market area includes Luxembourg and Metz)...cheap furniture for the working class to furnish their social-democratic welfare state high rise apartments/condos. So its funny to see the hipster cachet Ikea has here in the US. Still, a fun website, that Ikeohio....

..believe it or not they served that in my high school cafeteria down in Louisville. Thats where I heard of it first...and I didn't hear of it again until I moved to Ohio!

...roast beef hotshots. Never heard of them till I moved to Dayton. Also, there is this stewed tomato salad thats popular in old-school restaurants here, which is supposed to be local?

heh..i just got my membership renewal this past week...

periogis are not a regional food unique to Cleveland, I can gaurantee you that. For me the buckeye thing that is uniquely Ohio is the "buckeye" candy..that peanut & chocolate bon bon. Unknown to me before I moved to Ohio, so I think a particularly uniquely Ohio food.

The problem area on I 75 is really between Edwin C Moses and Wagoner Ford Road, and the issues are number of lanes and poor weave patterns at interchanges. Nonstop express lanes through this area would help.

Interesting discussion. The anglo-american tradition is to think of "squares" as parks surrounded by buildings, not so much like the pix Monte posted of Milan (you can find these in other European countries too). Yet maybe a compromise between a more formal "open' plaza and some trees? Personally i don't think Fountain Square is exceptionally bad...its actually fairly good for large events, like that keg-tapping at the Oktoberfest. I also think The Banks is Cincinnatis really great opportunity to do something grand and special with its riverfront and downtown.

I have very mixed feelings about this....I guess I show my old-fogey "counterculture/alternative scene" bias here, but I tend to be more into the funky home-grown stuff like whats happening in the Oregon district (yeah, I know..but it has its moments) and Canal Street Tavern...and will be going to that new Foundry place later tonight to hear some local jam bands.... ....this complex sounds a bit too "glitz" for me. Fourth Street Live is not my idea of an interesting, organic nightlife scene as it seems sort of "chain store"..there is a big Borders, a Hard Rock Cafe, a bowling alley, and so forth, but its sort of, well, corporate, compared to a more organic streetside nightlife scene. I guess that was inveitable as Louisville had that dead downtown shopping mall, & this was a way to bring it back to life...it wasn't purpose-built to be a entertainment center... I am trying to be positive about this as downtown Dayton needs all the help it can get, but I would hate to see scenes like the Oregon or some of the other places fade due to this complex sucking out the life from them. I do like that whitewater rafting concept and the covered stage for the summer festivals that happen there....

Thats intersting as I recall the "come again?" expression.,,but not from Cincinnati. I wondered where that came from. Its actually in a rock song chorus by Jerry Garcia...Mission in the Rain... Someone called my name you know I turned around to see It was midnight in the mission and the bells were not for me Come again Walking along in the mission in the rain Come again Walking along in the mission in the rain