Jeff

When did Toledo do its renovation, I think it was the mid 90s... I think Dayton was doing some small scale loft renovations by then, too (I recall going to a party at a loft in an old commericial bldg at the intersection of St Clair and 1st street back in the early to mid 90s), but it was sort of onesys and twosys....not the big building renovations we are currently seeing.

Actually i didnt know Toledo had a warehouse district. I do think Toledo was a pioneer in loft conversions here in Ohio as I think they redeveloped an old downtown department store into lofts a few years ago, before this trend hit Dayton in a big way.

Great news for Toledo! I need to make the trek up I-75 again to check out the changes in the Glass City. ..one doesn't usually associate this demographic with loft or in-town living but I can see this developing into an new market niche.

Your welcome! I checked the WSU library and they had it too. I checked it out yesterday and am reading it now. Pretty informative, tho the author does have sort of a "left" POV.

There was an editorial about the Arcade in todays Dayton Daily News, Faith Needed on Arcade Complex The op-ed talks about the tax situation, but also: "...On top of that, Mr. Staub says it costs an additional $10,000 a month, on average, just to keep the buildings in basic repair and heated in the winter." ..lets hope we dont start seeing deferred maintenacne and shutting of heat. Deterioration will accelerate if that happens. The article also says: "For one thing, "giving up" would come at a significant cost, arguably much more than simply maintaining the Arcade in its current status. Demolition would be expensive and would yield an eyesore that would add little developable land to adjacent buildings. The scar would become, as one observer has said, the "most expensive vacant land downtown." Mayor Rhine McLin, Dayton city staff, and associates of the Downtown Dayton Partnership, along with Mr. Staub, have been the Arcade's champions. Mayor McLin enlisted the help of the Mayor's Institute on City Design, an agency organized by the National Endowment for the Arts and dedicated to the "design and livability" of American cities. Its representatives came to town to find an Arcade they described as an "extraordinarily high quality complex of buildings" that are in good repair, that benefit from "excellent pre-development analysis" and that will become "great public spaces when accessible."

It seems most of "Clayton" is farmland and ribbon developement along country roads, with very few subdivisions. And the orginal villiage of Clayton. Clayton Villiage. Does it have a downtown? I was wondering if there would be an opportunity to do a "new urbanist" type of developement around the orginal villiage, similar to the way developement occurs in Europe. I would be interested to see more details of what they are proposing. This could be pretty innovative for the Dayton area. Or it could be sprawl in new urbanist drag.

Springfield Street and the old part of Riverside is an interesting example of changing road alignments and early suburbia. Alot of the development along Springfield Street was 1920s era, perhaps related to the location of the Wright Field in the late 20s. And there was an interurban line running through the area more or less parallelling Springfield St, so perhaps this was an early driver of developement, too. The place started out, though, in the 19th century as a rural villiage called Harshmanville (some of which still exists).

Not anymore. Its been privatized & renamed The Prairies. And its being torn down and rebuilt. Xenia has that spokes of a wheel layout..with the roads coming in from the country. I think other towns in the old VMD have similar layouts....Washington CH and Marysville. I think you can see the Central State/Wilborforce campus northeast of Xenia on that aerial. I didn't realize they where so close to town.

This is a really good thread. I have to agree with mrnyc about that Springsteen song...it does "hit me like a sucker punch" too. It, and alot of that "Ghost of Tom Joad" album, was based on a book by a Sacramento Bee (the daily newspaper in Sacramento) reporter and photographer Journey to Nowhere, from the early 1980s, about how their contacts in the drifter/hobo community was telling them about a new sort of person on the road ending up in Sacto. They followed these down -and-outers back to Youngstown....thats where the book begins, with a photo essay on Youngstown, the neighborhoods and dead mills. And follows out-of-work people as they drift from the Mahoning Valley to California, the new "Tom Joads" so to speak. Other good books on Youngstown: Shutdown at Youngstown, Buss & Redburn. Steelworker Alley, How Class Works at Youngstown ...the above two I read. The first one is more about the first big wave of shutdowns and was written in 1982, so is more immediate. The other book is from the 1990s, and is more historical and sociological, including a discussion of the "Little Steel" strike of the 1930s. Steeltown USA: Work & Memory at Youngstown, Linkon & Russo. This is a new one, and looks to be pretty good. From the amazon blurb: Focusing on stories and images that both reflect and perpetuate how Youngstown understands itself as a community, Sherry Lee Linkon and John Russo have forged a historical and cultural study of the relationship between community, memory, work, and conflict. Drawing on written texts, visual images, sculptures, films, songs, and interviews with people who have lived and worked in Youngstown, the authors show the importance of memory in forming the collective identity of a place. I have been to Youngstown, making a special trip to see the place having heard so much about it (I was in college when the first big shutdown hit and one of my proffessors went to Youngstown to work on some community activitism to re-start a mill). I did see that museum downtown, which is worth a visit for anyone here interested in the history of the steel industry and steel-making technology. The museum also discusses the people who worked in the mills, too, so its not strictly focused on the buisness end. Just a real interesting and informative place. Youngstown wasn't as dead as I expected. There are some nice suburban areas to to the south, and also a nice park along a creek valley. The residential area north of YSU didnt look too bad either. But you can also see alot of abandonment and demolished neighborhoods closer to the valley proper, where the mills used to be. And downtown was pretty vacant at street level, which probably had to do with suburbanization prior to the mills shutting down (same story as everywhere else).

So whats the consensus? Xenia a suburb of Dayton? I vote "yes". The place was tied into Dayton viat two interurban lines...one, the Dayton-Xenia, lasted till the 1930s. There is an antique add for it over in the Spaghetti Warehouse in downtown Dayton. Beavercreek actually has some suburban developement that predates WWII, possibly related to this interurban line?

The Beavercreek/Bellbrook one is neat. Nice overview of the patterns of new developement there. I didnt realize there are so many golf courses in BC, esp that one on the southwest corner of the interchange between US 35 & I-675 And you can see the transition from the township & range survey system to the metes and bounds system at the Little Miami River.

I'm really impressed with Columbus' abiltiy to execute. They have a plan, then they go ahead and actually make it happen. So, yes, I expect this will get built, too!

It'll be interesting to see how sucessfull Burress will be going statewide. The proof in the pudding will be if his organization can unseat someone like Dewine in the GOP primary, or act as kingmaker in a GOP gubernatorial primary. Unseating Dewine in a primary would be a real coup.

Klau library has an excellent collection on the Holocaust and Nazi antisemitism. I did some research there a while back.

The area around New Baltimore (I think) is pretty scenic, in the valley of the Miami River. Lots of wooded hills and valleys..

Hey, is something else happening on 4th besides the HoB? I noticed they had the whole street blocked off. Is the intention to re-do that whole block between Prospect and Euclid? I think HoB works more with Prospect as it seems Prospect is developing into some sort of bar/restraunt district. There is that big Fat Fish Blue over at the corner with Ontario, I think?..then places on & off down the street towards the intersection w. Huron (I recall walking past an Irish pub place and a sports bar). The intersection w. Huron looks like it could be a hopping corner. Maybe its the affect of Jacobs Field and Gund Arena so close, the after-game crowd can go to the Prospect Street area for a few beers or food. It seemed Prosepect was a bit more lively than Euclid.

LOL...Dortmund! If they can put one in Dortmund they can put one in Cleveland...Dortmund is Cleveland..beer drinking football fans living in a city of steel mills and fading heavy industry!

I recall when IKEA used to advertise big in the German media, back in the 1970s, with their cartoon moose or deer, "Der Grosse Mobelhaus Aus Schweden" (the big furniture store from Sweden). That was the market..cheap stuff for people living in those big mulitfamily housing projects that where going up all over Europe. In the US IKEA has sort of has some sort of chic thing going on..IKEA is "cool".

^ ..thats too bad, as these tool & die jobs are skilled manufacturing that pay pretty good wages. I guess that is the problem. Good wages--->poor competitive position in the global economy...and Daytons industry is playing in the global economy, not just w. local customer firms. Though I think redevelopement of abandonded industrial sites is a good idea (something Dayton needs to do more of), I am somewhat skeptical of fluffing it with this "Tech Town" concept (tho I can see this as a marketing strategy).

Why did they abandon the idea of working with their tool & die industry? It seems this is a type of technology or industry where Dayton has been historically strong, and I recall Sinclair had a pretty good training program for tool & die makers. In any case it looks like what this is about is Dayton redevelops a brownfield site into an in-town industrial or office site, which at least brings abandoned real estate back into the market.

The Kroger building had aqua blue spandrel glass panels. Really "50s" looking. The Ameritrust building in the pix above. I notice it had some sort of precast panel curtain wall system, with these rounded window edges. An interesting design (tho dated), but it seems the top and bottom could have been designed better. For really sucky in Cleveland would be the Eirieview urban renewal complex (I guess thats what its called). A dead expanse of late modern office blocks with a fairly hard and banal exterior landscaping. The buildings are banal enough not to rise to true suckyness (like the Celebrezze Federal building, which is a correct, tho bland, "Mies Box").... ....except for the tall big black skyscraper that sort of looks like the Kettering Tower in Dayton or the old First National Bank bldg in Louisville, until one notices the really poor design/ integration of the fenestration with the curtain wall.

I think Dayton might be over-restraunted, too. I know of three that went out of buisness over on the 725 "restraunt row"...Cooker, Macaroni Grill, and Cozymels (actually four did, but they are re-doing one into a ribs or BBQ place, I think). These where all chains, though.

I ended up following the "Canalway" (Ohio & Eire Canal National Heritage Coordior) up to Cleveland during my recent exploration of NE Ohio. I saw thiswebsite prior to leaving and wasn't sure how well the route was marked. It turns out the route is very well signed, and is a great alternative to interestate travel as it takes one through the countryside, small towns, and urban neighborhoods, too.

Admiral Benbow is a real dog, esp considering the context. The best thing about it is the retail space at street level in the adjacent parking garage (the space where Cold Beer & Cheeseburgers is)... Dayton has alot of dogs. I think the Prestige Plaza/Dayco highrise near the Dayton Mall is a pretty awful. Great site for a high rise, but the building just doesnt hack it. There are alot real sucky spec buildings, too, like brown brick ones just south of I-675 between the interchange with 75 and the OH 725 exit. I can think of a few more, but most are mercifully hidden away in industrial and/or office parks.

Interesting concept...I can see a Borders at Fairfield Commons. However, the additions to the Dayton Mall looks pretty minimal.