Doing some research into the urban renwal era I found a three volume collection of studies, surveys, and plans in the downtown library, that span the mid 1960s to 1970 or so, that are sort of the genesis of the Courthouse Square plan, also incorporating what was called Mid-Town Mart, later to become Dave Hall Plaza.  One of the interesting things in the volume are a set of plans developed for downtown by Baltimore-based architectural and planning consultants RKTL. 

 

There was also two design conferences held, one as sort of the kick-off of the planning effort in January 1967, the other near the end of it, in 1970.  For all the time & money spend nothing really came  of this effort,  except perhaps the 1970s plan for Courthouse Square and later the Arcade renovation.  In any case, interesting as a historical look and a "what if"

 

"In late 1966  a variety of important actions were underway in Dayton’s Central Business District.  The new freeway, I-5, had just opened in December 1966, land acquisition in the Center City West Urban Renewal Area was approximately complete; Mr. Beerman had been awarded the contract for the redevelopment of Center City West approximately 20 months previously and two small buildings were under construction; property acquisition was just getting started for the Mid-Town Mart Renewal Project; Sinclair Community College was searching for a site; and Dayton’s obsolete stock of office space provided an obvious potential for several dramatic additions to Dayton’s skyline....

....Many people in the community recognized the potential for coordinating this development to maximize near future downtown growth and change and direct into a cohesive growth."

 

Phase A of the effort appeared to be one of "planning to plan"...one of studies, PERT charts, data gathering, etc.  Phase B was when the consultant, RKTL, developed a series of designs for downtown...schematic for downtown as a whole, but somewhat more developed for the Courthouse Square area...Courthouse Square was apparently a focus due to the government functions moving to the new "civic center" in the urban renewal district west of downtown....The redevelopment of downtown was seen as happening in phases...ultimatly connecting "Mid Town Mart" with Courthouse Square..

 

Courthouse Square as it was..the old and new courthouses, and the DP&L midrize next to them...

 

 

Phased redevelopment...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Final redevelopment scheme

 

 

...with some highlights labeled

 

 

Courthouse Square area was detalied out a bit more, as mix of offices and shopping, connected to peripheral parking areas, incorporating the Rikes department store, and extending north of Rikes to 2nd Street and east towards city hall..

 

 

 

 

 

The plan also envisioned an extensive skywalk system, connecting peripheral parking lots, garages, a transportation center, with the core of downtown and residential areas facing the river...

 

 

One wonders about the inspiration for all this.  As RKTL was based in Baltimore perhaps the Charles Center plan was perhaps a model..which incorporates high rises, skywalks, and plazas...

 

This could have been the vision for downtown Dayton....

 

 

 

 

It is interesting, too, that RKTLs later version of the plan incorporated a big theatre at the corner of 3rd and Main, perhaps inspireed a bit by Baltimore's Morris Mechanic Theatre, located at Charles Center

 

 

Here is version 2 of the RKTL plan.  In this one they incorporate the Convention/Exhibition Center, which was to be located in the Mid Town Mart area.  Construction for the Convention Center began in 1970 and was finished in 1972. 

 

 

 

 

 

As in Version 1  RKTL generated a more detailed plan for the Courhouse Square area...this version shows a skyscraper at the current location of the Mead Tower, so that aspect of the plan was carried over in the 1970s Courthouse Square concept as executed...

 

 

 

 

Cross section....

 

 

The plan labled showing some of the features...note that the second level is seen as crossing Third Street via a skywalk flanked by retail, similar to the Columbus and Cincinnati downtown malls do.

 

 

 

 

Underground parking garage (reminds me a bit of Fountain Square)

 

 

Cross Section

 

 

And a colored map showing how this complex would have fit into downtown.  Also note how they envisioned Main Street to be narrowed and a large green space or mall be set up down the middle. The recognition that Main was just "too wide", so had to be narrowed somehow.   

 

The plan also saw downtown redeveloped as a set of plazas connected by skywalks, with large parking garages.  The "transportation center" concept also appears here in the "Mid Town Mart"/Dave Hall Plaza area...this was was actually executed as a parking garage and two bus stations (one is now Chins/Elbos), connected to a hotel and the Convention Center via skywalks (remnant of the very extensive skywalk system originally proposed).

 

Of course nothing was built on Dave Hall Plaza aside from the Stouffers, later Crowne Plaza. What was to be the retail core of Mid Town Mart ended up being "temporarily" landscaped until a use could be found; 'temporary' being 30 years now. 

 

 

A rendering of the plan, looking north up Main.

 

 

In concept the Courthouse Square retail/office complex seems a lot like Eaton Centre in Toronto...a large galleria, multi-level retail and upper level office, w. parking, anchored by two department stores (one, The Bay, being an older store "across the street", like Rikes would have been in the Courthouse Square scheme).  Also the incorporation of a historic feature; in Dayton it would have been the Courthouse, at Eaton Centre it is an old church.

 

 

And the Courthouse Square complex ground floor plan color coded...

 

 

 

What was actually built...drawn in red over the RKTL proposal.  You can see how bits and pieces of this where realized, but not as an integrated structure.  The way retail was developed was particularly disjointed as the two "anchor stores" (Elder-Beerman & Rikes, later Lazarus) are across the street from each other,  while the "shopping mall" (Arcade Square) is a block away.  Nothing really was built of the skywalk system, just the one from the parking garage to Courthouse Square.

 

 

Some final remarks from the planning documents of that time. Given the fate of downtown shopping malls in other nearby cities perhaps its fortunate that the RKTL plan was never executed as it would have most likely ended up a white elephant.

 

"WILL DOWNTOWN DAYTON MOVE (OR HAS IT?)(Nov. 1969)

 

Already South Dayton Mall (SDM) is anticipated to overshadow the present CBD retailing function.  SDM will have 2.2 million sq. ft. of retail space consisting of 106 stores.  Downtown Dayton presently comprises approximately 2 million sq. ft. with Rikes Department store accounting for 600,000.  Adjacent to the SDM are an additional 168 acres already zoned for commercial used.  Some of Dayton’s existing merchants are estimating that 40% of their total sales will be generated by SDM.  This may, in fact, be a conservative estimate.

 

Office buildings are already locating in nearby areas adjacent to the mall. A million-dollar building is programmed to be built southwest of the 741-725 intersection.  The $8 million NCR training/office complex is currently under construction.  In addition many smaller buildings such as the Shell Oil Company regional office headquarters…. are in various stages of development. 

 

The County Planning Commission has zoned 113 acres to the east of the SDM for commercial use.  There have been numerous requests for rezoning the areas immediately north of the SM from south 725 to Yankee Street.  The areas directly south of the SDM are either being held for speculation…or are in the process of being studied for high-density commercial planned unit development.  Thus while the office space function is still most strongly associated with downtown…large office parks are bound to be built in the next five to ten year period provided the center city creates no counter-trends,

 

…Downtown Dayton has waited too long to begin the replacement of its obsolete facilities, and a variety of factors are working to pull office/sleeping room and retail space users out of the traditional center city.  If they continue to be unopposed these forces will work to shrink downtown Dayton’s share of the regions economy…Time is not longer on the side of Downtown Dayton.  Immediate steps must be taken." 

 

SECOND CONFERENCE on URBAN DESIGN (March 1970)

The 1970 Conference came into being in an atmosphere of doubt and dimmed hopes.  Not enough had happened; after three years, the effects not only of the RTKL plan but of other major planning projects in Dayton where conspicuously invisible.  The Conference was an attempt to review current efforts, to rally leadership, to renew purpose, to help the move the community from planning to action in the face of mounting economic difficulties, political stalemate, and a leadership which seemed to be suffering a failure of nerve…the result was a lively conference heavily weighted on the side of planning as distinguished from design.

 

Mr. Rogers, representing RKTL, gave a concise illustrated exposition of the Dayton Plan and presented some success stories from other cities, in the course of which he brilliantly pinpointed the motivating forces which had brought these developments to fruition---motivating forces which up to that point he found lacking in Dayton….

 

 

 

 

 

Wow, Jeff! Another exquisitely detailed research and documentation project!

 

In some ways, Dayton sounds a lot like Fort Wayne on a larger scale. Here, over the years probably millions have been spent on consultants, whose plans were ultimately thrown out because they didn't suit the movers and shakers (Well, that's a misrepresentation. There haven't been any movers and shakers, just wealthy, influential people who sit on their money and hoard it.), or watered down to something cheap and uninspired/uninspiring.

 

I've seen grand visionary proposals going back as far as 1915 for turning a drab, dwindling, dying downtown into something dynamic and exciting, and if the people who thought it was in bad shape in 1915 could see it now, pretty in spots but without signs of intelligent life...

Interesting plans.  I guess a downtown shopping mall probably wouldn't have worked out well anyway.

One of the things that i thought interesting is how this anticipated what what was actually done elsewhere...this plan was 10 years ahead of the first "downtown shopping mall" in the area, the one in Louisville. 

 

Another thing is how misguided the original Mid Town Mart concept was.  You can see the consultant was pretty much brushing off this area, focusing the retail around the Courthouse Square area. However, in some of the planning documents there is a sort of tug-of-war evident as the planning staff kept on focusing on MTM as the land aquistion was already underway.  But they apparently knew the die was cast for retail downtown with the opening of the malls...

 

In the end nothing was built, except for the actual Courthouse Square block.

 

And , a bit later, the failed Arcade redevelopement, which was consdered cutting edge adaptive re-use for its time, getting national and international (from Canadian architects in Toronto)  attention when it opened via making the cover of Progressive Architecture magzine.

 

Of course the Arcade, even then, was in trouble as the residential component was never completed. Now it is just waiting to be torn down.  The roof is probably 20-25 years old now, which is the around the end of a sevice life for a built-up roof, so it is most likely starting to leak and fail. 

 

@@@@

 

I think Fort Wayne probably had a common sense approach to their downtown, which is to turn it into an office center.  When I was there (stayed at the Marriot or Hilton downtown, next to that winter garden), I had a hard time telling what the main shopping street was as so much had been torn down. 

 

Fort Wayne did put in parks and such, and the downtown did not seem all that shabby or run down.  There just wasn't much left.  I do like that they kept their grand old city hall and turned it into an interesting local history musuem (including that police museum in the old jail).

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the reasons why I'm glad that time period is somewhat over...