Posted June 8, 200619 yr Brookwood was the "working title", Newfields the official name. I don't now if this belongs in the abandoned projects thread...a mixed-use new town af 4000-5000 acres and 30,000 to 40,000 population is probably the mother of all abandoned projects for Dayton suburbia...so the mods can move it if they want. And it's been abandoned since the late 1970s. I sort of found out about this place by accident. I always wondered why there is a state park made up of abandoned woodlots and farmland out west of Trotwood, which seems like an odd place to have a state park, or why Dayton bothered to annex a bunch of open farmland out west of Gettysburg Avenue into Madison Township. It turns out these feature of Dayton suburbia are related, part of the story of Newfields, Dayton's lost and forgotten New Town.... Set the wayback machine to the 1960s. Nationally there was quite a critique of urban sprawl back then as being ugly, wastefull, and maybe not the best way to develop suburbia. An alternative was the planned new community. Examples abounded in Europe of New Towns, and three private developments where underway in the US; Irvine Ranch, Columbia MD, and Reston, VA. These inspired one of Dayton's big developers, Don Huber (the brother of the developer of Huber Heights), to consider a new town for Dayton. Huber's comment on Huber Heights was that "we where just building shelter". Huber was perhaps was more socially concious than the typical devleoper as he had partnered with city officials and leaders within the black community to develop Madden Hills Columbia MD and Reston VA was of particular interest. Huber used to fly local officials to give them tours of these places. Lake Anne Village, the orginal part of Reston, in particular was perhaps a model for what Huber had in mind for Dayton: The 1960s was the era of civic strife, but also the era of great hope and belief things could be changed for the better. The New Frontier and Great Society social programs where products of this sentiment, and the New Towns movement could be seen as part of the Great Society era of social programs to fix urban problems. The lobbying for New Towns came via various sources, resulting in two legislative initiatives in the 1960s...Title X in 1965 and Title IV in 1968. Flaws in this legislation, intrest group opposition, and lack of interest by developers resulted in nothing getting built. Yet interest in New Communities continued. In 1968 the National Committee on Urban Growth Policy (NCUGP) was formed, engaged in studies, and issued a report in book form, The New City (still available in the libraries), as an advocacy tool. NCUGP efforts lead to renewed legislative action culminating in Title VII of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1970, with the New Communities program to be administered by HUD. 16 new communities where approved under the authority of Title VII, with Newfields being the only one in Ohio, and one of four in the Midwest (the others where Park Forest South in Illinois, Jonathan (partly approved under the earlier Title IV) in Minnesota, and Cedar-Riverside, a "New Town In Town", in Minneapolis (the other New Town in Town was Roosevelt Island in NYC). Title VII was one of the great failures in US urban policy, and the new communities movement is almost forgotten today. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Don Huber began planning for his new town in late 1970, orginally looking for a site near Bellbrook as the growth trend in Dayton was south. Land costs and distance from Dayton led to a change in location, with the Trotwood/Madison Township selected as a location, particularly as it was on the alignment of the proposed Wolf Creek Expressway and the western leg of the I-675 beltway...with the bulk of the town to be between Trotwood and Brookville, with a 'panhandle' extending along the expressway route to Dayton... Huber began to aquire land from farmers and begin planning in 1971. 1971-1972 was, apparenlty, the big planning period and also the the time when the Environmental Impact Statement and HUD application was prepared. Consultants where hired, a general manager hired, staff hired or reassigned from Huber's development organization. There was also an A95 review by state and local government, with the city of Dayton playing an important role. Grassroots input from community activist groups in Dayton and locals in Trotwood was also solicited via a "Joint Citizens New Communities Planning Council". One of the interesting concepts or innovations of this plan was more in the process and governance side. Newfields was to be developed via a "dual developer", a private sector developer (Huber and perhaps others) and a public sector non-profit developer (for amentities and community facilities) called the Newfields New Community Authority (NNCA) This was a public authority created by legislation in Columbus. Physical planning for Newfields underwent a number of iterations. The basic concept, though, was to apply the "ecological planning" principles articulated by Ian McHarg in his 1969 book "Design with Nature". Various natural constraints such as soils, depth to bedrock, wetlands, steep slopes, etc, where overlayed to determine suitable areas of development of the land. (McHarg was actually hired to design one of the Title VII new communities, The Woodlands, north of Houston. This was also the only financially sucessfull Title VII community.) Hubers first planning consultant was Llewelln-Jones, who developed this master plan for the first HUD application (there where two applications). This plan included a large lake (by damming Wolf Creek) as centerpiece for the new town center, which also included a communit college. and a detail of Phase I, which was to be closest to Trotwood. The proposals for the Wolf Creek expressway corridor was to include first, two frontage roads (similar to the way they build freeways in San Antonio) with an open space belt between. ..with the actual expressway being below grade and buffered from the surroundings by landscaping. Also note the proposed rapid transit line, which was a long term concept to connect the town center with Dayton. The new communities under Title VII where mostly auto-oriented, as this was before the era of "new urbanism" and "transit oriented development". More cross sections of roads for the new community The Wolf Creek Expressway eventually died due to opposition from communtiy activists associated with Dayton's Model Cities program, as it would have disrupted and demolished poor neighborhoods in West Dayton just to provide a "dirveway to the suburbs". ODOT then revised its west Montgomery County transportation planning... I 675 became more important as a driver for planning in Newfields Some of the planning graphics associated with the second HUD application. Note that this was not a continous area of development as there was a number of in-holdings as well as "life estates" (where farmers sold, but could continue to farm until they died, at which the property would revert to the developer). A color coded map. By this time the Llewellyn Jones concept had been modified to remove the large central lake, which was replaced by the forested Wold Creek valley, and smaller neighborhood lakes subsituted. This was at the recommendation of the staff ecologist. The town center was envisioned as a high-density area, perhaps even incorporating high rises. The idea was apparenlty a sort of a planned, garden city version of Clayton, Missouri (or other edge cities). Another concept was that the neighborhood centers would be seen as "convenience centers" rather than "villages". Industrial development was to be located along the railroad (now a bikepath) and in the panhandle area. Another version of the development plan, showing how the land would be zoned by function. The community college was retained in this plan (perhaps a branch of Sinclair?). The town center as an office and high density cluster shows up here too. I guess the affect driving by on (unbuilt) I-675 would have been driving by the office complexes in Dublin in Columbus, perhaps...but a more orderly& greener Dublin. The nice feature, though, is the retention of greenways and generous open space, and the clustering of schools with the neighborhood convenience centers. There was about 20 farmsteads on the property (barns and farmhouses), which where going to be retained as focal points within the various residential developments. The land use breakdown is thus: 54% residential 20% open space 10% industrial 3% commercial 2% "community authority" (community centers, etc) 8% roads 3% reserved space. The town center would have this distribution: Retail 35% Freestanding Commercial 25% (hotels?) Office 10% Reserved 6% Smaller commercial 4% (like gas stations) The density was about 4 units per acre. There was also an "urban design plan", but done in a novel way. The shortlist for urban design consultants was Harry Weese from Chicago, The Architects Collaborative (TAC) from Boston, and Helmuth Obtata Kassenbaum (HOK) from St Louis. HOKs intial presentation was rejected, and they came back with a process-oriented concept of an "Urban design think tank..the "New Town Environmental Planning Group (NTEP)...made up of experts in various fields. The NTEP would lay down general guidlines, but then work directly with the joint citizens group mentioned upthread via charettes to come up with detailed plans for the various villages and neighborhoods. Very much a particaptory planning concept! Although they didnt land the urban design contract, TAC was hired to design the first neighborhood or convenience center. Here is a plan for phase I of Newfields. Im not sure if it was the product of the first charette or a later planning effort, but it does show how they where envisioning developing this as a mix of density and land use, interwoven with open space. The color coding shows increased density, from yellow to red... 2.4 units per acre (some clustering) 4.0 units per acre (cluster, patio homes) 9.0 units per acre (town house) 15 units per acre (garden apartments) 25 units per acre (mid-rise apartments)(probably a small tower block?) ..and, of course, industrial park along the railroad (and a DP&L substation, I think) Clusering refers to the cluster housing concept, which was an innovation from the late 60s/early 70s that reduced lot size and street width, so as to provide more shared open space. As part of the design package there was a consultant hired to design street furniture (lights, signs, etc) and Ivan Chermayeff of NYC was retained to design a 'graphic identity program', including a name, for the new community. Chermayeff came up with Newfields as the name, and designed the logo, which is shown here with some of his other more famous. The color family would have been browns and greens, and Chermayeff would have had a hand in selecting other place names for the various villages and such, which where to be based on important local historical figures, flora, and fauna. It is sort of unfortunate that this didn't pan out as Chermayeff has done some very sucessfull graphic identity programs, like the one for Mobil Oil. One of the innovations that helped sell the application to HUD was the New Community Authority. The NCA was structured so it could be expanded as new areas were developed. The board of directors orginally had private developer representation (but not a majority of the board). As the new community became populated it would eventually move to full resident representation. As the NCA had bonding authority and was responsible for some infrastructure development and maintenance it would generate revenue via an "income charge" on the residents, perhaps akin to a local income tax. Why a NCA? Apparently Huber thought of incorporating but as this was so close to Trotwood Trotwood could have prohibited annexation. And Dayton would not sign-off on the A95 review unless it could annex the new town. And Trotwood and Dayton where already at loggerheads over annexation as Trotwood had outmanouverd Dayton in the 1960s for the annexation of the Salem Mall. So a compromise had to be brokered. Trotwood would get to annex phase I, Dayton would get to annex the panhandle and the "town center" area. The part of the new town out in Perry Township was left for future decisions. The sweet part of this deal for Dayton is that it would have an opportunity to annex what could have been a new "edge city" as well as industrial land. But this was not to be. Newfields was built on very shakey financial and market projections. As early as 1972 some internal financial projections where showing that the economic model was unsound. And assumptions on capture rate of new housing proved to be very rosey. A later study of the entire Title VII program by Boaz, Allen, and Hamilton for HUD pretty much confirms some basic flaws in the program design for the entire program in finance, program management, and developer assumptions. The B, A, & H study contains this sensitivity anayses for Newfields, showing negative cash flow for the duration of the project. There where also conflicts between the first project manager and Huber, leading to the resignations of the both general manager and NCA manager resgining Things did happen in Newfields. About $20,000,000 was spent on land aquistion, development, and management/consultant cots. 1973 The New Community Authority was created, a new general manager hired, a revised master plan developed, ground breaking in September, and HUD project agreement in November. Dayton begins to annex the Panhandle. Newfields name and logo by Chermayeff. 1974 Revenue bonds floated for commercial building in the community center, construction of the first lake, recreation center, and housing units. Title VII program suspended by HUD in October, general manager fired and some staff suspended. 1975 Additional layoffs, NCA informs HUD the project is not viable, Newfields defaults on interest payments (picked up by HUD per agreement), Huber closes out his construction company for Newfields. (Don Huber remains in buisness in Dayton today, though, recently developing land in Beavercreek) 1976 NCA director resigns, HUD finds project not economically viable, accelerates principle and interest paymens on bonds 1978 Foreclosure action by HUD and negotiated solution proposed. What was proposed was that the property be disposed of three ways. Winters Bank (which had loanded money to the defunct NCA) and HUD would self off the panhandle property and split the proceeds. HUD would sell the westermost part of the property to the State of Ohio, which would convert the vacant land to a state park. HUD would sell the phase I property as three development areas. So, interesting to see here that the State of Ohio ends up holding part of the bag via its agreement to take some empty land off the hands of the Feds. On the map...the Ohio state park in green, HUD/Winters sales and split in gray, and the remaining development areas in red. The three development areas close-up... some scenes from Newfields And Development Area II close-up. This was the only part of Newfields to be constructed, and then it was only a partial construction... 39 single family homes 1 duplex 12 condominiums & townhouse units 12 apartment units ...and a commercial building, community center, and swimming pool. Development Area 2 today Close up And some color coding showing how the cluster concept permitted quite a bit of open space, and the use of prexisting fenclines and woodlots as landscape features. The pathway to the community center from the cluster housing was a nice idea too (and note the mix of multi & single famliy going on here. The new communities movement envisioned these new towns to have a mix of age, racial, and income groups as a social policy component of the planning. An outline of one of the streets in the cluster, showing how it was designed to have off-street parking pull-offs at various locations as it was narrow by design... A visit to Newfields, which is now called Sycamore something-or-other, is a visit to a road not travelled in suburban development. Lets take a look at what could have been: The commercial building. This apparently had a branch bank at one time and some Huber offices, but is now used by MotoPhoto The back of the building fronts a plaza and lawn overlooking the lake The community center. This would have been one of the facilities built & managed by the New Community Authority. The pool next door is filled in. Given the size of the parking I think they perhaps had more in mind for this community center than what was built Lets follow the paved footpath to one of the housing clusters.... looking across the lake...apartments slightly visible in the woods... looking back toward the "village center".... multifamily townhouses facing the path path skirting the housing cluster.... shared open space and treeline forest beyond path entering the housing cluster path winding between backyards in the cluster Some pix of the housing cluster...from afar it blends into the landscape.... Inside the cluster and one of the modernist homes found here. More of the orignal Newfields housing....the "Sea Ranch Style" from California was popular here.. Intermittent creek through a communal greenway seperating housing areas which could have been landscaped better in this case... Snout garage imported from California. In this development the orientation was to the open space at the back of lots The Dayton Double housing type makes its appearance Multifamily townhouses again..... Apartments set back in the woods behind a wide lawn. And some illustrations of the generous open space in this development. Its difficult to say whether this was going to be that open under the original Newfields plan, or that all this open space was left as there just wasnt a market for the land. Branch of Wolf Creek as a natural greenway. Road into Development Area Two from the north The road sometimes widens to provide a median, and there is a bikepath on the shoulder. Note the berm and landscaping on the right as a buffer for the housing areas One of the old farmsteads that was to be preserved. This one has been developed into a buisness. The bulk of Newfields is now Sycamore State Park, which was dedicated November 1979, marking the end of the Newfields story. Some scenes in the state park..one of the surviving old barns: This area of Sycamore would have been the Newfields Town Center... Most of it is just woods and dead fields, bisected by country roads.. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ There are other developments in the area that are sort of precursors to Newfields..Greenhills in Cincinnati and Greenomont Village in Kettering. They where not as large as Newfields, but where innovative as models of a planned suburbia. Newfields was in the wrong place for Dayton as growth was heading south. The Title VII program it was part of was also fatally flawed for various reasons. Yet the vision here is really appealing to me..in some ways more appealing than New Urbanism we hear about today. A flexible planning concept which incorporated community control and participation, a non-nostalgic approach to planning that was driven by ecological and environmental constraints, an interest in and preservation of the cultural landscape (preseving old farmsteads and elements of the rural landscape), use of greenways, pedestrian/bike paths, and generous open space to link and seperate communities and villages as well as for recreation, convience centers...schools and shopping within walking distance, a high-density community center with possible transit links to the larger metro area, socioeconomic diversity and integration, and the pleasant character of what was built does demonstrate that this was perhaps a sound concept in design and intention, even if the development economics where not sound.
June 8, 200619 yr facsinating... sorry if I missed it, but how did you learn all this? Very interesting - and a nice alternative to the "standard" photo thread. I have family that grew up in Reston, and it was always interesting to me how they refered to the central area of the town as "downtown" when to me it looked much more like "the local mall".
June 8, 200619 yr ^ yeah, Reston Town Center is more mall-like, as is Columbia's downtown. This one would probably have been too. I think Reston Town Center is failry new too. However, at the time this was being concieved the only thing built at Reston was that Lake Anne Village neighborhood, which was maybe more humanistic in scale. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ How I found out about this? One-liner mentions at the Sycamore State Park website, and in a book or article I read. Nothing more. Then, doing some online catalogue searches at WSU and Dayton librarys came across the EIS for the closeout for the new town, then followed that further. The downtown library has the original and final EIS, the two applications, plus a bunch of supporting info that was sent to HUD, as well as the new town newsletter, which is where I got the logo graphics. Incidentally Chermayeff included the Newfields logs in his recently released book of corporate identity and trademark designs, so he thinks its one his better ones. There is also a book: The Politics of New Town Planning, The Newfields Ohio Story, by Fredrick Steiner, published by Ohio University press. 227 pages, so its considerably more detailed than this thread. The book is perhaps a bit one -sided as it tells the story from the perspective of Gerwin Rohrback, who was the first project manager or director, not so much from Huber, who declined to be interviewed. Rohrback was trained as a landscape architect at Harvard along with McHarg, but went into urban planning. There are probably other sources in the Dayton Journal-Herald morgue file or microfilms at the downtown library as they covered this story. I didn't look for those. Other sources are various HUD publications that I got at UD and via Ohiolink that talk about & analise Title VII , and a ULI book on Title VII, pitched more to developers, which has quite a bit of graphics and illustrations of the Title VII new town proposals. There is also a recent book out called ReForming Suburbia, The Planned Communities of Irvine, Columbia, and The Woodlands, which is a retrospective look from the 21st century, comparing these with New Urbanism. I read it to find more about the Woodlands as I'm a fan of Ian McHargs work.
June 8, 200619 yr Whatta hoot! "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
June 8, 200619 yr ^ Ha, yeah, it's like "Oh Well." Can this be moved to the Abandoned Projects subforum?
June 9, 200619 yr Wow, I've never heard anything about this. Actually, I have seen the commercial building and the apartment buildings there and thought to myself "Wow, those really seem out of place." But I had no idea they were part of such an ambitious plan.
June 9, 200619 yr ^ Heck, the only thing I thought was west of "old town Trotwood" was Brookville, and that no-mans-land state park. When I started reading about this I found out something was actually built, and the graphics in the final EIS had the locations of the lots, streets, and buildings, so I was able to sort of recreate what was envisioned for the place using the actual buildings and landscaping, avoiding taking pix of the later housing. Its not like this was some pipe dream....$20M in 1973 dollars, down the tubes. The "New Community Authority" was even subsidizing RTA service out to the community center until they ran out of cash. Superficially this looks like "suburbia", but its nothing like a typical suburban plat. There they sell you the "image" of living in the country surrounded by open space. Here you really do live in the landscape, or integrated into the lanscape. A lot of this planning, with the open space and greenways and walkways, reminds me a bit of the way they do developement in Germany, & maybe the UK and Holland.
August 29, 200816 yr *Bump* (This post is elicited by the comment that this thread didn't receive much comment. Well, here 'tis, and I really should have posted something back when this thread was new.) My "Dayton lifer" take: Newfields may as well have been 50 miles away, as far as middle class consumers in the Dayton area were concerned. The grid of freeways proposed either never happened (I-675 western extension) or were delayed for decades (US 35 expressway and connector to the OH 49 vicinity in '98 or so.) Driving in that direction from downtown was murder in the 1970s, and Daytonians of that time were generally accustomed to drive times of 20 minutes or less. My opinion is that Newfields was about 20-30 years ahead of its time in terms of housing lifestyles (IE, living in far removed exurbs), and was poorly planned and implemented against the transportation system of the era. Also, Daytonians were (are) inherently obsessively conservative about everything. The west side and points near West Dayton had a bad reputation among the middle-class masses. Buying a home in Newfields would require, for a Daytonian, just an amazing leap of faith and sense of adventure, which Daytonians also lack. When we read about Newfields at the time, it seemed like science fiction, like someone was going to wave a magic wand and make a new town from scratch. In my opinion, it is amazing that Newfields got what little critical mass that it did. As always, a fascinating photo-essay, and a reminder of more local stuff that was happening when I was a kid.
August 30, 200816 yr I wonder if this development had something to do with the Trotwood real estate development market stalling.
August 30, 200816 yr There is a modern legacy of this development. The New Community Authority (NCA) legislation apparently was not specific to Newfields, and still stands. NCA is being used in San Mar Gale and I think also in that Big Darby plan over in Columbus.
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