Posted March 20, 200520 yr (I can't remember if there was a thread on this at any point, because it's not a new story.) I don't know if there's much to say, but I'll just toss this out there. From today's Dayton Daily News: Going condo Big city, coastal strategy makes appearance in Dayton market DAYTON | The plan to transform the Oregon Place Apartments, formerly called Dayton Towers, to The Metropolitan condominiums is quickly progressing. The complex's new owner, Bayview Dayton Towers LLC of Coral Gables, Fla., will send out letters to Oregon Place tenants Monday detailing redevelopment plans for the 206-unit building and asking whether they are interested in purchasing their apartment. Tenants have 90 days to purchase a unit at discount prices. In June, the remaining units will be up for sale to the general public.
March 20, 200520 yr Wonderful! Now let other buildings downtown go condo and I'll be VERY happy. "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
March 22, 200520 yr I couldn't find one in Chris's pics. I found a horrible shot that's obscured by a tree, though:
March 22, 200520 yr The Dayton Towers is on the site of a proposed urban renewal project, from the 1930s. This would have been Daytons very first attempt at large-scale slum clearance, to remove the Haymarket District with its "unsavory reputation" (according to the report) and replace with low-rize public housing. This "demonstration project" was part of a larger plan to clear everything between Dutoit Street and downtown, including the Oregon District. The Haymarket District was eventually razed, Keowee Street cut through, and the area turned into a local take on Le Corbusiers "Ville Radieuse" concept...residential towers set in wooded parkland (so the "horrible shot" upthread is actually a pretty good illustration of the design concept)......except in this case there was only one residential tower..the Dayton Towers. Dayton had a reallly agressive urban renewal effort...another concept would have been to build a row of high rises like the Dayton Tower along the Miami River, between say, Ludlow and the interstate.
March 22, 200520 yr This "demonstration project" was part of a larger plan to clear everything between Dutoit Street and downtown, including the Oregon District. Oh, God no!
March 23, 200520 yr ....yeah, it was going to be like Queensgate, and they did execute alot of the plan, too. A lot of what was proposed in a concept in the 1930s did come to pass. For example, everything east of Wayne is mostly gone, and the residential area south of downtown is also gone, too, mostly. The Oregon is the only survivor. Interestingly enough the architectural firm that prepared the initial Oregon urban renewal plan was Bertrand Goldberg from Chicago, famous for the Marina City project..those twin "corncob" apartment skyscrapers on the Chicago River. I would be interested to see what he had proposed for Dayton.
March 23, 200520 yr ^ That planning document has got to be somewhere in the Montgomery County library system. Either there or at the Historical Society.
March 23, 200520 yr ^ Ha...believe me, I will be looking for it! I'm doing some other research right now into Dayton history, but thats on the agenda.
March 23, 200520 yr If the Bertrand Goldberg document from 1966 is what you're looking for, as opposed to the 1930s plan (or are they approximately the same thing?), I found a reference on the web to this, if it's even the right document: Burns-Jackson Project: Bertrand Goldberg Associates. "Burns-Jackson: A Study for Renewal." September 1966. [Wright State University, Dunbar Special Collections, MS-142, Burns-Jackson Project, Box 1, folder 27]. So if that's it, get thee to Wright State!
March 24, 200520 yr Well, I did stop off at WSU today to pick up some books from Ohiolink, and stopped off in the special collections department. Box 1 is a failry extensive set of clippings, studys, legal stuff, etct, from the Burns Jackson Corporation. And it was an eye-opening journey into the past.... What had happened was that the urban renewal plan was to tear down 70% of the neighborhood and probably replace w. public housing (and they started to do that, as there is a pocket of public housing off of Wayne Street near US 35). Then, apparently some private citizens (with connections..one of them was the wife of the head of the DAI) got together and decided to try to save the neighborhood as it dawned on them that this was a particularly unique place, so they incorporated and got Bertrand Goldberg to do this plan. I think there was sort of the idea that this neighborhood could be another German Villiage. So the plan. Goldberg did save all the houses, but totally tore down everything along Wayne, Patterson, and Fifth (the Armory, Jays, all the commercial buildings on 5th..all gone), basically surrounding this housing "core" a pedesrian/park zone scattered with new stuff, including, between Patterson and Tecumseh, "marina city" towers on top of a shopping center plinth (with underground parking, it looks like), a "theater", an "Arts and Crafts Villiage" on Fifth (new housing, I think). The idea was to open up the neighborhood and make it visible as a "living museum" to passing traffic. The execution plan was to totally vacate the neighborhood and remodel it at one time, plus build the new stuff. There was a sort of creative finacining package put together, requiring special legislation in Columbus, but a part of it was found unconstitutional in the Ohio courts, and the city had an economics consultant do a study, which pretty much deep-sixed the plan. The plan was released in 1966, and finally died in 1971, I think. One of the last clippings from 1972 said that "Burns Jackson" might have deterioriated too far to be saved. Its interesting to read the newspaper clippings on this. It seems the papers where editorializing for it, and that there was a four part special series on "The Oregon" history, too (the local history buffs called it the Oregon, while the "official name" was Burns-Jackson). Anyway, we are fortunate that the Golberg scheme didn't get built as we would have lost Fifth Street, as well as some older buildings on Wayne and Patterson. I guess during the 1970s the neighborhood was restored one house at a time, rather than all at once, as was orginally proposed. Since this thread is about the Dayton Towers, I noticed in the clippings that this was already built by the mid-1960s.
March 24, 200520 yr Wow, very interesting! I'd had no idea that Dayton came close to losing all that.
March 25, 200520 yr Interesting. Thanks Jeff. "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
March 5, 200619 yr Not a surpise, considering the fate of the Days Inn condo conversion (they ended up renting them instead of selling them as condos). Also, I spoke with a current resident of "The Metropolitan" last week and they said that only two or three units had been sold. Dayton Towers drops condo conversion bid By Margo Rutledge Kissell Dayton Daily News DAYTON | The former Dayton Towers will remain as an apartment building instead of being turned into condominiums, residents learned Friday. "We're all delighted," said Arnold Coonrad, 73, who has lived in a 10th-floor apartment there for four years.
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