Staff Report

 

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

 

DAYTON — Ten local architectural firms have agreed to study 10 vacant or under-used downtown buildings to determine how best to reuse them.

 

The Downtown Dayton Partnership is spearheading the project, along with the Dayton Chapter of the American Institute for Architects.

 

"I think this is a big deal for downtown," partnership President Sandy Gudorf said.

 

The partnership will meet with reporters at 2 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 9, at 112 E. Third St., to announce which buildings will be studied and name the architectural firms that will do the work.

 

The buildings are all located in the core business district downtown, but do not include landmarks such as the Historic Dayton Arcade or the Mead Tower.

 

Volunteers from the Dayton Chapter of the AIA, in 2007, also worked with residents of the Historic South Park Neighborhood.

 

The group brainstormed solutions to adapt and restore vacant homes to create a vision for that community.

 

8-20 S. Jefferson Building  Matrix Architects

146 E. Third Street  Greg Lauterbach Architects

25 S. Main Street  Jeff Wray Architects

KeyBank Building  Levin Porter Associates

Price Stores Building  Earl Reeder Architects

Transportation Center  Rogero Buckman Architects

Walker Building  The Architectural Group

David Building, 115 E. Third St.  John Poe Architects

Leigh Building  Lorenz & Williams[

Merchants Row, Third Street  App Architects

 

 

 

 

There might be a stone neo-romanesque façade under the gold screen curtain wall:

 

 

 

Not sure if "Merchants Row" is an urban design concept or they are going to pick some buildings to work on...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chicago style bank block (think Michigan Avenue facing Grant Park), now vacant after Keybank moved regional operations across the street to the old Mead Tower.

 

 

L shaped building with two street facades, wrapping around a 1920s mid-rise

 

 

One of those Dayton parking garages that’s disguised to look like an office building…a modern example.

 

 

Key map

 

 

Fitting the study buildings into downtown, showing some other action.

 

 

Stripping away the base map the pattern emerges as the study buildings fit into a contracted “heart of downtown” and a corridor linking downtown to the “gateway” to the Oregon.

 

 

The outlier is the 25 S Main building, but that fits into the Schiffler acquisitions and a notional Arcade/DDN re-use

 

 

 

OMG, I would kill to have these windows in my apartemnt:

 

What's up with that transportation center...that is a HUGE fugly building.

^

That was part of the big "Mid Town Mart" urban renewal project.  The idea was to have  two bus stations and an railroad station, which would have been connected to a shopping malll and mixed use high rise.

 

Then the plans changed and it was going to be connected to downtown via a skywalk system.

 

 

Eventually a convention center and hotel was built instead and the shopping mall site became "Dave Hall Plaza", a downtown park.

 

There was two bus stations Greyhound & Trailways, but only one today(Greyhound).  No train station. 

But they did put a jazz bar and a public TV station on the ground floor.

 

Beleive it or not there's a heliport on the roof.

 

 

 

Thank you!

Your welcome!

Dayton has such a great downtown, visually. It would be exciting to see something come of that.

 

The transportation center isn't attractive by any definition, but it should be preserved as a lesson to future generations of what can happen when some architects are not supervised closely enough. :|

i agree rob. they sure were in love with concrete in 1977. i can see parking the gremlin or z28 there back in the day.

Went thourgh downtown the other day. It sure is odd without the Patterson school there. I did see probably about 50 or so people walking around on the streets as I weaved my way through town, and everything is looking good. Also, I saw some construction south of town at the intersection of main and Irving. Is that Sugar Pointe?