How to Save Dayton - Part 1

By David McDonald (Author, "Saving America's Cities")

I am going to try and put the highlights of my plan into a few paragraphs. This is near impossible to do correctly because a large part of what is necessary to be done is based on my observations over four decades of literally hundreds of cities and municipalities who have done it wrong. You can’t put that in a few paragraphs. If you do not fully understand everything that doesn’t work, you might then think you would have more avenues for success than you really have. Having said that, here goes:

Here are the absolute facts:

The office building vacancy rate in the City of Dayton is worse than Detroit for three years running. Even Detroit has stabilized, but Dayton is still digging a hole. I am now led to believe that there are several large tenants who are still paying rent on space they have already vacated. When those leases expire next year, that space will start showing as vacant - running the city’s vacancy rate up to near 50%.

In the past, roughly, 12-18 months we have lost the following businesses: The Tissue Center, Gibson & O’Keef Law Firm, Levin Foundation, Thompson, Hine, Clark Scheaffer & Hackett (soon to leave) and approximately 55,000 more square footage (4 businesses) slated to leave in the near future. Three within a year and the fourth in two years. Their names are confidential and there is no saving them. The “snowball” is definitely heading down hill!

I have never in my 40 years in business seen the value of office buildings within a city drop 70% to 80% in any period of time - let alone 6 to 7 years. This is the situation in the City of Dayton. Seven years ago the 5th Third building was valued at $31 million. It just sold for about $3.5 million. The old Mead Building sold for about $1.5 million. Six years ago the Kettering Tower was valued at $27 million. It was recently on the market for $7 million, with the likelihood that it would sell for $5 to $6 million.

Here are some other facts:

No city can thrive with a rotting core... not a one.

The University of Dayton and Miami Valley Hospital are not in Dayton’s core. The core is where the office buildings are. I am thrilled with what is going on with Miami Valley Hospital, UD and UDRI, but it won’t save Dayton’s core, and in fact has not apparently had any impact on the city’s core, because UDRI has been up and running for some time. Development has been going on constantly at Miami Valley Hospital, and businesses are still leaving the core - at an ever faster pace.

Nothing in a decade or in five decades has worked to even slow the exodus out of the city. Not the Schuster Center, not the ball park, not Riverscape, not the new “tent” at Riverscape, not all the press releases from the Greater Dayton Plan, not any of our mayors since 1960 because our whole system of government at the city level is outdated. I am not disparaging those in office now or in the past. It is the system.

In observing close to 1,000 cities and municipalities over 40 years, I have seen only about eight do the “right things” sufficiently to have a major impact on their health: Los Angeles, Memphis, Chattanooga, El Paso, Indianapolis, New York City, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. All the rest that people sometimes hold up as cities to emulate (like Louisville, KY) were already healthy. It is my observations of these cities and Dayton that leads to the course of action – the only course - that can possibly lead Dayton back from the brink of total decay. More on this in my next post, How to Save Dayton - Part 2.

EDITORS NOTE: 

This post is part of a three-part article that is a little off-topic for MadeInDaytonBLOG.com. The purpose of our blog is to promote the region, promote manufacturing and to help each and everyone of us become better people. Recently we saw a gentleman speak that has laid out a plan to help reverse the decline in the city of Dayton. After many discussions here among our blog advisors we have decided that this is an important enough issue to warrant this blog space commitment. The views and opinions are that of David McDonald. If you agree with his plan, that’s great, then share the news. If you do not agree with the plan then reply and post your plan. Working together we can rebuild our wonderful community.