Blight along South Main Street has been replaced with some eye-catching new buildings. Brown Street’s rebirth continues with dozens of market-rate apartments and new retail space. South Patterson Boulevard is now home to a multi-million research center, a nonprofit expansion project and a pizza joint that uses ingredients like white truffle oil and hot honey.
And the biggest transformation may be yet to come. On Monday, the University of Dayton and Premier Health announced plans to purchase the 37-acre Montgomery County Fairgrounds on South Main Street for $15 million.
It’s not clear what will result from that partnership, but the duo was instrumental in enlivening Brown Street, Main Street and the neighborhood around the fairgrounds. Developing the fairgrounds property itself would add to the remake of an area that has long been in need of one.
“It was an area people drove through to get to another area,” said U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, the former mayor of Dayton. “Today it’s become a destination.”
‘Hidden gem’
For a long time, Patterson Boulevard and Main Street, south of U.S. 35, were nondescript and uninviting entryways into downtown that offered few attractions and were popular hangouts for transients, said Steve Seboldt, the chairman of the Downtown Priority Board.
“There has definitely been some improvements,” he said.
Those improvements seem to keep coming. Just south of U.S. 35, Daybreak Inc. is working on a roughly $5 million expansion project to enhance and grow services and give a new home to the Lindy & Company gourmet pet treat bakery.
A few blocks away, the Dayton Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center removed its aging warehouse and distribution center, and plans to create a new donation center with a basketball court and picnic area to serve clients.
In October, Old Scratch Pizza opened in a former appliance-storage store at 812 S. Patterson Blvd. The restaurant serves Neapolitan-style pizza with a “modern twist,” offering cheesy pies made with items like Brussels sprouts and Calabrian chilies.
Eric Soller, co-owner of Old Scratch, said the location is a natural fit with plenty of upside.
“It’s a place close to downtown, close to Oakwood, close to the hospital, close to UD,” he said. “It seemed like a hidden gem.”
Business boom
In some cases, entire blocks have been painted over with a new canvass. Goodwill Easter Seals Miami Valley demolished seven buildings — some of them vacant for five or more years — at Main and Lincoln streets to construct its new 100,000-square-foot headquarters.
Lance Detrick, Goodwill’s president and CEO, said just in the two years since the $18 million headquarters opened a “boom” of new businesses have opened.
Coco’s Bistro, which opened its new restaurant at 250 Warren St. in 2012, even advertises the neighborhood on its website.
Community leaders and others say infrastructure improvements have aided the resurgence. The city of Dayton invested more than $14 million into widening and improving Main Street and reconstructing Brown and Warren streets to be more pedestrian and bicycle-friendly.
A different history
Big changes have also taken place to the south of the fairgrounds property.
That structure is next door to the $53 million GE EPISCenter, where researchers develop electrical power systems and technologies. The center, which opened in late 2013, sits on a property between Patterson and Main streets that previously was home to NCR Building 26, where top-secret research went into breaking Nazi codes.
A different history is getting written now, officials say.
“Investment begets investment,” said Amy Walbridge, Dayton’s special projects administrator. “GE was confident about what those institutions were doing in that area, and Emerson was confident enough in what was happening at the university.”
New look
Brown Street has also taken on a new look.
A couple decades ago, the street was lined with vacant and deteriorating homes and structures, while the fairgrounds neighborhood to the west was riddled with drugs and crime.
The quality of housing was seen as a major driver. About one in six of the 150 residential properties in that neighborhood were owner-occupied. Rooming houses, rentals and vacant lots were the norm.
It didn’t happen overnight, but the hospital, university, the city of Dayton, CityWide Development Corp. and other partners collaborated on what was called the Rubicon park master plan, which gave rise to the Genesis Project.
That group, along with neighborhood and business associations, worked together to acquire and demolish substandard homes and properties and renovate others. They formulated and executed strategies to attract new private investment, improve the housing stock and significantly increase the homeownership rate.
Some of those new homeowners worked at the hospital, which provided homestead incentives to its employees to live in the neighborhood, said Mary Boosalis, president of Premier Health, which owns Miami Valley.
The hospital needed nurses, Boosalis said, and invested about $4 million in acquiring property and building new homes. The neighborhood stabilized and became safer once the the housing product improved, officials said.
Rubicon Square, an approximately $2 million project consisting of 14 condos, has been a more recent addition, serving as another complement to the diverse mix of restaurants and housing in the energized business district.
Good neighbor strategy
Premier has invested heavily in Miami Valley Hospital, including the $19 million renovation and completion of the neonatal intensive care unit (2009), the opening of a $135 million patient tower (2010) and the completion of the $12 million emergency department renovation and expansion (2014).
But Boosalis said the quality of the neighborhood also impacts the hospital, and the fairgrounds purchase fits the company’s strategy of being a good neighbor and serving the community.
The hospital recently acquired and demolished the vacant Denny’s on South Main Street. It also plans to sell land it owns along Warren Street to support the $7 million Flats at South Park project.
The first phase of the Flats project will add about 43 new market-rate apartments and 10,500-square-feet of commercial space in what officials say will better connect the UD campus, the hospital and the fairgrounds neighborhood to downtown.
Dick Ferguson, who served as UD’s liaison to the community and helped craft the plan for overhauling the fairgrounds neighborhood, said development of the fairgrounds property could be just as impactful.
“I was surprised and happy to see that development, because that wasn’t even a possibility when we were working on (the neighborhood project),” he said.
Added Boosalis: “I have been with Premier for 30 years, and I think the success story of the constituents coming together and completely changing the face of the neighborhood is one of the things our board is proudest of.”
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