DAYTON — The city of Dayton spent almost $75,000 to study the future of a building that partially collapsed, creating a million dollars in damage and closing nearby streets.
The property that is in question is 34 North Main Street in downtown Dayton. It’s been almost a year since the fancy façade at the top of the building gave way during a storm, creating huge damage to the building and the Stratacache Tower that sits next door.
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Emergency work helped fix the damage, but the city wants the entire building productively reused to boost downtown.
Dayton City Manager Shelly Dickstein said, “They are renowned for adaptive reuse architecture.”
Dickstein gave background information on the property to city commissioners as they approved a $70,000 contract to a Cleveland architectural firm.
“We have them under contract to explore the re-uses for 34 North Main Street,” Dickstein said.
The city of Dayton, along with the county land bank, owns the building after previous owners walked away. They’ve already spent $1.5 million to stabilize the roof after a storm sent large sections of the roof’s façade plunging 20 stories down.
News Center 7 requested a tour of the building months later, exposing previously unseen damage to tons of debris punctured holes in the building’s basement.
It also did a million dollars’ damage to the Stratacache Towner next door, knocking out dozens of glass windows. That tour also exposed how grand the building was once and how solid the structure still is.
The city believes it could be a hidden gem for redevelopment.
Dayton City Commissioner Darryl Fairchild said, “It goes back to a broader conversation that we had recently around how do we activate all this office space we have downtown.”
“Office wouldn’t be reconsidered. It would be housing development, mixed-use or first-floor retail,” Dickstein said.
City leaders believe activating 34 Main Street is good for the entire area and that this is not a pipe dream.
“There’s one or two groups that are looking at that building right now, and we may have more after we can put out more information,” Dickstein said.
She said the architecture firm will look at redevelopment, but also look at demolition, so they can have a well-informed discussion of the best path forward.
It’s the same approach they took 15 years ago with the Arcade project.
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