Tech Town Changes Plans

More bad news on the urban preservation front.

The DDN reports:

“…$3.5 million in Clean Ohio funds will pay for environmental clean-up and demolition of six industrial buildings remaining on the site.

That will leave just the six-story factory riddled with broken windows that looms over the campus. The fate of that building will be decided this fall.

"If we can't find money for a general fix-up, then we'll go with demolition," Budd said."


The six-story factory they are talking about is the one in the front in this pix. It was built in 1920. The tall one to the rear was built in 1914 and apparently will be demolished. These apparently are some early GM plants. Maybe from the Delco-Light era (the one to the rear might even be pre-GM as the Sanborns have it listed as Dayton Metal Products).

Here is a pix showing the rear building, behind the tree, sometime between 1914 and 1920.

(thanks to Larry Sizer , host of the Slidertown Webazine, for the pic)

The clincher in this blurb is that they have a demolition plan in their back pocket. According to this master plan the old Frigidaire building was going to be the centerpiece of entire Tech Town complex (which is incorporating pretty good urban design concepts)


…which is still shown on their website . Sort of. Note the renderings link leads to a page that’s “under construction” (while they do some erasing).


The loft building was be renovated sometime in the future . According to this phasing plan the factory adaptive re-use was Phase 3. One wonders whether this was ever the plan: can you imagine leaving a vacant shell on-site while two brand new office building go up next door? The pressure would be to either renew it ASAP or tear it down.



The plan for Tech Town seemed good, particularly the urban design, with industrial loft adaptive re-use as the centerpiece building. But it seems like it was all just pretty colored drawings.

Tear down another old building? Oh well.