Sunday, May 24, 2009

Bank Street in the News Today

The wide open spaces of a part of Wright-Dunbar are explained in the Dayton Daily News today.

Apparenlty they are owned by the city and Sinclair College, part of an expansion plan (which has been "released", but not published) to take over more of West Dayton between Edwin C Moses and the river levee.

And there is one holdout owner, Donald Farra, who refuses to sell: Sinclair, Retiree Battle for Land.

Interestingly, his house appears in a Daytonology post of last year: The Last of Bank Street...
and a susbesquent post chronicles the elimination of a neighbor The Last of Bank Street Revisited.

The DDN article also indirectly explains a puzzing aspect of the demolition covered in Bank Street Revisited, which is why the city bothered to demolish a house in an area of empty land when there are worse nuisance vacacnies in the city?. Answer: it wasn't the city, it was Sinclair.

Suprisingly, no one has questioned if this is the best use of the property. This is right on the river, and is already semi-wooded land from the demolished neighborhood that once stood here. One would have expected a Wright-Dunbar Phase II, closer to the river, levee walk, and bikepath. Instead we are going to get some banal, monolithic institutional building surrounded by parking or at best empty lawns, since that is the "Sinclair Style".

And Dayton will become just a little more dreary.

2 comments:

Joe said...

Interesting. I saw this too and wondered about your Bank Street posts. The house you posted about was demolished, correct? Or is this the house in question?

I really hope Sinclair changes it's building styles for this seemingly inevitable development. That sector of downtown is dreary. My friends at Sinclair refer to it Cold War Soviet buildings. And they complain that there is almost nothing else over there. No shops, places to eat, or parks. Sinclair is a huge asset though.

Jefferey said...

On the Last of Bank Street tposts Donald Farras' house is in the street scene pic just below the graphs, 3rd image down...

The old brick house on the corner with the fire plug in front is the one that was torn down.

Sinclair..their main campus...is really consistent in design. But it could be anywhere, it's so sealed off from its surroundings. It would fit great out in suburbia somewhere.