The Dayton Banana

Borrowing a concept used in EU regional/economic planning…the “blue banana”…and applying it to the new spatial order of suburban Dayton.

The Dayton Banana represents the arc or banana shape of new suburban population growth, retail development, and office/industrial/high-tech expansion at or beyond I-675. The Dayton Banana is the reordering of markets and economic activity in the region into a linear city, with concentrations at both ends.


The easy and central access to markets and a skilled and educated workforce, provision of large floor-plate office & industrial space, and plenty of free parking makes the Banana the optimal location for most types of enterprise.

Living near the Banana provides a variety of employment opportunities, reduced commuting time, and a convenient and wide choice in services, shopping, food and entertainment options.

Taste the bananan. I'ts unpeeled for you via this virtual tour.

A Few Words on Defense Spending

The purpose of this blog is to talk about Dayton and vicinity, so very rarely will it touch on national issues or politics. However, given the discussion in the Dayton Banana post, some brief remarks about defense spending, as this is one area of national public policy that has local economic implications.

Good sources (meaning they are not ideologically left or right) are two policy houses: Defense and the National Interest and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (formerly The Defense Budget Project). I use Defense and National Interest graphics below.

The discussion is about the so-called "Military Industrial Complex" To understand this term and the concern, read Eisenhower's farewell address here.
Looking at defense spending in the context of the national economy a common measure is defense spending as a % of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Over time one sees this measure at around 6%-7% during the Cold War and steadily declining. This means that as the national economy grew after WWII defense spending became less and less signifigant.

During WWII defense spending was huge, pretty much driving the economy (perhaps a proof the theory of economic pump priming), then dropping after the war and rising again due to Korea and the start of the Cold War.

What's interesting here is the relatively high % during the 1950s, when Eisenhower was president. This was the context of Eisenhower's warning in the farewell address.


Another way to look at defense spending is to compare how much was being spend over time, and projections, in current year dollars (to smooth out inflation).

The following graph shows defense spending being pretty stable in the post WWII era, with fluctuations within a certain range. Interesting to see that high Korean War era spike, though.

One thing the above chart does not show is that defense spending as a share of the Federal discretionary budget dropped from around 70% in the Truman/Eisenhower era to 50% today. This is not of the total federal budget, as things like Social Security, Medicare, and Food Stamps are not considerd discretionary spending.

At 70% one can undestand Eisenhower's concern about the influence of the military industrial complex on the Federal budget process. Even at 50% this is half of the budget pie. One can speculate on why the drop from 70% to 50%, perhaps due to increased Federal involvment with urban policy and and environmental and social spending?


I marked up the above graph, showing some key periods. One thing to compare is the brief era between WWII and the start of the Cold War, and the post Cold War minimum.

At the end of the Cold War there was talk of a "Peace Dividend", where defense spending would drop below the Cold War minimum range.

This did not happen.

Spending dropped to the Cold War minimum and no further.

Somewhere within the difference between the post Cold War mimimum and the post WII demoblizatioon top is the cost of being the world's technologically dominant military superpower. And this difference is what contributes to the local economy as the defense activity here is not "fly and fight" but more on the R&D/weapon system aquistion.

The Paper-Highway

The May 1979 cover letter from MVRC to DOT mentions that I-675 was a “paper-highway”; though it was still on paper the bypass was a fait-accompli, already generating and guiding development. Planning and zoning was already being based on the existence of I-675.

This was the case as early as the late 1960s with the Dayton Mall.

The mall developers were looking at the proposed OH 48 interchange as a potential site before settling on the current location near the terminus of I-675. So both sites were probably in consideration due to I-675. In fact the “Mall Area” could have been in speculation since the early 1960’s since the southern alignment was already public knowledge and never in question, and the mall site was also adjacent to an I-75 exit..



I-675 alignment was near-final in 1965 and included in the 1965 transportation plan. The 1976 draft EIS notes that after 1965 “major developers began to consolidate holdings” at the southern terminus, and mentions Galbraith, Mead Corporation, and Oberer by name. Press reports and property maps also show that NCR, Beerman Real Estate, and the Mead family also acquired real estate in this area. DeBartolo was the first mover for retail, building the mall in 1969-70.

Once the mall was open it drove adjacent development, as retail, food, and drink establishments located close to the mall.

After final alignment was decided in the late 1960s one can see how subsequent real estate development was sited to make way for the I-675 right-of-way, as these examples from the southern leg of the highway.





This is the OH 48 interchange site in 1977, showing an early office park undergoing development in ancipation of the bypass, but leaving room for ROW and an exit ramp.

Yet during the 1970s development was sparse. The first spec office development near a proposed I-675 interchange was Governors Square from the early 1970s. By 1977 an office park was under development at the proposed OH 48 interchange (shown in the above graphic). After the northern “Fairborn” segment opened in 1975 the first office park at the northern end of I-675 went under construction across from Wright State, opening in 1977 or 1978.


(Daytonology will look at the evolution of office development along I-675 in a future post)

Only after the final decision for the bypass did development really accelerate, particularly in Greene County (which had the most post-1986 growth) but also in the OH 725 corridor the OH 48 interchange and north of Clyo Road:



A good example is Cross Pointe, built after 1982 by an out-of-town developer on the old alternate site for the Dayton Mall. The first development here was an early big-box, Gold Circle, plus some auto dealers.

Cross Pointe as the poster child of I-675 sprawl in a newspaper article (developer Linclay was from St Louis and was building a skyscraper in downtown Cincy at the same time)



Cross Pointe before and after aerials. The site also included the now-closed Showcase Cinemas, facing the interstate.



Cross Pointe today, one of the larger strip centers in the area.



Coda

In retrospect Neal Goldschmidt was correct that the traffic projections justifying I-675 were self-fulfilling, since the highway became more crowded as it generated more development. It was reported that traffic counts were under projections during the first year of operation, before build-out of the interchange areas and residential sprawl beyond.

The MVRPC analyses said retail was not going to be a significant player along I-675, but this proved very wrong as major retail centers developed at all interchanges, especially at Fairfield Road via Fairfield Commons mall.

The impact of retail development on downtown was felt years before the bypass was opened. I-675 alignment drove the Dayton Mall site selection, and the mall opened 16 years before construction completion, drawing addition retail through the 1970s and 80s.

Retail was dying even before the Dayton Mall opened in 1970, but the mall pretty much dealt the mortal blow. Downtown retail was for all intents and purposes dead by the time I-675 opened in 1986. Subsequent impact was in the older suburbs, like Fairborn, Trotwood, Riverside, and Kettering, killing the Salem Mall and sucking strip center shopping to the I-675 interchanges.

The big impact to Dayton city was in lost jobs, particularly white- and pink- collar employment. A large collection of hotels and spec office buildings went up at the interchanges, as well as some light industry. This destroyed the market for downtown hotel rooms and office space, resulting in vacant skyscrapers, closed hotels, and a deserted center city. Development at the interchanges also meant employment opportunities moved away from inner city residents, especially in service industry work.

The suggested mitigations of revenue sharing, subsidized housing, and extended transit never happened, so the economic benefit of I-675 was limited to suburban areas adjacent to the freeway, especially Greene County.

The end result, 22 years after opening, is the “Dayton Banana”, a crescent of new suburban and commercial growth along and to the east and south of I-675, with a stagnant or dying center city and older suburbs.



Everything the opponents of I-675 had predicted has come true.

As a postcript, the final timeline of the NIMBY Forest controversy: a 6-7 years delay between construction periods, and 13 years between the EIS requirement in late 1973 and completion in 1986.




Adding the pre-1973 work and planning, 1957 to 1986, it took 29 years to build I-675.