The Recession Comes to Dayton

“Dayton” here defined as the five-county Dayton Metropolitan Area.

This is an attempt to measure the onset of the recession in the region, using Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly employment statistics, since they are very recent (last numbers are from February) and are shredded out by economic sector.

The statistics used here are all private employment stats, not including the various levels of government, since the intention is to measure economic activity as reflected in job creation and loss across the metro area.



As one can see the metro area was pretty weak in generating employment, even in good times. One can say the Dayton area never really recovered from the “9-11 Recession”.

Opening up the numbers to look the monthly employment starting in 2006 to see what the trend looked like as we entered the recession.

Since these are raw numbers, not seasonally adjusted, one can see the pulse of the local economy over the course of a year, with seasonal employment and downtimes providing a pattern of job growth and decline over a year. Yet the pattern is more or less the same from year to year, as one sees in 2006 and 2007.

However, in 2008 the pattern collapses, showing the economic pulse becoming irregular.

The yearly employment cycle compared, 2008 vs. 2007, showing how the local economy moved into recession by deviations by month and quarter.



This BLS time series has sub-shreds by sector. Taking two gross sectors, good-producing (for Dayton this is mostly construction & manufacturing) and private sector services-producing (not including government) to see how the trends went for the near term, 2006-early 2009

First, goods producing. 2006 is annotated to show features of the annual employment cycle that appear to occur in every year, then 2008 is annotated to show when this sector slid into recession.

Next, service producing, with similar annotations (this sector has a pretty consistent annual employment cycle in good times).


It looks like the recession came to Dayton in the first few months of 2008, but for sure for services after April, and for goods, employment rapidly collapsed after the summer.

Taking the longer view for these sectors, starting in 1999 (the time series goes back to 1990), labeled with a few observations from yer humble host.



The 2000’s were not good times for the Dayton metro area, at least for private sector employment. So the recession is going to make an what seems to be an already weak employment situation worse

The Landscapes of Everyday Life

A months worth of blogging on Colonel Glenn Highway, just a corner of the Dayton region. Four blog posts on New Germany, the proverbial wide spot in the road.

That there is this much to say, that there is this much backstory to what at first glance is a banal, everyday landscape is proof of the viability of a suburban studies approach to place blogging. In-depth inquiry and anayses brings out the details of how places came to be, how they developed and why they look like they do, as well as their economics and sociology. Suburbia is as rich an enviroment for inquiry as traditional cities.

There is enough history to suburbia that one can trace the evolution and development of suburban vernaculars, opening the door to a typological analyses of buildings and developments as well as entire suburbs, not to mention uncovering places like New Germany that have been subsumed the great wave of postwar development.

In one sense there is a forest and trees problem in doing microgeography. Colonel Glenn Highway and New Germany have been investigated in detail. Yet the relationship between this area and the larger Fairfield Commons edge city has yet to be addressed. And there has been only brief mentions of the influene of Wright State Unversity. Also, discussion was mostly on offices and commercial things. The apartment and condominium development in this area makes this one of the most densley populated suburban communities in the region, worth it's own series of blog posts.

In fact, one could dedicate an entire blog to just this one corner of the Dayton region.

But there are other local landscapes of everyday life, so perhaps a detour eslewhere in the near future.

Kava House: A local coffeehouse for Beavercreek

One of the benefts of exploring somewhat foreign (since I don't get up there much) suburban world around WSU/Fairfield Commons is that one discovers new places.

Like this coffeeshop


Located in a fairly new strip center just south of the Kettering Health Partners building and Golden Corrall, this a locally owned and operated coffeeshop with a wide variety of styles, including specials of the day and week. They also serve tea. Always cool to see local operations like this.

Very nice inside, colored walls, comfortable, big windows to let in the sun. Certainly someplace to stop off at more often when I'm in the area.

"Downtown" New Germany

..being the intersection of National Road, Zink, New Germany/Trebein & Colonel Glenn Highway. It probably wasn't a real downtown, but it did have a school house and country store at one time.

Today, from the Greene County Auditors website, an aerial with property lines, we see a mix of businessess and houses. The yellow numbers here are keyed to some pix later in the post.


Taking away the picture and throwing in some labels and colors, shaded yellow is the original road alginments, which have been distorted due to recent development and I-675.

There is some branded food /drink places, but they're outnumbered by four "Dayton Originals":

a. Tsao's Cuisine, a strip center Asian place which Dayton has a lot of. This one did get two good reviews at an online , as well as a positive twitter.

b. WO Wrights, a bar/food thing that books live music, so definetly a shout-out from this blog.

c. Submarine House (in a real house), a local chain.

d. Tuty's, which has been here since the early 1970s and is a restaurant that actually delivers to Wright State student housing (not far away off Zink Road). In a predominantly suburban environment sandwiched between southern pop culture icon Waffle House and the new Sonic Tuty's is, or was, sort of a campus hangout. The orginal Tutys burned in 2005 but was rebuilt.

One can also see the used car dealers, the drive-through for beer, wine, and low-test spirits. Also shown are some odd features, like the road to nowhere, "Joes Garage" , which is visible from the interstate, but is not really called that (just thought of that Zappa album when I saw it), the hotels (and some foot traffic that happens between one and the Sub House), and the big Sonic Drive-In "plat" shaded in red, which has an access road out to Colonel Glenn. Sonic does cover a lot of area.

And then there are the two brand-new extended stay hotels.

Stepping back a bit we can see the New Germany area in context. What's shown here are by no means all the businessess, just ones that seem to concentrate and cluster here. ...churches and car lots?

There are three churches in the vicinity. And six car lots, one for new (Dave Dennis Chrysler) and the balance little used car places, two of them in old gas stations. For alchohol, two of the local places are bar/restaurants, and there is that drive-thru.

Living in Downtown New Germany

According to the auditors website, for New Germany & National Road area, for the surviving property that is still residential, this is the distribution in age. More in the postwar era, but still a lot of older things, including a flurry of house construction just prior to WWII, which we saw elsewhere in Beavercreek.
Some of the houses near "downtown New Germany", keyed to the aeriel earlier in the post. These are dated via the county auditors' website.

This is the last of old Grange Hall Road looking south towards I-675. There was ribbon development to the left on the road, but that was all removed for the interstate. This one house survives, dating from 1951.

On New Germany/Trebein Road, renamed Germany Lane, this very early ranch from 1949.
Across from the intersection with old Grange Hall (which has been renamed something else) is this prewar house, from 1940. Also a very early ranch style. The lots here are pretty generous, too.

The Submarine House, in a literal house. By the architectural style, prior to WWII, maybe even as far back as the late 1920s/early 1930s. But it's a sub shop now. They do make pretty good subs, too (yer humble host stopped in for one). As noted upthread this place seems to get some walk-in traffic from the hotel down the street, since it would just be silly to drive one block for a sandwhich.

And finally, the last of old New Germany, from 1920. Down the street you can see the intersection with Colonel Glenn, and the used car dealer at the old gas station at the
"point" of the intersection.

New Germany: National Road plats

This is properly not totally "New Germany" as it deals with early ribbon development, early suburbia if you will, along a road that extends north from the New Germany intersection.

Since most of this is in Bath Township, a little map showing how some of the land extended across the township line, the tract of the "New Liberty Welfare Association"



Features we will look at. Shaded in red the tracts of the New Liberty Welfare Assocation, then some smallholdings, and the property (in the 1930s) of DW Reese, probably subdivided after the war.


.

Most of this belonged to the New Liberty association. North of the New Liberty tract (which is quite evident as it was heavily wooded, and still is) is a small plat from probably the 1920s.

What was the New Liberty Welfare Association? Was New Liberty another name for New Germany? A large hall was build on the southermost part of the property. It's a church today, but was it to start?

The land had some prewar things on it, but was mostly subdivided and built on in the 1940s & 50s. Today, the deep lots are being slowly turned into office buildings and businessess (as in the illustration). Yet it still is mostly residential and still heavily wooded.


North of the New Liberty tract was this small plat, with a mix of 1920s and 1940s houses. We are at the dawn of auto-oriented suburbia here.


(the pix and aerial are from the county auditors site. Greene County has excellent online resources for doing this kind of historical investigation).

One of the older houses on the New Liberty tract. Auditors records say 19oo, but maybe later. Office building is a new neighbor, just visible to the left.
Fish Gate church today, but an early building on the New Liberty tract; it appears on WWII era aerials of Wright Field. Was there a connection between it and the New Liberty Welfare Association?


Continuing south on New Germany, this white frame house with side chimney is probably the oldest building surviving in the locality, Zink property in the 1930s.

(Signal Hill office park is visible in the distance)

The neighbor from the 1920s, also Zink property in the 1930s...
On the Reese subdivision, this house is cinderblock with metal sash windows, sort of 1940s building style, but auditors records date in from the very early 1950s.

We've seen this one before. On the Reese tract, but dating from the 1920s, this bungalow faced on old Zink Road. Auditors records show that this is still owned by members of the Zink family.


..which is itself a remarkable bit of continuity, that members of one of the 19th century farming families still live here.

New Germany: Zink Plat & West of Grange Hall

By the 1930s one of the Zink farms had been partially subdivided into the "Zink Addition", north of the old Yellow Srings or Harshmanville Road (AKA Colonel Glenn Highway). This is outlined in red in the map below.

After the military obtained the farms to the north, additional land left over along Colonel Glenn was subdivided, and was developed in the 1940s and early 1950s into a little residential ribbon development.

Some of the houses from this era survive, in other cases the lot lines survive but replaced by new buildings, as can be seen in this birds eye view keyed to the county auditors' property map.



The above graphic illustrates the fate of houses here: front yards become parking and the house is turned into a business of some sort. The fragmented parcelization gives the place a sort of snaggletooth feel compared to the massive planned developments further east, but what's interesting is that these are all local businessess; used car dealers, a church, a health spa, etc.

Across the street one of the unsual features of this area: a lot of open undeveloped land, as can be seen in this aerial from the Greene County auditors' website.



We've seen some of what was built, like Ashford Center and Signal Hill and the GlennTech Center (on the north side) as spec office buildings from the 1980s & early 1990s. The property, though, is mostly open. The far west part is owned by the GSA for a motor pool. Next comes "Colonel Glenn Limited", which has something to do with the Dave Dennis Chrysler dealership as it's on the tract north of Colonel Glenn but is using the southern tract to store cars (which is visible on the aeriel).

The bulk of the land, though, is owned by "Stewart W. Thomas" who's mailing address is either in the Kentucky horse farm country or a suburban Denver office & retail complex, depending on the parcel one clicks on.

One wonders if this had something to do with Ashford Center, which seems to be the start of something larger (with that little access road looping at 675).

One of the more interesting developments is Signal Hill, which looks like one complex, but is actually held by two landowners, one based in Dayton (the newer building and some vacant land) and another from near Phoenix, AZ (the older two buildings).


And, finally, the hold-out. Aerial photographs from the WWII era show that there was houses on the south side of Colonel Glenn. This is the sole survivor, from 1950.


One has to wonder what happened here. Why the development stopped after Ashford Center and Signal Hill and never continued during the booming 1990s.

This does seem to be a very ripe site, especially if the defense R&D-based spinoff economy ever takes off here (pardon the pun).

New Germany

Before there was a Colonel Glenn Highway there was "Germany". Later "New Germany"

From the 1918 history of Greene County:

THE VILLAGE OF NEW GERMANY
The village of New Germany is a small cluster of houses in the extreme northwestern corner of Beavercreek township situated in the northwest quarter of section 5 township 2 range 7 on the Harshmanville road The records do not reveal when the site of this village was first settled Apparently the first residents of the little village were of Teutonic origin because the name applied to the settlement is New Germany The village is not situated on a railroad

The 1881 history of Greene County has this very brief mention:

Germany is a small collection of houses in the extreme northwestern part. of the township, on the Harshmanville road, and at present, has a school-house, grocery, and blacksmith shop.

The above early map (early 20th century) notes the village. Incidentally this was not a platted village, like Bryon or Alpha, but just a locality, a sort of crossroads place.

New Germany was close enough to Dayton to see some very small suburban growth when the automobile use became widespread in the 1920s & 30s. The village was fairly close to Dayton, just across the county line.

The earliest road was one of the routes to Yellow Springs, from the Springfield Pike at Harshmanville to the Dayton-Yellow Springs Road at Five Points area in what is now Fairborn. But other roads junctioned here, like the New Germany/Trebein Road and Grange Hall Road, before heading down the long slope or hill into the Mad River valley.


Int the 1920s an alternative route appeared via the Third Street Extension. This and the old Yellow Springs road disappered in the 1940s when Wright Field expanded, breaking a direct road connection with Harshmanville. Instead Airway Road replaced the Third Street Extention as the route into Dayton, as a main commuter route to the base prior to I-675.

Roads to "New Germany" today:

...the big impact being various moves to support I-675.


From a 1930s-era county engineers map, land holdings in New Germany look fragmented, but these were mostly just small farms with, perhaps, tenant houses. Some late 30s/early 40s subdivision action happens later, not on this map. One can't ascertain stores or if there is still a school here, either.

Only one plat shows on the 1930s map, the "Zink Addition". During WWII houses appear on some of the leftover land (from base expansion) to the east (right) of the Zink Addition. As one can tell the Zinks were the major landholders here.

One can also see the property labled "New Liberty Welfare Association". This extended north along National Road into Bath Township. One wonders if "New Liberty" was a patriotic attempt to rename New Germany during WWI? And what was the nature of that welfare association?

New Germany today, from the Greene County auditor website. One can see how the land has become quite parcellated, yet the some of the old 1930s land lines are still visible in outline.


Next, a look at what's left and some analyses one how this early form of ribbon residential development (which is found elsewhere in Beavercreek) was recycled into commercial use.