The Arcade Has Finally Been Sold

The Badger State boys actually did come up with the $600K + bucks to pay for the Arcade, in the face of an undertow of local skepticsm. Some good discussion on this at DMM Forum (or you could pop a blood vessel by getting angry at the inane negativity at the DDN readers comments).

Berg and Sturtz ended up forming the "Wisconsin Financial Freinds of the Arcade" to raise money from freinds and associates up in Plymouth, (which is sort of a suburb of of Sheboygan), as well as contributing their own money to the cause, beyond the $1,000 down payment.

For all the talk about "Dayton Originals" and "keeping it local" , this is a 100% out-of-town effort. There was hope that Bob Schiffler would be the angel, but he backed out as it didn't work out for him, for whatever reason. And let's see what he does with the old Moraine Embassy and 25 S Main buildings; already a full plate. Instead two small-time renovators from rural Wisconsin made the sole bid, paid the down payment, and actually came up with the balance of the back taxes.

Berg and Sturtz may yet bring the Arcade complex back to life. It's an audacious move considering the national and local economy, especially risky real estate deals. But they just might do it.

The dicey part is what happens if and when the restoration is done and the doors are open.

There is a lot of nostalgia around the Arcade, people remembering the old days and wishing it were so again. Well, to make it so they have to use the building.

If people are opening a business or professional practice or already own one they need to consider locating in the Arcade. And if people are going on a shopping trip they need to go shopping at the Arcade (assuming there will be shops again). If they want to buy a condo or rent an apartment they need to consider the Arcade. The building just wont be economically viable if there is no income coming in from tenants.

Berg and Sturtz might be brining money in from Wisconsin but they aren't going to be bringing in tenants. That's something for the greater Dayton community to provide. And its up to us to patronize those tenants, too.

Newfields Cluster Housing and a Suburban Road Not Traveled

This final Newfields post will look at some of the housing and ponder a bit on this suburban road not traveled.

The village center was at the southern edge of the development area, connected to some of the first housing via a path, either for walking or cycling. The path passes through common-use open fields defined by forests and preserved tree lines along old fences. The following marked-up aeriel illustrates these features:



The original housing illustrates both the mixing of single- and multi-family units and the concept of cluster housing.

Cluster Housing & Open Space

Cluster housing was another suburban innovation coming out of the 1960s in reaction to the uniform sprawling plats of the postwar era, with their chain link fenced back yards and lack of parkland. The concept was to cluster the houses closer together, freeing up land for common open space, which could be left wild or developed for recreation



Illustrating the concept: Settlers’ Point was a cluster housing development of the early 1970s in exurban Oldham County, KY, outside of Louisville. One can see the housing clusters arranged around landscaped cul-de-sacs, with the adjacent common open space. As one can see Newfields followed very similar concept, with even more generous open space.



The difference being that Newfields was apparently to have a connecting pathway system and was planned to have those mixed-used village centers.

So lets follow that path, from the village center into the first housing cluster.

Looking back over the lake at the village center.



….and then encountering the multi-family housing, perhaps townhouse condominiums. The exteriors are done up in a rustic style using wood siding, but with nice big windows and accent landscaping. This condo development was at the entrance to the housing cluster. Apparently each housing cluster would have this mix of multi- and single-family units, so a mix of age groups and lifestyles and perhaps incomes in each little neighborhood.



The path curves past these into the common open space (presumably to be maintained by the New Community Authority) and passes the backs of the housing clusters.



The original houses here made use of the change in grade, overlooking the open space with big windows and a mix of wood and brick materials in a no-fuss modern design. The side facing the street would probably appear as split levels or a one story ranch. The little wing-wall on the lower floor patio gives a bit of privacy.

The path curves along the edge of the green space, housing nestled into the landscaping, and in the background, and a line of mature trees defining the space in the background.



Finally the paths curves between the houses via a common open space between the backyards


This is a very convincing approach to improving suburbia…if one is a landscape architect. The relentless uniformity and repetition of a typical suburban plat would be avoided, and houses would either open onto green space, almost like living in a farm pasture or big park, or be very close to it via the path system.

Some other Newfields housing. Different types of single family houses...


…and apartments and condominiums, one set at the edge of a forest.

Much of it in the woodsy-shedsy early-mid 1970s style, fairly restrained architecture compared to the suburban bloat and "revivalist" design references of today. A modernist rustic aesthetic would be quite appropriate for an innovative community designed around generous open space.

The Suburban Road Not Travelled.

One can imagine the rest of the property developed like this, accommodating 30,000 people via a landscape plan that would fairly successfully merge housing of various densities, business, and retail into a matrix of landscaped highways, greenways, fields, forests, and creek valleys.






Newfields would be a true green suburb, similar in intent to Milton Keynes, the “city as forest”
(or in this case city as "Midwest rural landscape") . Although designed around the car, the nature of the planning implies some degree of walkability or bikeability via the pathway system and mixed use of offices, shopping, and recreation in the village centers, as well as mixed incomes and lifestyles in the housing areas.

As such Newfields seems an interesting counterexample to New Urbanism, demonstrating that certain intentions of that movement can be achieved within the modernist paradigm, sans the somewhat ersatz and nostalgic trademark aesthetic.

About the only nostalgia in Newfields was the stated intention to preserve some of the old farmsteads, with their great bank barns. These remnants of the Midwest cultural landscape would be preseved as focal points for the various new developments, either as community centers or as businessess. In this case as a doctors office.



No More Experiments?

Newfields was the last suburban experiment in Dayton until the Village of North Clayton (which seems to be developing very slowly).

Though not really experiments perhaps golf course communities could be following some of the concepts here, with houses arranged around open space; fairways, tees, and greens. The bike and walking paths become golf cart paths. But these are cold coffee compared to the ambitious and greenway concept illustrated at Newfields.

The only local development to incorporate an open space system of greenways (vs. a golf course) is Stonehill Village in Beavercreek, being developed by the Nutters of Nutter Center fame.



This development on the other side of town from Newfields might make good on the promise of an improved form of suburbia.

Newfields Survivals: Village 1 and Village Center

In the previous post it was said things were actually built at Newfields. In fact enough was built to get a feel for what the new town might have been like.

The maps showing the HUD sell-off parcels show some of this, with “Development Area 2” having some things built

What was built was:

9 single family homes

1 duplex

12 condominiums & townhouse units

12 apartment units

...and a commercial building, community center, and swimming pool.

(funny to see a double there. It’s still standing, too).

A close –up of Development Area 2, showing how multifamily was sort of mixed in with single family, and the start of the village center. This was to be “Village 1”, the schematic design discussed in previous posts.


An aerial from 2000. Again with some of the original features labeled. What wasn’t shown on the HUD map are some aborted development areas, were curbs and roads where laid out and parking was even installed in some cases.






One can also see there’s some later development, so apparently HUD did interest some developers to come in and do conventional housing.

Village Center Planning and Buildings

The centerpiece of the design was to be a village center arranged around a small lake or pond. It’s unclear who the designer was. The Newfields book says TAC, Walter Gropius’ old firm out of the Boston area , was to be design consultant for the first village center. It’s not known if they actually did any work. But someone did design this and do some site planning. (As an aside TAC did do work in the Dayton area, designing a modern house in Centerville in the 1950s).

An office building, community center, and pool were built, and extensive parking lots laid out. Additional development was apparently to go in north, perhaps townhouses or apartments.



This village center was actually served by RTA at first, but the line was terminated probably when the development went into foreclosure.

This aerial illustrates the aborted development next to the village center, and how the community center and office building related to the lakefront


The extensive open space and cut-off walkway/patio system indicated more things might have been planned. Absent a site or development plan one can only speculate. In this case perhaps the walkways would have been extended to the outer parking lot, and would have been flanked by maybe shopping and apartments and townhouses.



The office building is unusual as it doesn’t privilege the parking lot façade. For a spec office building, it is very open to the common-use public space, like the circular gathering space (maybe intended for things like craft fairs or community events of various types), and opens onto the lake with lots of windows.




To the rear, or parking lot side, are the angular geometries of late modernism, with long sloping walls of metal roof material, punctured by band windows. The building steps back following the angle of the parking lot. The design actually minimizes the bulk of the building., yet also giving a sort of futuristic look.

Angular form in the 1970s also symbolized “solar” and “ecology” (there was a ‘green movement” back then, too), so maybe a play with that symbolism, too.


Its unclear if the red vinyl siding is original. This was the corporate HQ of MotoPhoto which had red as its corporate color. The next door community center was more restrained. This design had a similar angular form, but done up in gray wood siding, giving it a more rustic and weathered feeling. Maybe that was the original color and material.

Unfortunately the sloped walls of the community center were perhaps a good invitation for kids to try to climb them to the roof, so chain link fences were installed.

The village center was a radical design concept for the Dayton region, especially if retail was going to be built. The concept was to turn away from the parking lots (orienting things to the lake), which is never done is commercial or retail construction.

Not to mention integrating offices, retail, a community center and maybe housing in a fairly tight development, instead of spreading functions out in large, separate zoning blocks. We are close to the ideas of New Urbanism here, but far away from New Urbanisms nostalgic aesthetics.

Newfields Innovations, Failure, and Denoument

Newfields had one lasting contribution to suburban planning in Ohio, but is also a good case study of a beautiful theory ambushed by reality; a suburban experiment that failed.

Dual Developers and New Community Authority

Title VII new communities were intended to be demonstration projects and had to incorporate development and planning innovations to be eligible for HUD assistance (HUD administered Title VII).

One of the innovations that helped sell the Newfields application to HUD was the Dual Developer Concept.

The ideas was that Newfields would be developed jointly by private sector for-profit developers and a non-profit quango, called the New Community Authority, or NCA. The NCA would be responsible for developing & operating the open space and community support features (including preschool) and have some involvement with the town center. The NCA was, perhaps, as the convener of the design think tank that would do the detailed planning as the community grew.

The NCA was structured so it could be expanded as new areas were developed. The board of directors originally had private developer representation (but not a majority of the board). As the new community became populated it would eventually move to full resident representation. As the NCA had bonding authority and was responsible for some infrastructure development and maintenance it would generate revenue via an "income charge" on the residents, perhaps akin to a local income tax.



The NCA remains a lasting contribution of Newfields, as the enabling legislation remains on the books in amended form as Title 3 Chapter 349 of the Ohio Revised Code. The NCA is being used for modern developments like New Albany near Columbus, San Mar Gale near Oregonia and the Big Darby plan for the open country west of Columbus.

Newfields Politics

Why a NCA? Apparently Huber thought of incorporating but as this was so close to Trotwood Trotwood could have prohibited annexation. And Dayton would not sign-off on the Federal A95 review unless it could annex the new town. And Trotwood and Dayton where already at loggerheads over annexation as Trotwood had outmaneuvered Dayton in the 1960s for the annexation of the Salem Mall.

So a compromise had to be brokered.

Trotwood would get to annex phase I, Dayton would get to annex the panhandle and the "town center" area. The part of the new town out in Perry Township was left for future decisions. The sweet part of this deal for Dayton is that it would have an opportunity to annex what could have been a new "edge city" as well as industrial land.






The book on Newfields also implies some monetary payoffs by Huber to certain Dayton political leaders (such as the father the current Dayton mayor) were needed to tamp down political opposition from the city.

Dayton did start to annex westward as the new town went under development, which is why the city limits encompass that farmland south and east of Trotwood.

Causes of Failure

Newfields was built on very shaky financial and market projections. As early as 1972 some internal financial projections were showing that the economic model was unsound.

And assumptions on capture rate of new housing proved to be very rosy. As was noted Huber chose this area over Bellbrook as land was cheaper due to slower growth. Perhaps things would have been different if the area had expressway connections or was more desirable to the local real estate market.

The big postwar Huber success, Huber Heights, was in an underdeveloped, stagnant suburban area. The Hubers pretty much made that area boom. So expectations would have been similar for Newfields, assuming ongoing growth. But that was not the case as Dayton region stopped growing in 1970, entering an era of prolonged population stagnation and economic structural adjustment.

There was also the issue of the “housing project” character of Newfields.

The intention of Newfields was to have a mix of density and socioeconomic groups, and was developed with Federal assistance. This would have been a radical concept in the context of the conservative suburban real estate market of that era, possibly contributing to racial steering into the Trotwood area in the 1970s, due the local real estate community perhaps abandoning the area as suitable housing for whites. And the developer, Don Huber, had a history with partnering with black developers in urban renewal projects prior to Newfields. Was the thinking that Don Huber was going to develop a big Madden Hills instead of a new Huber Heights?

In short, maybe Newfields was unmarketable in the context of the Dayton regions racially and economically segregated housing market?

The Boaz Allen & Hamilton Evaluation & The Basic Flaw

An evaluation of the entire Title VII program by accountants Boaz, Allen, and Hamilton for HUD pretty much confirms some basic flaws in the entire program in finance, program design and management, and developer assumptions.

B,A, & H don’t say this but the fundamental demographic assumption underpinning Title VII was proven false; that urban areas would continued to grow during the 1970s due to rural depopulation and internal metropolitan area population growth. Instead internal population growth leveled off and rural out migration ceased. And, in 1970, no one forecast the economic disruption of the oil price shock of 1973-74, with the subsquent recession and inflation.

The B,A, & H study contains this sensitivity analyses for Newfields, showing negative cash flow for the duration of the project if some fundamental economic assumptions changed, which is what happened during the 1970s.




Timeline & Endgame

There where also conflicts between the first project manager and Huber, leading to the resignations of the both general manager and NCA manager.

Things did happen in Newfields. About $20,000,000 was spent on land acquisition, development, and management/consultant cots.

1972

Enabling legislation enacted for the New Community Authority.

1973

The New Community Authority was created, a new general manager hired, a revised master plan developed, ground breaking in September, and HUD project agreement in November. Dayton begins to annex the Panhandle. Newfields name and logo by Chermayeff.

1974

Revenue bonds floated for commercial building in the community center, construction of the first lake, recreation center, and housing units. Title VII program suspended by HUD in October, general manager fired and some staff suspended.

1975

Additional layoffs, NCA informs HUD the project is not viable, Newfields defaults on interest payments (picked up by HUD per agreement), Huber closes out his construction company for Newfields. (Don Huber remains in business in Dayton today, though, recently developing land in Beavercreek)

1976

NCA director resigns, HUD finds project not economically viable, accelerates principle and interest payments on bonds

1978

Foreclosure action by HUD and negotiated solution proposed.

What was proposed was that the property be disposed of three ways. Winters Bank (today’s JPMorgan Chase), which had loaned money to the defunct NCA, and HUD would self off the panhandle property and split the proceeds. HUD would sell the westernmost part of the property to the State of Ohio, which would convert the vacant land to a state park. HUD would sell the phase I property as three development areas. So, interesting to see here that the State of Ohio ends up holding part of the bag via its agreement to take some empty land off the hands of the Feds.

On the map...the Ohio state park in green, HUD/Winters sales and split in gray, and the remaining development areas sold off by HUD in red.



It's not known if the HUD/Winters Bank land ever was sold. It seems to be still for sale based on signs on the property.

1979

Sycamore State Park dedicated, November 1979. So it will be 40 years this fall.

All that’s left of the bulk of Newfields land are the empty farmlands and the wooded Wolf Creek valley of Sycamore State Park




And the aborted development in the HUD sell-off areas. The Newfields name was abandoned; Newfields Boulevard (the main road through the area) was renamed Sycamore Boulevard

And Newfield went down the local memory hole. What was to be a suburb of +/- 30,000, perhaps the most ambitous suburban developement of the 1970s, is totally forgotten (or there is a polite silence about it).

Yes, things were actually built here, and Daytonlogy will investigate this area as taste of what could have been, and as Dayton's only example of another 1960s-era suburban experiment, cluster housing.

Sources:

There are various publications on the Title VII program, both government and non-government. Some of these (like the Booze/Allen evaluation) specfically mention Newfields.

For Newfields itself:

The downtown library History Room has the original and final EIS, the two applications, and supporting info that was sent to HUD, as well as the new town newsletter.

There is also a book: The Politics of New Town Planning, The Newfields Ohio Story, by Fredrick Steiner, published by Ohio University press. 227 pages. The book is perhaps a bit one -sided as it tells the story from the perspective of Gerwin Rohrback, who was the first project manager or director, not so much from Huber, who declined to be interviewed. Rohrback was trained as a landscape architect at Harvard along with McHarg, but went into urban planning.

Newfields Planning: Milton Keynes in Ohio?

Although there is evidence that the ecological planning concepts of Ian McHarg were used in Newfields, a more direct antecedent was the last and most radical British New Town, Milton Keynes.

Milton Keynes

Located off the M1 motorway halfway between London and Birmingham Milton Keynes was named after a local village, not (as sometimes thought) the poet and the economist. It was designed by Sir Richard Llewellyn Davis in 1967-1968 and was published in planning and architectural journals in 1969 through 1973, so would be exactly contemporary with McHargs’ Design with Nature as an influence. Llewellyn Davis would be retained to do the first plans for Newfields, probably in 1971-72, so Milton Keynes can be seen as a direct precursor.

Llewellyn Davis was influenced by US thinking on planning and architecture (including the example of Los Angeles, which was quite an interest item with UK design theorists) and by the avant garde concepts coming from the UK-based Archigram Group.

“Got to Have a Loose Fit”
(apologies to the Happy Mondays)

This led to the Milton Keynes incorporating the concept of “loose fit” and indeterminacy. Form was indeterminate, with development (including the town center) loosely plugged into “grid squares” formed by a 1km square net of access roads draped across the landscape. Height was low (“buildings no higher than the highest tree”), and the town was to merge into the landscape.

There was also the concept of City as Forest, with generous plantings along the road net, the motorway, the housing areas, and in the park belts in the river bottoms. The idea was to make the city more wooded than the surrounding countryside (which is, interestingly enough, how Dayton and its older suburbs look from the air). Essentially this was a merger of US suburbia and UK new town planning, assuming an automobile-oriented society.


Llewellyn Davis apparently was aware of land use suitability planning as topography and drainage, along with the road system, was used to locate open space, resulting in two north-south open space systems based on river valleys and the motorway. Ecological considerations came into play in species selection for the forest planning. Tree belts were also planted along the net roads. The town center was on the highest elevation, but acted as a connecter between the two north-south open space systems…



….which one can see in this aerial rendering, showing what almost looks like a US style suburban office park bisected by boulevards connecting the two open space systems, flanked by landscaped 1km net roads.



In real life it does look rather fetching, and one can see how the depressed highway concept for Newfields may have had a Milton Keynes precedent.



Though designed primarily with the automobile in mind, Milton Keynes was also designed with an extensive bike/pedestrian system, the “Redway” (named after the red tarmac paving material), which acts as a secondary transportation system grade-separated from the net roads. The 1km dimension for the grid squares was selected to permit walkability to bus stops, so public transit was a consideration in planning.



Milton Keynes in Ohio?

In Ohio, Llewellyn Davis already had a road grid to work with, which was distorted a bit in the plan. One can see some similar concepts, like a town center (and community college) set in parkland but accessed from a freeway, and the use of the topography and drainage to generate the open space system, which determines the blocks of developable land.

It seems there is a “net” concept operating in the Newfields deisgn, too, but one of greenways rather than access roads. Which implies a version of the Milton Keynes ped/bike Redway system.



A missed opportunity was the incorporation of Old Town Trotwood into the scheme (which would have been easy to do). Country villages were incorporated into the Milton Keynes plan, but this didn’t happen here.

The concept of convenience centers was an innovation, where schools and recreation centers would occasionally be paired with neighborhood shopping (shown as red boxes) to provide community focal points throughout the scheme, with larger schools (junior highs, two red boxes) paired with larger shopping areas. In generic US suburbia schools and retail are quite separate.



An unusual feature of the plan is the “panhandle” extending to the east, This was envisioned as a mostly industrial area, but was mainly driven by political considerations. More on that later.

Newfields Plan Development

The initial plan was quite schematic and envisioned most of the land under the control of the developer. In reality ownership was quite fragmented, with some property held as life estates and others remaining as in-holdings, not purchased at all. So the planning was altered to address this reality.


But not altered too much as one still sees the town center/community college, and the Wolf Creek valley and tributaries as the organizing feature of the scheme. (Purple is shopping and blue are schools). The Wolf Creek Expressway appears, arcing its way along the panhandle into Dayton.

Another scheme has more of a village center concept, with three village centers (dashed circles and oval) comprised of housing of various densities, shopping, and schools. In this case one can see industry along the railroad line, which was still active at that time.



One of the goals of the Title VII new communities was socioeconomic integration via mixing apartments and townhouses in with houses. This was a radical feature for suburban Dayton, where single family housing is usually quite separate from multifamily, leading to socioeconomic segregation and social exclusion. One can see that mix in the above graphic, where orange denotes high density housing snaking through the new town, following the greenways.

The Design Think Tank

All this was in outline. Detailed design of the new town was to be done on a case-by-case, subcommunity-by-subcommunity basis via a design think tank made up of design consultants, the staff ecologist, and residents. The intention was not to have a predetermined form, but to take a more ad-hoc, participatory approach. This seems to be a reflection of the 1960s interest in process, letting the process determine the form. Which once again relates to the concept of indeterminacy, eschewing a comprehensive, top-down detailed master planned approach.
One can see this in action with this preliminary study, which provides a generalized outline, but also locates how various housing densities would mix, color coded in shades of red. Yellow would be single family and dark red, perhaps, a high-rise.

The label says study, but Village 1 was, believe it or not, partially built. Subject of a future Daytonology thread.

Newfields and Ecological Planning

Newfields started out inspired by Reston, and this early sketch shows the intent a bit, to dam up Wolf Creek for a lake and put a community college and shopping center near by, with housing all around.


Instead Newfields would be influenced by the new concept of land use suitability planning, also called ecological planning.

The approach was developed during the 1960s by Ian McHarg and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania. McHarg was a Scot, trained in landscape architecture at Harvard, and a sort of public intellectual during the 1960s (with his own TV show), as well as an innovative planner and designer. The concept was to overlay constraints to determine the best place to build.

The concept, via examples alternating with biographical and philosophical writings, was popularized via McHarg’s book, Design With Nature, published in 1969, just in time for the New Communities legislation. McHarg himself would design one of the Title VII new communities, The Woodlands, north of Houston, using ecological planning principles.

Design with Nature was perhaps one of the most influential books of its era, influencing generations of landscape architects and planners. Eventually the overlay technique would be the intellectual foundation for computerized Geographic Information Systems, AKA GIS.

It’s interesting to think of Design with Nature next to Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life of Great American Cities (published in 1961). Both books bracket the decade, but are quite different in their conclusions. Jacob’s book was a ringing endorsement of the old urban world of the pre-automobile city just as it was about to die. McHarg’s was the apotheosis of the garden city concept, transcending that hoary idea and pointing to the future, the start of ecologically based planning.

The planning technique introduced in Design with Nature was to ascertain land use suitability via overlay. The procedure was to map various constraints, such as soil quality, depth to bedrock, wetlands, watercourses, floodplains, aquifers, steep slopes, forest and vegetation cover, cultural resources, and other factors as layers. The sum of the overlays would show areas were one could build and where one could not.

An early example of this technique was the plan for The Valleys, an exurban area northwest of Baltimore, where an overlay of constraints led to recommendations for controlled development based on the nature of the land itself



The technique would become more robust over the course of the decade.

It was a convincing technique, except the one thing that was not overlain was private property, which meant this concept was somewhat utopian for regional planning. But it could be used for large areas controlled by a handful of landowners, or one large owner, which was case in Newfields.

In the case of Newfields, there is this evidence that the land use suitability approach was being used, as soil classifications, depth to bedrock, woodlands, and slopes were being mapped as “Natural Systems Sensitivity” to determine developable areas and suggest a form for the new town.



One can already see the valleys of Wolf Creek and its tributaries surfacing as a constraint.

Next we will look at some actual planning for Newfields.