From the June 12, 2006 print addition

Dayton Business Journal

by Yvonne Teems

DBJ Staff Reporter

In December, art lovers came to Jane Black with a holiday wish: to have the Dayton Visual Arts Center’s gift shop open year-round.

Open for a month and a half during the holiday shopping season, DVAC’s Art-to-Buy program stays closed the rest of the year so DVAC can focus on its gallery and other programs, said Black, executive director. But in late May, the gallery opened the shop again and will keep it open until June 24, testing the market to see if it can launch the program year-round.

Art-to-Buy, which earns the organization $60,000 during the holidays, will likely generate just $15,000 this spring. But Black said if shoppers respond to this recent opening, she may open the store year-round, which would flush much needed revenue into the 15-year-old arts center.

The program, which sells local artists creations for anywhere from $15 to $300, is a hit with Christmas gift buyers seeking items with local flair. Shoppers can find anything from paintings and photography to pottery and jewelry.

Black said she’s looking for additional revenue because her organization, like many nonprofits, is hurting from sluggish corporate and individual donations.

“More and more nonprofits are pursuing earned income strategies for many reasons,” said Jim McClurg, president of Seattle-based Social Enterprise Alliance, a nonprofit that helps other nonprofits create ventures to earn income.

While competition is increasing for charity dollars, traditional donors are expecting nonprofits to become more self-sufficient, McClurg said.

So in addition to increasing fees, many nonprofits are launching programs that align with their missions but also earn money.

“It’s too important to leave it to chance or the whims of donors,” McClurg said.

But in the past several years, the group’s budget has grown — it was $174,000 in 2002, $240,500 in 2005 and is on track to hit $282,000 in 2006. The organization’s recent capital campaign raised $500,000, much of which was used to move it into its new home at 118 N. Jefferson St. in Dayton.

The space is 3,600 square feet, two-and-a-half times the size of its old facility at 40 W. Fourth Street, and its gallery grew by 50 percent with the move, Black said.

On the other hand, the retail store may take too much time away from DVAC’s core mission: its gallery. Black doesn’t want to occupy her 500 member artists’ time solely with producing art for sale, she said.

Plus, she’s concerned a year-round Art-to-Buy program will recycle the same artists over and over, leaving little room for new, beginner artists. But some of the time spent on the Art-to-Buy program is setting it up and tearing it down. If she had it year-round, Black wouldn’t have to worry about that task.But it’s important for nonprofits to keep in mind both the need to grow its revenue and its core mission, said Joceyln Harmon, director of development and communications for the National Counil of Nonprofit Associations. A program like DVAC’s seems to tackle both challenges.“You want to make sure when you’re starting a program that you’re bringing in money, but you want to impact the mission,” she said.

Dayton Daily News
By Jim Nichols

As you go along East Fifth Street and come to Wayne Avenue you are getting close to the geographic end of the Oregon Historic District.

From there, one building will attract your attention. It sits alone in more than six acres of green space bordered by Bainbridge Avenue and Dayton Towers Drive.

The high-rise building has been known as Dayton Towers since it was completed in 1964, but that’s no longer true.

Last fall the outside sign changed. It has a big “M” in the middle and the wording lets you know that you are nearing the Metropolitan Condominiums.

Of course, the sign isn’t the only thing that has changed. What once was an apartment building is in the process of becoming condominiums, and workers are busy redoing the building inside and out.

One of the most impressive updates has been the replacement of every window.

The building was acquired in foreclosure action by Bayview Financial of Coral Gables, Fla.

Irongate Reality Inc., and Stuart Brown and Greg Gillen, have offices on the first floor. They are handling sales for Bayview.

The Metropolitan’s new information booklet says it is a 14-story high-rise tower. That’s not accurate, however.

Like many high-rise buildings — especially those built in the mid-20th century — it has only 13 floors.

Buildings such as the Dayton Towers were built following past superstitions that there would be no 13th floor. In other words, in the elevator stops at 12 and the next listed floor is 14.

The 206 units will be contained in eight different floor plans. One monthly fee will cover everything, including utilities such as gas, electric, water and sewer, insurance and maintenance.

The amenities listed for the remodeled building are a state-of-the-art fitness center, a private movie theater and a recreation/club room.

The lobby interior already has been completed, and work is about to start on new entrance, elevators and hallways. There also will be expanded covered parking.

There is already a swimming pool on the property, but engineers are planning to expand the area.

The Dayton Towers has long been a pet-friendly building, but it’s about to get even friendlier. Plans call for doing away with the tennis court and creating a dog park in its place.

Brown points out that one of the best features of the building has been its location.

There’s an unparalleled view of downtown and the Oregon District. The high rise is just off U.S. 35, giving residents easy access to interstates 75 and 675. Downtown locations, including Fifth Third Field and RiverScape MetroPark, are easy to get to as well.

Condo information is available by calling Gillen or Brown at 428-1240.

Contact Jim Nichols at 225-2333 or by e-mail at jnichols@DaytonDailyNews.com.

Dayton Daily News

Dayton Visual Arts Center opens new home on Monday
Larger Jefferson Street location wins director’s praise
By Pamela Dillon

DAYTON | The sleek look of Dayton Visual Art Center’s new entrance belies the traditional feel of the old Bindery Building on North Jefferson Street as if to say, “Hey, look at me!”

The 26-inch-high steel letters in DVAC’s contemporary logo jump out at passers-by, offset by 385 square feet of storefront glass and a bright orange-red brick facade.

Upon entering, the expanse of cream-colored walls and 16-foot ceiling make the 1,810-square-foot NCR Gallery seem even more spacious.

The moveable walls and smell of fresh paint suggest growth and promise.

“I am thrilled that local artists have this place to call home,” DVAC Director Jane Black said. “It’s really going to give us the resources that we need to do the kind of programming that the community wants.”

For the past 10 years, the artists’ home was at Fourth and Ludlow streets.

The new venue is about four times the size of that space.

The 15-year-old nonprofit collective opens its new doors to the public on Monday.

“We have an amazing core of support. They’re not big in numbers, but their support is huge,” Black said.

The DVAC board of trustees pledged $80,000 and charged architect Mary Rogero with designing a larger, more flexible gallery, offices and workshop space.

One of DVAC’s founders, Linda Lombard, brought together four former board presidents and community volunteers to raise $500,000 to renovate the space and seed an endowment fund. Both the Kettering Fund and the NCR Foundation made substantial gifts.

The campaign raised $676,188 from 144 donors.

In addition to the NCR Gallery in front, the space includes a reception cubicle, a large workshop/conference room, two office areas, storage room/loading dock and fully equipped kitchen.

“One of the tasks for nonprofits that is so important to stay solvent is to identify revenue streams,” Black said. “By offering a service like rental space, we can expand our usefulness to the community.”

Contact arts writer Pamela Dillon at pamdillon@woh.rr.com

Dayton Daily News

By Stephanie Irwin

DAYTON | Dayton city officials have selected a Cincinnati developer’s housing proposal to complete the redevelopment of Cooper Place downtown.

A Dayton economic development specialist confirmed Friday the city is negotiating with Al Neyer Inc. to transform three corners at First Street and Patterson Boulevard into street-front and courtyard town homes and flats.

An agreement would give Neyer the exclusive rights to develop the site, said Shelley Dickstein, senior planning specialist.

The parcels include two vacant lots adjacent to Lincoln Storage and the Relizon Co. headquarters, while the third southwest corner is a parking lot owned by PMI.

Dickstein said her office queried 20 developers from Columbus to Cincinnati about their interest in developing the site in August, and got four initial responses. Two developers submitted proposals, and her office and CityWide Development Corp. picked Neyer’s proposal in December.

Neyer’s streetfront townhome concept includes “dramatic” atrium-style garden townhomes with rooftop terraces, and loft-styled urban townhouses and flats, said Gail Paul, spokeswoman for Neyer.

“We envision a vitalized, true urban neighborhood offering a diverse blend (of living spaces),” Paul said.

The entire project will take three to five years to complete.

After negotiations close in early February, Neyer will start developing construction plans with Rogero Buckman Architects inc. during a series of public meetings through mid-summer.

CityWide Development Corp., will also review Neyer’s financing to see if any assistance is required, said Buddy LaChance, director of neighborhood development.

The city must also acquire the parking lot from PMI before the lot can be developed.

“The surface parking lots are parcels that were deemed substandard and to be acquired by the city,” Dickstein said.

Representatives from PMI were not available for comment on the city’s plans.

Contact Stephanie Irwin at 225-7404.

By Benjamin Kline

Dayton Daily News

SPRINGFIELD | Primeval man crawled into a cave and huddled near a fire, which gave him warmth and light and a sense of security. The forest embraced him in its velvety dark greens and shaggy rich browns, a cloak of natural hues with speckles of golden sunlight filtering down through timeless shadows.

Thousands of years later, in 1908-1910, architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed a 4,435-square-foot house for a Springfield industralist, Burton Westcott, his wife Orpha and their two children, and achieved much the same ambiance.

The Westcott House, Ohio’s principal example of Wright’s famed Prairie Style of “organic architecture,” opens to the public Saturday after a painstaking, 5-year restoration. Beautifully brought back, complete with the enormous cast-concrete urns, cantilevered roofline and sheltering pergolas that are Wright standbys, the house is simply wonderful. It is a reminder that of all the fine arts, architecture is the only one that can be experienced from the inside.

Wright, a dapper little man from Wisconsin whose talent may have been surpassed only by his gigantic self-esteem, would be delighted that the craftsmen devoted to this restoration have spent $5 million, and most of their patience, doing it just so. Following the deaths of Westcott and his wife in the 1920s, the house had been hammered into seven apartments, its sleeping porches boarded up and its location on Springfield’s one-time “Millionaires Row” had seen better days. Rescued and restored, now under the auspices of the Westcott House Foundation, it opens to the public as a museum.

In a Wright house, project manager D. Shawn Beckwith said, “You’re sheltered from the outside but you experience it being brought inside.”

Wright was known for (but did not invent) the concept that form follows function. In his view, “Form and function are one.”

Though hardly casual, his interior spaces flow into each other, eliminating the boxy rooms of older dwellings. For instance, the Westcott’s south-facing reception-library (22-by-15 feet), fireplace (20-by-18) and dining areas (22-by-15) melt into each other with no partitions or doorways. Before Wright there were discrete parlours, sitting rooms and other specially named rooms; after Wright, America did everything in the living room. (Today’s so-called great rooms are merely living rooms with pretentious ceiling heights.)

For the Westcott restoration, craftsmen made lovely oak tables, chairs and built-in bureaus to match the originals in the Arts & Crafts style. Stucco, glass and metal fixtures also were recreated. Old-fashioned clearglass lightbulbs glare nakedly, but correctly, on some sconces.

“If we did not know what the orginal looked like, they are interpretations,” said Lin Erickson, director/CEO of the Westcott House Foundation.

Beckwith said more than 90 percent of the original glass, sashes and doors were intact, though some pieces had been removed to a local art museum. (Authentic Wright artifacts sell for thousands of dollars. The e-Bay Web site lists more than 500 Wright-related books and objects.) The hardware, such as the old nickelplate or brass hinges, was carefully copied. The 20-by-13 kitchen is bare, its built-in icebox concealed behind cabinet doors, but there are plans to install a circa-1910 stove.

Westcott’s garage, with horse stalls and a turntable to reverse the direction of his cars, signifies the period when horses were still in use but automobiles, such as the luxury sedan bearing the Westcott name, were coming on strongly. It will become a gift shop and conference area.

Wright houses were notorious for their exploding budgets, protracted construction and leaky roofs. So far, the roof here does not leak.

Erickson, who recently moved to Springfield from the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania, said she wants the Westcott House to become a center for learning, not just about Wright but “to inspire creativity and promote understanding of architectural principles and the design process.”

HOW TO GO

What: The house museum opens to the public.
Where: 1340 E. High St., in the east end of Springfield at East High and Greenmount intersection.
When: Beginning Saturday. Wednesday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday 1 to 5 p.m.
Admission: $8.50 adults; $7 seniors 65 and older; $6 students and groups of eight or more; $4 school groups.
More info: Call (937) 327-9291 or visit: www.westcotthouse.org

Some would call it a perfect ten. Others just seem to keep calling. After a decade of being involved in some of the most interesting transformative architecture in Dayton, Rogero Buckman Architects work is featured in Dwell magazine’s Oct/Nov issue. “Suburban Flight” features the modern home they designed for local architecture writer Peter Bracher and his wife Joan, in the Fairgrounds neighborhood.
It’s been a great year for partners Mary Rogero and Barry Buckman, who have been changing the architectural landscape of Dayton. They are one of three regional firms chosen to collaborate with master architect Stanley Tigerman on the “innovation initiative” complex and campus centered around the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Westcott home in Springfield, they are transforming the old Dayton Towers apartments into the hip new Metropolitan condos and have been awarded contracts for the Phoenix project, an unnamed Dayton Public School and the Roosevelt Center Renaissance project, all while finishing the build-out on the Cooper Lofts condo’s downtown.
Over the past ten years Daytonians have watched them; transform an abandoned Shell Station at E. Fifth and Wayne into the Dublin Pub, create the sculptures along Riverscape that pay tribute to the great inventions from Dayton and turn six warehouses into The Cannery that has become the local version of Melrose Place.
While the Bracher home was the feature of the Dwell article, Rogero Buckman were also the architects on the “Genesis Project;” a joint effort by Miami Valley Hospital, the University of Dayton and Citywide Development to rebuild the Fairgrounds neighborhood. There is currently a waiting list for the new model homes.
Before you go run out and buy a copy of Dwell, be aware, the magazine tends to dwell on the idea that the area is better known for drug deals instead of dashing design. We can only assume the writer spent too much time at the hospital pharmacy.

We have a pdf of the article on our site here.

Urban League facility brings area ‘back to life’
By Joanne Huist Smith

Dayton Daily News

DAYTON | Reminiscent of an earlier time on the Nickel, men in suits and women in summer dresses gathered in front of the former West Fifth Street YMCA on Wednesday, to celebrate the homecoming of the Dayton Urban League to the neighborhood once heralded as the heart of the black community.

As the crowd of at least 200 hushed for a dedication prayer, a melody of new construction sounds and the laughter of children heading for the nearby Linden Recreation Center added background music.

“This neighborhood has awakened, been brought back to life” said Carol Sampson, superintendent of cultural affairs for Dayton’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Culture.

It’s a revival in progress on the Nickel — the nickname for West Fifth Street — and part of a transition that’s more than a decade old. The Dayton Urban League’s purchase of the YMCA building at 907 W. Fifth St. is the latest of many projects slowly erasing empty buildings and blight from the Wright-Dunbar neighborhood.

When the cornerstone of the Fifth Street YMCA was laid in 1927, blacks weren’t allowed in the downtown YMCA. Dayton’s black population raised the funds for the building that once housed a gym, pool and 50 rooms for men.

In 1947, founding members of the Dayton Chapter of the Urban League signed their charter there, giving birth to the organization. By the 1970s, the building that had been the after-school haunt for neighborhood children had closed.

“Old and new. We have to know where we’ve been to know where we’re going. This neighborhood has been through a cycle. This was an active neighborhood when I grew up here, then things changed. Now it’s been reactivated,” Trotwood resident Raymond Garner, Sr. said.

At the gateway to the neighborhood on the former Sprague Street, the city’s oldest black Baptist church building will reopen in October as the Dayton Cultural and RTA Transit Center.

The $1.7 million makeover has been one the community anticipated for more than 30 years.

The congregation of Zion Baptist was forced to vacate the building in 1984 because of highway construction. Now the building, plus a 100-by-50 foot addition, will house the Zion Theater, including a performance stage and seating for 95, a small store with bus merchandise and an exhibit hall.

Progress and blight collide at Williams and Mercer streets. On Williams, manicured lawns of new or renovated homes showcased in Citirama 2003 offer stark contrast to those on Mercer with boarded or broken windows.

But even there, signs of renewal are sprouting. New gutters, sidewalks and light standards already line one side of Mercer and ditches have been dug on the opposite side for similar treatment as part of the city’s 1995 urban renewal plan.

“We’re making the street development ready,” said Amy Walbridge, community development specialist for the city. Infrastructure improvement will be done by Sept. 1.

A sign on the door of 105 Williams St., the former home of publisher Daniel Grant Fitch, states the house is “unsafe for human habitation.” The house was built in 1852.

The city renovated the exterior in 2003. Now the Home Builders’ Association of Dayton and the Miami Valley, Preservation Dayton, Habitat for Humanity and the city have teamed up to repair the interior.

The home will be sold, with proceeds going to Habitat for Humanity, and the restoration will be featured during the Heritage House Designer Showcase tentatively set for Oct. 21-30.

The boom in Wright-Dunbar also includes several medical facilities. Jeanette Ishman of Dayton said she’s glad to see more essential health services available close to home. Wednesday, she and about 20 others waited for medical appointments at the Victor J. Cassano Sr. Health Center, 165 Edwin C. Moses Blvd., part of the Kettering Medical Center Network.

“We needed this in the neighborhood,” she said.

PriMed Physicians also is moving two of its Dayton medical offices to the Wright-Dunbar business district. Renovations are under way at 1152 W. Third St. for the independent physician group.

Walbridge believes the next pinnacle for Wright-Dunbar will be demolition, then reconstruction of Edison Elementary School by Dayton Public Schools. That project is scheduled for completion in five to 10 years.

“The school will serve as the nucleus for all of the neighborhood. It will bring all the development that has happened since the mid 1990s together,” she said.

Still, there are challenges. About 140 children weekly play basketball at the Linden Center, at 334 Norwood Ave., but the center is to close in about three years, according to the Dayton Parks, Recreation and Culture 2004 Master Plan.

Contact Joanne Smith at 225-2362.

By Benjamin Kline

Dayton Daily News 23 April 2005 Page 1E

The old real estate spiel about the importance of “location-location-location” still applies to many deals, but it’s being challenged by two Dayton architects who turn risky locations into dazzling building sites.

Rogero Buckman Architects, headed by Mary Rogero, 51, and Barry Buckman, 41, is marking 10 years in practice. They’ve been so busy, Rogero said, they haven’t nailed down a specific time to celebrate.

On virtually empty Emmet Street, east of North Main near the north shore of RiverScape Park, they are finishing up a remarkable, pristine, 2,000 square-foot house with big windows for Jose Orsini and Margerita Rivera. At 110 Frank St. in the Fairgrounds neighborhood, they won an American Institute of Architects Honor Award last year for the compact Peter and Joan Bracher house. In the Oregon District, they are transforming the smoke-stained Southern Belle tavern into a modernist, 6,000-square-foot mansion with a rooftop terrace.

And in Springfield, Rogero Buckman is one of three Ohio firms chosen for an “innovation initiative” with Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman in the redevelopment of the Greenmont Avenue neighborhood near the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Westcott House.

Buckman, from Doylestown, Pa., near Philadelphia, and Rogero, from EauGellie, Fla., met when both were working for Woolpert Co., of Dayton. She is single. His wife, Audrey, operates a high-design furniture and accessories store downtown, Go Home.

The architects’ first studio as an independent firm was in the Lofts on St. Clair Street. Then they relocated to the Cannery on East Third, finally to the Firefly Building at 123 Webster St. Each time, it was a modernist rehab of an old structure that sheltered them.

“We like to see new uses in established neighborhoods,” Buckman says. That is not saying you’ll never see a Rogero Buckman house out in the sprawling exurbs — they’re working on a Yellow Springs project right now — but it will not likely be a posturing “Colonial,” a pretentious “Country” French or one of those galloping-gables monsters the builders call “Transitional,” presumably meaning somewhere between banal and more so.

“We are Midwest, modern architects who feel strongly about good design for the way we live today, not 100 years ago,” Rogero says. (No apology for being from Dayton, either.)

The Orsini House is tall and narrow, starting with two large garage bays on the ground level of a 32-by-110-foot lot, with a modest, alley-side entry and stair tower that is the opposite of those grand, Palladian excesses on many new suburban houses. The dining, kitchen, living areas and master bedroom are on the first floor, like a traditional Italian piano-nobile. The living room soars 19 feet up, space shared visually by a balcony library area. Up even higher in the composition is a rooftop terrace that will allow the occupants to peer over the levee toward downtown. or east towards the river fountains.

Buckman said the aim was to respect the streetscape’s planes and forms and give the house a sense of two-story volume, while actually making it tall enough to catch the river view.

Rogero’s master’s thesis adviser at Miami University, architecture professor and chairman Robert Benson, says he is not surprised to see her and her associates flourishing.

“Mary was first in her class. She has a wonderful personality, bright and creative,” Benson says. “I think she is also an outstanding collaborator.

“Her undergraduate degree was in sculpture and she always enjoyed the relationship between architecture and the other fine arts. She is committed to urbanism and sustaining the visual quality of the urban environment.”

Buckman studied at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Rogero Buckman acts as building contractor for its designs, if the client wants. That extends the architect’s control over day-to-day changes that may be wanted or demanded.

The partners’ lack of snobbery is startling. Rogero, a plumber’s daughter, grew up in a big Florida 1950s ranch house and she still likes the style as done in the Buckeye State. “Dayton has some very nice 1950s neighborhoods, in Kettering and Shiloh areas,” she says. “Richard Levin did many nice ones.”

The firm’s offices are located in their own Firefly Building, 1234 Webster St., just around the corner and quite visible from Fifth Third Field.

Contact Benjamin Kline at (937) 225-2222.