Dayton bounces back with baseball, beer
Popular stadium, microbreweries help revive Wright brothers’ hometown after years of hardship
DAYTON, Ohio — When I was growing up in greater Dayton in the 1960s and ’70s, the Ohio city already had been to the top of prosperity hill and was coasting down the other side.
Early 20th century Dayton was a metropolis that hummed with innovation and commerce. Population topped out in 1960 at just over 260,000.
After that, the city gradually lost families to the suburbs and others left as manufacturing declined and jobs evaporated. Downtown retail moved out as the population shifted.
By the time I left in the early 1980s, Dayton — and downtown especially — was frayed around the edges.
Moving back to Ohio after three decades away, I returned to Dayton and found some good stuff. There was a minor-league ballpark downtown, a lovely riverfront park, people out enjoying themselves and a burgeoning craftbeer culture. Craft beer!
The place had become kind of cool.
Understand, the economy here will never again be what it was when multiple General Motors plants provided thousands of jobs, and National Cash Register stood as proud symbol of grand homegrown commerce (the company took its headquarters and 1,250 jobs to Atlanta in 2009). Some parts of the city still reflect the malaise.
But efforts to diversify Dayton, trumpet its rich history and make it a cleaner, brighter, more interesting place are working.
The city spruced up the Great Miami riverfront, creating a family friendly downtown park. An old railroad freight house was converted into a popular public market. The city scored a minorleague baseball team — the Class-A Dayton Dragons — and put up a fan-friendly, 7,200-seat stadium. Fifth Third Field has sold out every single game since it opened in 2000 — the longest streak in any professional sport. The ballpark draws crowds even though the Cincinnati Reds, a Major League Baseball team, play just 55 miles (88 kilometres) away.
“Certainly this side of downtown wasn’t doing really well, and that started to change around the time of the ballpark opening,” said Alan F. Pippenger, whose venerable family business, the Requarth Lumber Co., is situated just beyond the left-field foul pole of Fifth Third Field. The Requarth building has been there so long that the Wright Brothers visited to buy lumber for their early flying machines.
When Pippenger came back to Dayton to take over the company in 1985, one of the only places to get lunch was the basement snack bar of the Sear’s store down the street. There are way more choices now. And more people around.
New restaurants and bars have opened up around the ballpark. Closed factories and warehouses have been converted to sleek apartments that are snapped up as fast they’re built. Construction equipment downtown has become a familiar sight.
Dayton also boasts a resident philharmonic orchestra, 2,300-seat downtown performing arts centre and a nationally recognized art museum. Not bad for metro area with just around 800,000 people, including 140,000 in the city itself.