Dayton Arcade

The Arcade in Downtown Dayton is a building in need of historic preservation....Kathleen, you should save it!  It is a gorgeous, well, was a gorgeous building at one time.  I remember going there as a child when my grandma worked on Main St in Dayton.  We'd go downtown at Christmas time and shop at Lazarus and Elder Beerman and have lunch at the Arcade.

It was so lively, so exciting.  I was just a naive boy from the suburbs, I wasn't used to "big" city things.  The Arcade was so neat, so big and I felt so grown up when we'd go there.  The halls were lined with stores, it was almost like the Greene in Beavercreek but indoors, similar to a mall, but not like a mall at all. In it's prime there were stores and vendors and restaurants and there wasn't an empty store front.  When we'd visit with my grandma there were some vacancies but it was still the center of city activity.

The Arcade has gone through some bad times.  It was closed in the early 1990s and only open a few years at Christmas after it closed.  It was sold in 2008 or 2009 (I think) and has been falling apart for nearly 20 years.  It is so sad that a building on the National Register of Historic Places can't find someone or a group of someones to save it.  It could bring so much life back to the downtown area.  Merchants, food vendors, customers...everyone would benefit from having such a hub downtown again.   

I went through the Arcade again in 2009 and it was so sad.  It was moldy, mildewing, wet and literally breaking apart.  It was so sad.  I could see the old Arcade through the dreary new Arcade.  I can see so many possibilities and so many positives in the building and area, if only I had millions of dollars to save the building.  

There's been talk of tearing the Arcade down, but for what?  A parking lot?  What else would go there?  Building a new building would be ridiculous, buildings alone won't bring the downtown back to life. I think an old, historic, revitalized building would be much more appealing than some new, modern, cold, boring building