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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2011 > May > 25 > Entry
Editorial: Law firm’s exit from downtown a double blow
The planned departure of the 100-employee Thompson Hine law firm from downtown Dayton is a particularly frustrating loss for the city for two reasons.
One, the firm demonstrated a quite strong desire to remain downtown. It explored several options over the years, at one point being set on a development site that didn’t develop.
When firms want to stay — when they don’t have to be recruited and lured — and something still can’t be worked out, that’s a pretty special problem.
And, two, law firms have always been seen as one of the best fits for downtown, because of proximity to courts and to potential clients, such as bankers, engineers, architects and accountants.
But the firm ran into today’s exceptional real estate situation. With downtown buildings being bought at bargain-basement rates — because their owners are in some sort of financial distress — owners are less than eager to invest in the kinds of property improvements that are sometimes necessary to provide the kind of Class A space a business law firm needs.
The last building in play was the Kettering Tower, now owned by out-of-town investors. Negotiations went on for a long time, with the City of Dayton willing to put up some money, as well as the law firm. But, after disappointments and delay, the law firm finally felt it had to make a decision or risk losing space it was also considering at Austin Landing.
The firm’s current offices in KeyBank Tower, formerly the Mead Tower, had special problems, including the fact that the building is mainly empty. The law firm worried about signing a long-term lease and then finding that nobody was able or willing to put money into the maintenance of the building, said the law firm’s partner in charge, Robert Curry.
The number of other possible sites downtown — with enough Class A space and with usable floors contiguous to each other — was limited.
As for giving up the advantages of downtown, for a firm like Thompson Hine, focused on business law, the proximity to courtrooms is not as important as, say, for divorce or criminal lawyers. Much can now be handled electronically.
Downtown is probably still the best place for the networking that business lawyers must do. But places like Austin Landing are coming on strong.
Sandy Gudorf, president of the Downtown Dayton Partnership, a business organization that tries to foster a strong downtown, said after the Thompson Hine announcement that she couldn’t think of other businesses that have left downtown for similar reasons. But it’s something the partnership and the city need to be on the lookout for.
The situation has roots in the national financial collapse of 2008 and the general crisis in real estate, on top of the pre-existing problems downtown.
It’s a tough problem to solve. Though Dayton offered $200,000 for the Kettering Tower possibility, any government has to pause hard before investing in buildings that nobody else wants to invest in. Anyway, the idea of using public money, not to foster new jobs, but to keep jobs from moving is problematic. That’s particularly true for, say, the state government, which shouldn’t be playing localities against each other.
The Austin Boulevard exchange off Interstate 75 south of the Dayton Mall is a new asset for the region, a place that has been rightly seen as ripe for development like so much along the interstate. And it is benefiting from the new I-75 exit.
But, of course, its greatest potential for service to the local economy lies in its possible attraction of new businesses to the region, not the relocation of others. This was not the dream some had. It is more like the nightmare that others had, people focused on the city.
Downtown Dayton does have some good things going on, in the realm of residential housing, for example, and in the recent attraction of Premier Health Partners, the region’s largest hospital system, which has purchased one of the largest buildings there for its corporate service.
But it also apparently has a new kind of problem to focus on.
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