“(Restoration) really is in the works. There are many things to overcome, more things to evaluate on the property. All that work, nobody really sees that,” said Gunther Berg, who bought the property last spring at a Montgomery County Sheriff’s tax lien sale with partner Wendell Strutz. “We didn’t purchase it to sell it or to leave it an empty lot. We want to do it right.”
Berg has connected with an architect and a general contractor, though neither has been formally hired. The city of Dayton has provided historic documents and drawings, a treat the developer has spent many hours studying.
“Ninety percent of the work on my desk is about the Arcade. If I had the money (for restoration) in my account next week, we still would not start,” Berg said. “Good things take time.”
Berg has visited Dayton four times during the last month and says he is examining the bones of the buildings and previous updates on the Arcade.
“The last remodeling affected the building more in a bad way than the whole 80 years before it. That really bothers me,” Berg said. “There is not too much knowledge on the road of real restoration work.”
In the Gibbons Building, for example, brick columns were covered with plaster containing gypsum in the 1980s. The gypsum, in a chemical reaction, turned the brick to sand.
“It’s not a big deal, but I have to know that. We will have to give guidelines on mortar work,” Berg said. “The Arcade was a revolutionary building when it was built (around 1902). In the United States, that kind of detailed work is almost lost.”
Berg could not say when the physical restoration would begin, or be completed. He did say it will take an architect at least four months to produce project drawings.
“Every detail has to be worked out,” he said. “The time we lose now we will be able to make up later, if we have good planning.”
Joanne Granzow, a founding member of Friends of the Dayton Arcade, said people who are impatient for progress need to understand how Berg works.
“He’s not going to jump into a project haphazardly. He is still energized and committed,” she said.
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