Community Gem: Dayton man a role model for helping communities

“In my mind, what I try to do is point to something that’s good and positive in the community, versus, something that’s bad in the community,” he said.

He’s also focused on supporting Dayton neighborhood revitalization and community resilience, wrote Lela Klein, team director for Dayton’s sustainability office, in her Dayton Daily News Community Gem nomination form.

However, the project he’s most proud of is the Gem City Market.

“It was to address the food issue in the community there,” Currie said. “I took their advice and listened to the community and what they cared about and how they wanted to address it.”

Currie became a founding member of the nonprofit Co-op Dayton in 2021, which helped start the Gem City Market.

The cooperative grocery store, owned by the workers and neighbors surrounding it, was a solution to the food desert in northwest Dayton. Klein said the goal is to have a grocery store that’s “not going to close on us.”

“He’s a very empathetic, compassionate person. He’s very measured, like he’s not going to bang on the table,” Klein said. “He really listens more than he speaks, which I think is a great characteristic of a community lawyer. And he’s a total trailblazer.”

Klein said Currie helped figure out the cooperative model, a business that’s owned by its members, and the members are key stakeholders.

Even when the project was done, he never left its side.

After retirement, Currie will continue as a member of Co-op Dayton’s board.

“He’s somebody who a lot of people look to as like a mentor or a role model for community lawyering. Including me,” Klein said. “He’s also just a cool guy. He loves music. He loves his kids.”

Klein first met Currie 10 years ago at a meeting to move the Dayton fairgrounds to its current location.

The move left the original fairgrounds site open. The city then began working on a zoning change to develop a neighborhood there.

Klein said different neighborhoods surrounding the fairgrounds gathered to have a collective impact; to ensure their voices were heard during the meetings on what to do with the fairgrounds.

At the time, Currie’s role was managing attorney for the housing and community economic development practice group at ABLE where he represented surrounding neighborhoods at stakeholder meetings, aided with record requests and helped them strategize.

“I [first] saw him in action as I was representing my neighborhood,” Klein said, “and he was representing all the neighborhoods collectively ... I had never seen a lawyer act on behalf of neighborhoods before.”

Currie also advised neighborhood associations and community organizations on environmental matters, such as source water drinking protections, impacts of industrial contamination and the EPA’s superfund program.

Jerry Bowling III, president of the McCook Field neighborhood association, met Currie while working on the Behr superfund site in Dayton in 2007.

He helped Bowling’s campaign get on the national priority list to get homes tested for contaminated ground water.

In 2025, he’s still working with them to get nonprofit status for The Behr, Valleycrest and Valley Pike Community Advisory Group (CAG), the three superfund sites in northeast Dayton and Riverside, Ohio.

“Matt is a very patient person, you know, even-keeled, really good to work with, you know, put you at ease [and] explains things well,“ Bowling III said. ”So he was a real pleasure to work with."

The retirement, while not what he would have preferred, came after a Parkinson’s diagnosis.

If up to him, he would have kept working.

“Matt has always been the quiet advisor behind the scenes and he hasn’t always gotten his flowers,” Klein said. “So I just wanted to make sure that people in the community know what a gem that we have, especially honoring his retirement and his years of service.”