At UD, I met a wonderful education professor named Ed Gay whose first lecture was the most brilliant word and mind play I’d ever heard. For 90 minutes, he held chalk in his right hand, which bore extraordinary long fingernails, and he turned repeatedly to write on the blackboard. But never did. Each time he pivoted, a new thought turned him back round toward the seminar students.
I took composition from Herbert Woodward Martin, one of the great American poets of his generation, and the man who revived the name and work of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Mr. Martin still lives in Dayton today and is working on a new volume of poetry. He was raised in Toledo.
And I took a trolley across town to work in an urban school, where I tutored an Appalachian lad — one of the few white kids in the school — in reading. He didn’t have a winter coat. A veteran teacher told me: “Look kid, don’t get emotionally involved. The boy doesn’t need your sympathy. He needs a coat.” She got him one.
Dayton has lost thousands of jobs since those days. Just a few years ago, it lost its last Fortune 500 company, National Cash Register, around whose campus I once rode my bike on weekends. That loss was a huge psychological blow, much like — Mayor Nan Whaley told me — it would be for us if we lost Jeep entirely.
Dayton took the hits of the 1970s and 1980 and then 2008 and 2009 (NCR left in 2009), and yet it looked to me, when I saw it a few days ago, better than in the old days. Less grit. And, it seemed to me, cleaner than Toledo downtown. This is impressionistic, but it also seemed to me that there were fewer empty buildings and that some of the lovely old buildings had been better cared for than we care for our architectural legacy.
Other than that, Dayton is similar than Toledo — a smaller core city (141,001 to our 281,031) but a larger metropolitan area (841,000 to our 651,429). Its (private and Catholic) university — The University of Dayton — has come into its own in a way that the University of Toledo still needs time to achieve. UD is a research university. But the city of Dayton is another old Rust Belt, industrial, river town, with a struggling central city. It has been called upon to reinvent itself. Just like Toledo.
On the rebound
Dayton is doing a better job than we are: It is third in the nation in high-tech job growth. It has twice been singled out by Site Selection magazine as one of the top medium-size cities for economic development. Bloomberg Businessweek hailed Dayton as a great place for a college graduate to get a job.
Mayor Whaley assured me that there are plenty of empty buildings in Dayton too. But she thinks the key to Dayton’s comeback is city and corporate cooperation and a certain pragmatic bipartisanship.
This is true in Grand Rapids, Mich., and Cincinnati, as well. City politicians agree on the big stuff and put ego and partisanship aside — at least at a certain point — to be able to move forward.
Dayton, the mayor told me, is an open-minded town — open to newcomers and new ideas. The mayor is only 39. She came to Dayton as a college kid, got involved in Democratic politics, and quickly became a local star. “Could never happen in Cincinnati,” she said. Or Toledo, I thought.
Key elements
Stephanie Precht of the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce told me that Dayton’s comeback has been built on new small businesses of five to 10 people that grew to 20 to 30. A diversity of industry. Second, on the local government being friendly and welcoming and then staying out of the way. And, third, on the health-care industry — spurred by Obamacare.
Along with ever more people at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and the ancillary industry that IT attracts. Some military bases have closed, or contracted. Wright-Pat has grown.
“We have the Air Force’s brain here,” the mayor said.
That’s luck.
Also, importantly, Dayton has long had — since 1913 — a city manager system and a small council of five, including the mayor (called a commission). Less politics. More professionalism.
Former Dayton Daily News editorial page editor Ellen Belcher said this: “ … the City Commission, the city administration and voters really respect the city manager form of government. No one ever seriously questions the benefits of that system — over patronage. Having professionals on the job has proved to be incredibly important when things are tough. And they have been unprecedentedly tough for Dayton.”
But perhaps even more vital is that openness — a willingness to adapt and change.
Recovery checklist
The final section of a highly instructive paper on so-called “legacy” cities — great industrial cities of the heartland that have been deindustrialized and depopulated, titled “Regenerating America’s Legacy Cities,” by Alan Mallach, a fellow at the Center for Community Progress and the Brookings Institution, and Lavea Brachman of the Greater Ohio Policy Center, offers a series of recommendations for cities like Toledo, Akron, Youngstown, and Dayton.
This is the check list for how Rust Belt cities come back.
Let’s see how Toledo is doing:
● Rebuild the central core (of the city).
We’re doing it.
● Sustain viable neighborhoods.
It’s easier to say than do. But we’re not doing it, or trying very hard to do it.
● Repurpose vacant land for new activities.
The urbanists agree that “greening” works. And Toledo is getting there. Our land bank has been a godsend and is run by really smart people. We need to support and bolster it.
● Use assets to build the city’s competitive advantages.
We get an F on that one.
● Re-establish the central economic role of the city.
Thanks to Randy Oostra and ProMedica, we have made a start.
● Use economic growth to increase community and resident well-being. Another F.
● Build stronger local governance and partnerships.
That’s key for us. Right now we get a D.
● Build stronger ties between legacy cities and their regions.
We know we have to do it, but other than Mike Bell’s efforts as mayor, not much action here.
● Make change happen through “strategic incrementalism.”
What is that? Strategic incrementalism, to me, means: Look for opportunities and then don’t dither, act. And, be real. Do modest things that are truly possible. Don’t be cosmic. Put some points on the board.
● Finally: Rethink state and federal policy toward legacy cities.
This one is a pipe dream. Forget it. Reinforcements are not coming. From the feds or the state (except, I think with regards to Lake Erie. There, ONLY the feds can deal with the problem). We must put our own house in order.
Of all this long list, I asked Ms. Brachman where a city like Toledo should start. She said you start with two things: Rebuilding the core and neighborhoods. But you cannot lift up all neighborhoods at once. You have to target one or two and focus on them until they are revived and then move on to the next one or two. That’s terribly difficult politically, unless you are in a place like Dayton, which Ms. Brachman described as “pleasantly free of political egos.”
Keith C. Burris is a columnist for The (Toleod) Blade.
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