Sauer is somewhat of an unspoken Dayton celebrity, with his stamp on so many local institutions. Even if you don’t know who he is, chances are you have spent time in his buildings, whether at Fifth Street Brewpub, Old Scratch Pizza, Ghostlight Midtown (now MidDay), Gem City Market, Rinse Cycle, Gem City Catfé, St. Anne the Tart, or the Wright Brother’s Pre-K-8 School. Sauer was the architect for them all.
Sauer, who grew up in Dayton View and Mount Vernon, left for Philadelphia to study urban planning before receiving a Masters of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. There he met Meridith, and the couple returned to Dayton in 2007, restoring uninhabitable houses in South Park before moving to Grafton Hill.
He spends his day drafting blueprints and designing models in his home office, with visits to sites that are in progress. He is active on several local boards and is a champion of making Dayton a resident-friendly city. He has volunteered on the City Plan Board for 13 years and is the current Grafton Hill president, working on improvement projects for McKinley Park. For years he helped run PechaKucha Night.
Sauer, 51, is a Dayton architectural history buff and calls his interest in urban planning a “borderline obsession”.
“I prefer to have clients in the city of Dayton. I like having a sense that what I’m helping my clients do is to help revitalize the city.”
A COMPLEX ORGANISM
As a child, Sauer enjoyed constructing with Lego and drawing floor plans for imaginary buildings. His earliest influences came from the city itself, the diversity of the architecture in the Dayton View Triangle, and the complexity of multi-use urban spaces. He would go downtown to shop at the department stores and to visit the food court in the ’80s-era Arcade.
“Even though Dayton is a small city, (I had) an appreciation of the life of a street, the inner life of buildings. There used to be so much life inside The Biltmore, where you had an active public space in the hotel lobby and various restaurants and bars and newsstands — that sort of romanticized New York view of how a city works. That kind of thing to me is what makes a city. It’s a really complex organism.
“Architecture today has made things less complex. That old mix of uses that seemed to happen organically doesn’t happen in the same way anymore. It’s much more planned and formalized. The trend now is a lot of underutilized space.”
Part of his appreciation for the workings of a city community also came from the way he was raised. His parents sent him to Colonel White, a historically significant school that was demolished in 2008.
“I got the sense growing up that they were committed to the idea of public schools. I think they had an old fashioned idea of the civic virtue of the public schools, which is something we’ve passed on to our kids.”
SITE VISITS
“I usually wake up at 7:30. Probably stay in bed a little later than I should, but I’m up and eating breakfast by 8:15. I make coffee and start responding to emails.”
The Sauers’ elder daughter, a dancer, is away at Dennison College, while Eleanor studies visual arts and piano at Stivers School for the Arts.
“Kid stuff is limited, because she’s a teenager. I pat her on the head and tell her to have a good day. Meredith drives her before going to work at One Lincoln Park.
“Usually I’ll have a meeting at 9ish somewhere downtown. Because I work out of my house, most of my meetings are on-site. It’ll be at a building or a house.
“Either it’s pre-planning and I’m taking measurements, or talking to the client about how to lay a room out. If it’s during construction, I’m there in an informal role to deal with some issue that came up. A typical one might be some existing condition that caused an adjustment in the design plan. I have to talk to the contractors and figure out what to do.”
He is currently working on the renovation of the Dietz Block Building on Wayne Ave., where Good Hands Bread Co will be opening a new storefront. He heads over to have a conversation with the owners of the building about whether the wall of the restroom should be built at an angle to have the appearance of taking up less space.
Dietzy, an adopted cat found during construction weaves in and out of Sauer’s legs while he contemplates the frame-out of the walls. He sneezes.
“I’m allergic,” he shrugs.
CREATING SPACE
Back in the home office he designs floorpans on his computer. He is currently working on a renovation of a downtown restaurant. Autocad is the program he has used for the 25 years he’s been in practice.
Credit: Hannah Kasper
Credit: Hannah Kasper
“When I came out of grad school we were using Autocad with a lot of 2-dimensional traditional drafting in the computer. Since then most firms are using what is called building information modeling. You are drawing a line that has a thickness to it and has materials laid out — cladding, framing, insulation, gypsum board — all represented by drawing a line.
There’s also a program called SketchUp. It’s a 3D modeling program used for presentations.“
He calls up a house he’s working on in Yellow Springs, spinning the build around in 3D rendered space.
A LIVABLE CITY
He works until around 4 o’clock before heading to City Hall for a meeting of the Plan Board, the volunteer land use planning commission for the city of Dayton.
“We look at zoning — if you want to combine two parcels together, if you want to put an addition on your house and run your doctor’s office out of it in a residential district. There are a lot of neighborhood plans that come through us and we review those and approve them. There will be a public hearing so people can give feedback. It’s cool, it’s the community representation board of the city.”
Sauer is passionate about creating a more residentially-friendly city, and advocates for the removal or streamlining of US35, which when constructed cut through established neighborhoods. He is planning engagement around the topic with historian Andrew Walsh of Dayton Vistas.
Credit: Hannah Kasper
Credit: Hannah Kasper
“It’s a bit quixotic, why are we even devoting time to it? But a lot of cities have done it. I’m really passionate about the idea that Dayton needs to have quality of life improvements. When people love a place, that’s really all you need. One big black eye for the city is highways that have demolished a lot of potentially productive city real estate.”
For the upcoming NATO meetings that will close off a swath of downtown Dayton businesses, Sauer suggests a single day where pedestrians can experience a car-free walking zone.
He is also on the board of the Dayton Society of Artists.
“I’m the properties committee. I got typecast. They wouldn’t let me be the curator of exhibitions.”
After meetings he might attend a get together for his book group, the Urban Book Book Group Dayton, which focuses on books about cities, public policy, and Dayton.
Then it’s home for dinner, hopefully together as a family.
“It’s embarrassing how frequently that gets blown up. I try to do the dishes. The dog gets a treat at 8:00 every night. We watch BBC mysteries and that’s it.”
A quiet ending to the day for Dayton’s unspoken celebrity architect.
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