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Dayton Arcade – ULI Americas Awards for Excellence Winner
May 12, 2025
Photo By SARAH BABCOCK PHOTOGRAPHY
Storefronts were replaced with historically inspired replacement windows and doors with energy-saving insulated glass. Clear glass was utilized to be historically appropriate and allows the new life of the restaurants, art galleries, and businesses to be seen from the city sidewalk. During the 1970’s a dark brick street front was constructed at the Ludlow Building and covered the entire first-floor façade. This covering was removed, and the original storefront and rusticated stone masonry was restored to its original grandeur. Much of the masonry was damaged and required masonry patching and replacement.
Photo By SANDVICK ARCHITECTS
This 3-deminsional view of the Dayton Arcade demonstrates the layering of uses of this dynamic mixed-use development. This layering creates synergies between the uses where the more public uses of retail and restaurants establish the street front base of the project. Offices and housing are then stacked above. At the heart of the historic block is the magnificent domed skylit Rotunda, the venue for many civic gatherings. The midblock concourse of the North Arcade, with the hotel above, creates a grand promenade to access the Rotunda from the street. Every piece of this mixed-use project works in concert to create this hub of urban activity.
Location: Dayton, Ohio
Developers: Cross Street Partners; McCormack Baron Salazar; The Model Group; Structural Technologies
Designers: Sandvick Architects; Moda4 Design + Architecture
Site Size: 2.3 acres
Shuttered after almost 30 years, the Dayton Arcade’s redevelopment brings new life and investment into downtown Dayton. This large-scale project, coined as “the most transformational project in America” by leading urbanist Bruce Katz, with over 500,000 SF over nine buildings and encompassing almost a full city block, reclaims its original identity as a mixed-use complex.
The Dayton Arcade originally opened in 1904 with a combination of retail, offices, and apartments that created a City Within A City. Centered on a public market in its glass-domed Rotunda, the complex thrived in the first half of the 20th century. Despite consistent efforts to maintain the Arcade’s status as an urban hub, including a major renovation in 1980 to create an indoor mall, the complex fell victim to broader trends impacting downtown Dayton and was vacant by 1990.
Photo By SHAGARI GERALD PHOTOGRAPHY
Dayton Arcade’s rotunda hosts over 75 events a year, including a variety of weddings, galas, conferences, and arts-related community events.
Following several failed attempts to revitalize the Arcade, by 2014 the City of Dayton was prepared to condemn and demolish the complex. However, they first created a task force to study options and costs for demolition as well as its potential redevelopment, which determined that redevelopment was feasible, and demolition would cost roughly $10 million. The City decided that the public would be better served by investing in redevelopment over demolition and pivoted to become a key political and financial supporter of the Arcade complex.
Local leaders recruited a team to execute the development, which secured over 25 sources of funds totaling $100 million, including a combination of tax credits, grants, and support from the University of Dayton, which also signed on as an anchor tenant.
The rejuvenation of the Dayton Arcade is endowed with an urban building configuration that had historically functioned as the heart of the city. The reinstatement of the grand rotunda space as the central hub of the development was facilitated with the cross-connection of the mid-block interior street (concourse) of the North Arcade. The traditional urban configuration of housing and offices over storefronts has been reinstated to bring new life to the street. The juxtaposition of the Arcade Innovation Hub east of the rotunda creates synergies between the two project components, as the Hub often utilizes the rotunda space for events, and the rotunda space is animated by the Hub activities on the second and third floors.
Photo By JORDAN FRESHOUR
Streets that were barren a decade ago have come to life. Art gallery openings, restaurant specials, and community-centered events fill the sidewalks with pedestrians enjoying the revitalized streetscape and lighting.
The design team’s adaptive reuse challenge was to convert former office space to residential apartments; transform a five-and-dime store into the Innovation Hub; turn a retail and apartment arcade into a hotel; and restore a former short-lived shopping mall atrium and historical market into a grand event venue while complying with building code.
The transformation of this adaptively reused downtown block was an opportunity to restore the detailed historic architecture and introduce fresh new contemporary details that create aesthetic synergies between the two expressions.
There is a 110-unit LIHTC and market rate residential component for artists and creative entrepreneurs, a shared commercial kitchen, multiple event spaces, restaurants, retail, and a 93-room hotel. The anchor tenant, Arcade Innovation Hub, is a 95,000 SF joint venture between the University of Dayton and the Entrepreneurs Center that houses hundreds of faculty, staff, and students, as well as classroom space for top-ranked Sinclair College.
Photo By TOM GILLIAM PHOTOGRAPHY
The Arcade’s Third Street and Gibbons Annex Buildings were built in 1902 as part of the original Arcade development. The historic Third Street Building façade, designed by Frank Mills Andrews in the Flemish guildhall style, is one of the most recognizable buildings in the city of Dayton. Its long-standing retail marketplace was shuttered in 1990 with the rest of the development. Long seen as the last piece of the Dayton Arcade puzzle, the completion of this second phase allows the Arcade to serve as the retail hub and pedestrian connector in the center of downtown Dayton once again.
The arts continue to be a focus with tenants Culture Works, a funding, advocacy, and service organization, and The Contemporary Dayton, a non-profit arts organization. Additional businesses are iHeart Media Dayton, Better Business Bureau, 937 Payroll, and others. The complex has driven over $135M in investment to a formerly blighted downtown block. The Arcade Innovation Hub serves to attract and retain talent in the region and contributes to Dayton’s thriving startup ecosystem.
Despite its turbulent history and facing numerous challenges related to the Covid-19 pandemic, the redeveloped Dayton Arcade opened in 2021 as a transformational project that succeeded despite facing incredible odds.