The historic Davis-Linden Building on Linden Avenue in East Dayton has housed a number of industrial producers since the late 1800s, including the Davis Sewing Machine Company and Huffy Bicycle.
Now, it has been reimagined as a creative, commerce space known as C2, which is home to more than 85 creative and commercial tenants.
Gery Deer, publicist for the organization, said the new initiative is tied to the history of the building.
"The whole idea is that it is still in use for the same things that it was in use for before, it's just in a little different of a direction," Deer said.
"You think about what it took to do things like the old sewing machine factories, the old bicycle factories, anything that they produced here took a lot more space than what it does now to do the same job."
Musician and artist Michael J. Bashaw, who has been at the Davis-Linden Building for 45 years, said production businesses continued to occupy the building, even during his earlier years on Linden Avenue.
Bashaw said the building is in better shape than it's been in decades.
"And the building is more occupied than it has been in my memory," he said. "Back in the day, there were machine shops and pattern makers and carpenters, and now there's a lot more diverse occupants in the building."
The building’s current owner Matthew Dieringer took over the 115,000 square-foot facility 10 years ago with a vision of revitalization that preserved the building’s history.
“We like just the wear and the tear where machines have sat, where people kind of refinished some of their floors, pulling out bicycle spokes and parts and pieces that were once part of products being manufactured here," he said.
He said his team invested over $500,000 dollars to fix years of neglect, especially with the building’s electric and heating system.
"At one point, tenants were allowed to just run their own electric and kind of modify the spaces how [they saw] fit, which created problems with the overhead suppression system, heating system with the main boiler," Dieringer said.
Dieringer said he installed new digital access panels for security, but he made sure to keep much of the historic infrastructure.
"Still a ways to go," he said. "I think — the original boiler was a coal-fired boiler so I don't know exactly how old they are, but [we made] a lot of infrastructure changes to just bring the building to where it operates a little bit more smoothly."
Deer said the C2 Initiative sets itself apart from other local innovative hubs through its adaptability and room to grow with collaboration between its tenants.
"Here they find not just a home for what they're doing, but down the hall there's the typewriter shop, over there there's a photographer. Over there, there's an electrical company, I mean, who knows what it's gonna be next," he said.
"And you have all these people under one roof and so they can collaborate in a way that you can't do when we separate business from creativity."
Dieringer and his team will host a C2 Market on Sept. 20 and 21 to promote the work their tenants are producing.
"Just a chance for both the tenants who live in the building to get to know each other better, along with a chance for the public to come in and see a part of the building and see our tenants and kind of start to get a feel for who we are and what we do here," said Rebecca Brumfield, the operations manager for the site.
Twelve glass artists, wood crafters, photographers and more will line the halls and open doors to their studios from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days.
"It's completely free to enter, the only costs involved are if you decide to buy something from one of our tenants," Brumfield said.
Some vendors will attend both days in order to allow visitors to shop and ask questions about their craft throughout the weekend.
Woodworker Scott Segalewitz and his wife, glass artist Caryl, will be selling both individual pieces and collaborative work.
Segalewitz said he hopes more people will attend to support local artists but also experience the history of the Davis-Linden Building.
"A lot of people don't know about this building or have never been inside, come check out the building," he said. "There will be some really cool artwork here, some new things to see."
Bashaw will also be at the C2 Market with his wife, Sandy, playing music and selling her book "Sight Unseen: Emma's House." Bashaw himself is better known for his work designing the Dayton Library Peace Prize and his musical, sound sculptures.
"My grandfather had a business here back in the 1950s and so when I was a kid he'd bring me over here so I was aware of the building and I was looking to move from a studio I was in, somewhere else where I could do more large-scale sculpture work," he said. "So sure enough a space was available up here, at least part or half of it, and so I grabbed it. The rest is history."
Organizers ask that visitors park at 15 and 115 Davis Avenue during the event to allow tenants space in the main parking lot for loading and unloading purposes.
Deer said this market is only the beginning of an evolving effort to promote local creatives and commerce and they hope more of the Dayton community will get involved over time.
He said as C2 evolves, he hopes everyone will feel more a part of it.
"So they really are members of an initiative of something that's really got a bigger picture than just this building, that we could recreate this somewhere else," he said. "And I think our location has a little to do with that as well. This is where you start things like that."
More information on the building and its vendors can be found at davislindenbuilding.com.
