Demolition underway of a garage that was "slowly falling into the back of the Victoria Theatre."
That's how Dayton Live President and CEO Gabriel van Aalst described the Ohmer Garage in downtown Dayton.
Add to that substantial damage to the historic theater from trapped water. WYSO’s Jerry Kenney spoke with van Aalst about the threat, and how removal of the garage will lead to the growth of Dayton Live’s downtown campus.
This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Gabriel van Aalst: So the short version of the story is — especially the stage area and the dressing rooms which are below the stage in the Victoria Theatre — we're seeing significant damage from water damage. When it would rain, because the building was leaning into the Victoria, water would get trapped between the garage and our building and it has nowhere to go and the only place for it to go is into the Victoria Theatre.
We are currently in a $20 million capital campaign unrelated to this project where we wanted to invest $20 million into maintaining and restoring the properties that Dayton Live owns and manages, which is the Schuster Center, the Arts Garage, the Arts Annex, and of course the Victoria Theatre, as well as the Metropolitan Arts Center, the MAC (Metropolitan Arts Center) building, next to us.
And as part of that campaign, we actually redid all the dressing rooms a couple of years ago, as one of the earliest pieces of that campaign's work to restore our buildings, which was offsetting a lot of this damage.
Even so, we're already seeing that encroach again. And it's very unscientific, but there are boards at the back of the stage that you can unscrew, and we have a pretty substantial moisture remediation system back there. If you imagine those bags that you put in your basement, the crystals that collect the moisture and then you replace them, it's a very sophisticated version of that, but also probably exactly that. And we have to do that regularly just to offset the potential of more damage happening that we don't — having just reinvested into those dressing rooms and the stage on the Victoria — we don't want to have to do it again in another couple of years. We saw a large amount of damage, and we've been mitigating against that since we repaired it.
Where we are at now, whilst it's not an ideal situation, feels like the best outcome as we all see it.
Jerry Kenney: And it looks like next steps after the removal of the garage are yet to be determined. What is the footprint of that garage? Do you have that?
van Aalst: There is what appears to be a house that used to be a music store, and then there is a warehouse on the corner of Jefferson and First that is connected to a mid-century extension essentially. The prior owner owned all three properties. They have all three been donated to the Land Bank, with Dayton Live being the eventual recipients after this remediation work is done.
As a not-for-profit, we don't have endless resources to spare. So whilst we have some concepts of a plan to paraphrase someone else, we didn't want to invest in a full campus master plan until there was a chain of titles that was secure for us. So that has all just come into play.
"To set expectations, this is not a one-to-two-year journey. I keep talking internally this is a 10-year journey, because we want to get it right."
Over the coming year or so, we expect to start to develop a full campus master plan for activation of all those sites. And we look forward to community participation in those plans, and we're going to do a proper study. Once you start looking at the square footage that we're talking about, we all wake up in the night and think, you know, it'd be great to put a deck on the back of my house. This is a more substantial version of that. And we want to do it right and we want to understand what the community needs are and respond to those needs. And I think Dayton Live in particular has such a strong history of serving the community each yea. About 500,000 people come onto our campus in downtown Dayton, and we look forward to expanding that impact.
Nothing to share right now, but if you look at the history of investing in our properties downtown and investing in activity that supports not just our own strengths, but the strengths of our resident companies and the economic impact of downtown, we look forward to continuing that journey over the coming years. But to set expectations, this is not a one-to-two-year journey. I keep talking internally this is a 10-year journey, because we want to get it right.
