By Larson McDonagh
Dayton, Ohio, “doesn’t necessarily have a parking problem,” said content creator Anne Kane. “We have a parking perception problem.”
Correcting this misperception is the guiding force behind “Anne’s Spot,” Kane’s new weekly column in the Dayton Daily News, highlighting various attractions in downtown Dayton. For this reason, Kane takes care to tell readers where to park when visiting featured locations, helping to remove that potential hurdle for potential visitors to the city’s urban core.
Overcoming the ‘primary barrier’
After posting TikToks and Instagram Reels about Dayton, Kane began writing for the local newspaper this past December to share her passion for area businesses that give the city its sparkle. From craft cocktails to boutiques and a family-owned grocery store, Dayton has something for everyone, Kane believes.
However, other locals don’t always share Kane’s love for the up-and-coming city. Their hesitation to visit downtown Dayton, she said, often stems from misplaced concerns about parking.
“I think that parking is the number one thing that keeps someone from visiting a place that they want to go, and I don’t think that that should be the case,” Kane said. “When you’re thinking of a place that you want to go, parking should be…a side item, not the primary barrier.”
This belief is what motivated Kane to begin writing “Anne’s Spot.” In her lifestyle column, Kane not only highlights the different amenities offered in downtown Dayton but also informs readers where to park once they get there.
“I want more people to feel comfortable parking,” Kane said. “Whatever I can do to make the people feel comfortable to park their car and go to a local business downtown, I’ll do it,” she said. “I have the belief that no matter where you live, you should love it. There’s something to love about everywhere you live.”
Through “Anne’s Spot” and her multiple platforms, Kane works hard to shed light on the small businesses that don’t always have the resources to advertise.
Most downtown businesses have “small marketing budgets,” Kane said. “They’re not really able to reach out to that larger demographic and get in new customers.”
Past versus present
Kane believes the people of Dayton assume the downtown activities and attractions aren’t worth exploring because they aren‘t aware of how much the downtown area has changed since it fell on hard times several decades ago.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Dayton grew rapidly as an industrial center, attracting workers and economic activity downtown, said Andrew Walsh, author of the 2018 book “Lost Dayton, Ohio” and a research librarian at Sinclair Community College in Dayton. By the 1970s, the city’s downtown had undergone a process of deindustrialization, as urban renewal projects replaced ground-floor retail and residential neighborhoods with malls, stadiums, and a highway. “All of these projects had the effect of hollowing out and disconnecting downtown,” Walsh said.
“There were still plenty of downtown office workers in the 1990s through the early 2000s, but not a whole lot else,” Walsh said. “There weren’t many downtown residents, the remaining retail was beginning to close and shift entirely to the suburbs, and downtown was considered a place that shut down at 5 p.m.”
However, that trend has been changing during the past 15 years, as investment in downtown Dayton has returned. Since 2010, more than $1.5 billion of public and private funding has been invested in the city’s urban core, according to the website of the Downtown Dayton Partnership, a nonprofit organization formed to improve and promote the city’s central business district.
Education helps
Today, negative attitudes about parking in downtown Dayton tend to come from residents visiting the urban center, rather than downtown residents themselves, said Tony Kroeger, the planning division manager for the city of Dayton. Residents who live downtown are less likely to say there’s a parking problem.
Kroeger believes “Anne’s Spot” is a great way to combat that divide. “Education is a nice thing, particularly for those who have parking as their primary barrier to coming downtown,” he said.
Although visitors to downtown may not always be able to park directly in front of their destination, Dayton has plenty of on-street parking, Kroeger said.
All told, downtown Dayton has 1,165 single-space metered parking spaces and 8 recently installed multi-space parking meters, said David Escobar, a city engineer with Dayton’s Department of Public Works. Parking is free on weekdays after 6 p.m. and throughout the weekend.
Amenities matter
Planning ahead can help to alleviate concerns people might have about parking when coming downtown, Kroeger said. “I know I’m a planner by trade, but I have that [parking] figured out before I get there,” he said. “I know where I’m going to park. Sometimes you’ve got to put a little thought into it.”
However, the amenities are what draw people, no matter the parking situation, Kroeger acknowledged. For example, the home stadium of the city’s minor league baseball team, the Dayton Dragons, is located downtown. The team “has sold out every game that’s ever been played there,” he said. “We didn’t build a single parking space to go along with that minor league baseball stadium. People figure [parking] out because they want to go to a baseball game.”
Although important, parking is not the most critical factor in determining whether people want to go downtown, Kroeger noted. Nobody visits downtown Dayton “because the parking is awesome,” he said. “People are going to come downtown because there’s awesome places to go.”
Larson McDonagh is a freelance environmental journalist based in Shoreline, Washington. They can be reached at [email protected].
