Some ideas for improvements included adding lighting, comfortable seating, colorful banners, signage, public art, spaces where people can bring their dogs, a beer garden, pop-up breweries or bars and games and play areas.
Courthouse Square in its current condition and configuration is not working, said Chris Kershner, president and CEO of the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce.
“There’s security issues, there’s vagrancy issues, there’s not the vibrancy that we know we’d like to have in the downtown,” he said. “We don’t have any preconceived notion of what we want it to be, we just know this isn’t working and we want to fix it and we want to make it better.”
The Downtown Dayton Partnership was one of only two groups across the country that was awarded a grant from the Project for Public Spaces, which will be used to help reimagine Courthouse Square.
The $75,000 grant will help with “placemaking” efforts at the property, and the Project for Public Spaces team also will be providing technical assistance, said Sandy Gudorf, president of the Downtown Dayton Partnership.
Last year, the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Dayton Partnership created a stakeholder committee to explore how to make Courthouse Square a community asset once again.
The public space, located on Main Street between Third and Second Streets, was created in the 1970s and was a highly acclaimed project at the time.
However, over the years the property deteriorated and lost much of its luster.
Today, the square is empty or nearly empty much of the time, even though it occasionally hosts events, festivals and programming.
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Courthouse Square has a stage, a fountain, terrace seating, benches, tables, trees and a plaza. The property is bordered on multiple sides by office buildings and the historic courthouse.
During Tuesday’s workshops, participants broke into small groups to tour various sections of the square and come up with ideas for improvements.
Some of the concepts they shared included fixing the fountain and adding a statue, installing digital billboards or signage and creating connections to the Dayton Arcade, which is located just south of the property, across Third Street.
Other proposals included creating places to play games or sports and installing synthetic turf or additional grass areas to give visitors a place to lounge.
Some attendees thought it would be a good idea to create kiosks where people could rent out games or sports equipment.
Some people said they would like to see more food trucks and drinking and dining options, possibly in the ground-floor spaces of the surrounding office buildings.
Some participants said Courthouse Square could host movie nights.
Courthouse Square has one large stage, but it might make more sense to have a handful of smaller stages, said Robert Powell, CEO of Liberty Savings Bank, who took part in one of the workshops.
Powell said his group also thought there are opportunities for programming during the lunchtime hours and after work, especially leading up to the concerts at the Levitt Pavilion Dayton, which is located nearby.
Courthouse Square would benefit from more and better signage, possibly with art elements, so people know what it is, said Stephanie Keinath, vice president of strategic initiatives with the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce.
Keinath said a major objective should be to find ways to keep Courthouse Square activated outside of the traditional workday hours.
Keinath said other cities have public gathering spaces with dedicated dog areas that are popular. She said a dog play area at Courthouse Square could be a hit, and it wouldn’t have to be very big.
Elena Madison, director of projects with the Project for Public Spaces, said said the smart approach with Courthouse Square will be to start with small changes and experiment what works and what doesn’t.
“It seems like you kind of have the ingredients and you just need to start cooking,” she said.
Madison said her organization is going to meet with other stakeholders this week in focus groups to start building a vision for the property.
She said she expects to share some concepts over the summer and “light” implementation of some of those ideas could soon follow.
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