As published in the October 1, 2009 Toledo Business Journal
Richard Meyers, AIA
and
Robert Seyfang, FASLA,
Toledo Design Center
downtown Toledo
development
Toledo Business Journal recently interviewed Robert Seyfang, AIA, president / CEO of The Toledo Design Center (TDC), and Richard Meyers, FASLA, governing board chair of TDC. They shared the following thoughts.
Toledo Business Journal: You are both involved with the Toledo Design Center. Who are the members of this organization and what is its purpose?
RM: Our mission is to be a public advocate for design and planning excellence in the community. We continuously look for opportunities to influence good design throughout the community.
In addition, we have an educational component and
have been working with the architectural 
program at Bowling Green State
University (BGSU) and the Geography and Planning program at The
University of Toledo (UT). They have been working on joint projects
looking at opportunities for new and different development in the
downtown. They utilize our design studio to meet and work on these
projects. BGSU is petitioning the State and is currently before the
Ohio Board of Regents now to get accreditation for its architectural
program. They will then have a bachelor and a masters program in
architecture. That will be quite an accomplishment for our
area.
RS: We have been very active in assisting BGSU for the last three years to get this accreditation, because northwest Ohio does not have a school of architecture. Ohio State University is the closest architecture school unless you attend the University of Michigan or the University of Detroit. If you don’t go to Michigan, you have to get to at least Columbus to go to the closest architecture school. Miami University, Cincinnati, and Kent State are all further away.
RM: We have a governing board and an advisory committee
(see sidebar). The
Advisory Committee includes people that are interested in what we’re
doing.
We ask our members to contribute to the organization, because we don’t really have any steady source of funding except what we can raise from donations or what fees we might collect when we’re involved in a project like we did this past year with the Connecting the Pieces planning project across the river. This project looked at connecting the Main / Starr Business District, the Roosevelt neighborhood, and International Park with the planned Marina District.
We have had people move up from the advisory committee to the governing board as they’ve gotten more involved in one or more of our projects.
RS: As mentioned earlier, one of the primary components of TDC is the educational aspect. Recently, the University of Michigan has become involved with the organization, and Miami University is doing a travelling studio project this fall in Toledo.
Additionally, architectural firms and planning firms are very competitive. You don’t have a lot of opportunity to just sit back, look at things, analyze, plan, and dream. TDC provides an opportunity to do that, to do things that professional design firms can’t afford to do. This is a luxury. What better people to use than the retired? I was getting ready to retire and others were all hitting the same age group. We’re doing again what we did 30 years ago.
We wanted to get involved with TDC, plus the City needs help. We all have at least 30 years of experience individually. You add that all together and you have hundreds of years of experience that needs to be downloaded.
In my experience, there’s always an intimidation factor with the young people coming into the profession and the principal of a firm. This way, we’re at the same level as the young people. We can act like students again ourselves and be creative with them.
TBJ: The new arena is now opening in downtown Toledo. Can you discuss the Arena Neighborhood Development Initiative (ANDI)?
RM: The County approached the Greater Downtown Business Partnership (GDBP) about the fact that they were making this major public investment in downtown Toledo. They had made a similar investment in developing Fifth Third Field, but they didn’t feel that the development around Fifth Third Field was necessarily as coordinated or as successful as it could have been if there had been more preplanning and more coordinated effort with property owners and other stakeholders in the surrounding area.
So, the County approached the GDBP about conducting that kind of an effort for the arena. We named it ANDI, and we conducted property owner / stakeholder interviews. The TDC took that responsibility, and we wrote down everything that was said about their visions for downtown, their issues with downtown, and what they needed to be successful in conducting their business downtown.
We divided all that information up into different categories – such as transportation and parking, maintenance, design, and safety and security – and then the GDBP formed committees to examine each of those areas and see if we could come up with recommendations for how we could resolve these issues and improve the downtown.
TDC took on the design of the public realm, seeing what we could do to make downtown more attractive and more family friendly. The idea of creating the ANDI video came out of that, seeing how we could best communicate to people what downtown Toledo could be. Not exactly what has to happen, but what could happen if we all work together. It has taken on a life of its own, and we have probably made over 85 presentations to groups as small as seven or eight people and as large as the downtown Rotary with 300 people.
RS: Early on, we didn’t have the person power to pull this all off. We were able to solicit Munger Munger + Associates Architects Inc.; Duket Porter Associates; The Collaborative Inc; SSOE, Inc.; and Poggemeyer Design Group to donate some time on this project. As we were developing ANDI, we came up with places that really needed attention, such as the Madison Building and that whole block of Huron Street. The former Fiberglass Tower needed help along with all the streetscape and specifically the block of Superior Street that’s shut off now between the block of Monroe Street and Jefferson Avenue.
TBJ: What is the purpose of the 3D animation that your organization has developed for downtown Toledo?
RS: The corners are critical in downtown Toledo; two streets are affected by an empty corner, and if we can fill in the corners with significant structures, then the teeth that are still missing in the middle of the block will fill in. If they aren’t, it isn’t so bad.
We assigned each of the five firms an area around the arena that needed attention. We talked about what the possibilities were to see what the firms preferred. They created the computer image design, which was all blended together into the video. We asked them to go out on their own, do their own visioning process, and then come back, and we kind of married the designs.
Because they all used the same software, it wasn’t hard to connect the pieces completed by the different firms.
RM: I repeat, this is just a vision of what might be. One of the firms came up with the idea of a mixed-use building at the corner of Huron Street and Jefferson Avenue, which is a vacant lot now. They came up with a nightclub / entertainment venue with parking underneath and rooftop condominiums and gardens. That’s one idea, but if the owner of that property wants something else, we can take his design and insert it into the video. We can continue to use this as a way of seeing what a design looks like in the context of downtown. We can continue to update it as we new developments take shape.
RS: Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other cities have all done computer imaging of their whole downtowns. We have a good start on that, and we want this effort to grow.
A model of downtown Toledo built by BGSU students
TBJ: Can you discuss the role that Toledo Design Center is playing in development of downtown Toledo?
RM: One of the things that has been guiding our overall effort with GDBP and the partners that make up GDBP – namely The Toledo Design Center, the Downtown Toledo Parking Authority, the Downtown Toledo Improvement District, Inc (DTID), and formerly CitiFest, Inc. – is following the blueprint laid out by the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Planning Programs Turning Around Downtown: Twelve steps to Revitalization. They did a study of over 50 downtowns in the US – ones that were successful and ones that were not successful – to see what they have done and what some common themes were with the successful ones. They came up with these 12 steps to accomplish a successful downtown revitalization.
We started looking at this, and it just blew our minds. We were already doing a lot of the first six steps. The seventh step is to create an entertainment district. So, we were actively engaged in six of the first seven steps without really realizing it. The sixth step is to create a Catalytic Downtown Development Authority, which was one piece that we weren’t doing but is now in process.
GDBP is going to create a Downtown Development Corporation. It will be a private, not-for-profit organization actively engaged in helping development happen downtown. We want to partner with the City and the County, but we want it to be primarily a private sector initiative.
We have a committee, chaired by Mark V’Soske of the Toledo Regional Chamber of Commerce working on this. It’s a development corporation committee of GDBP, and we’re meeting on a regular basis to put together the tools that we need to actually create this organization.
The 12 steps are what we’re following. The Brookings Institution not only recommends the steps but in what order they should happen. The twelfth step is the return of office buildings and office workers through the recreation of a strong office market. Offices used to be the main aspect of a downtown, but now you need housing, retail, entertainment, and other things before a strong office market remerges.
TBJ: Why is development of downtown Toledo important, and what impact will this have on regional development?
RM: Toledo’s downtown is really the downtown for all of northwest Ohio. There isn’t anything like what our downtown has to offer. We have three community-wide attractions that are within a block of each other: Fifth Third Field, the SeaGate Convention Centre, and the new multi-purpose arena. It’s going to bring over a million people downtown, many who haven’t been downtown in years. We now have 12 months a year of activity plus the convention center and the seasonal Fifth Third Field. Now we can attract more convention visitors because we have these other attractions.
Dave Nolan, the new president of the Greater Toledo Convention & Visitor’s Bureau, has only been here a few months, and he’s already one of the biggest cheerleaders you can find for downtown. He’s going to be a great asset to downtown Toledo and our entire community.
You have the very successful Mud Hens organization, the Walleye, and the Bullfrogs, which create a fantastic situation. SMG is responsible for scheduling the arena and convention center. These partnerships are really strong and so integrated. It’s an unusual opportunity compared to other cities. We don’t know of another city of our size that has three major regional attractions within a block of each other.
This is why we want to turn the block of Superior Street, between Monroe Street and Jefferson Street, into a primarily pedestrian street and create a space that’s particularly alive in the summertime but could also include such attractions as an ice-skating rink and other reasons to bring people downtown in the wintertime.
TBJ: With the current economic conditions, can downtown development advance?
RS: There’s no better time to plan than when things are slow, and we’re doing that. As the economy rebounds and comes up, we are creating a plan to follow. This puts us in a very good position, especially if people are thinking about relocating downtown – residentially or commercially. If they know that they’re fitting into an area that is planned, they are much more likely to come. We have a pretty good idea where downtown Toledo is going to be in five years. And I think we’re taking advantage of the current situation.
I also think this is a great time to market, and that’s not being done. We need to market downtown Toledo at this time. You can’t find any commercial space in the city of Toledo – other than maybe on Lagrange Street or one of the closer in neighborhoods – where you can get the bang for your buck square footage and rent wise. What an opportunity to incubate!
A lot of people that are out of work are very creative. If they know they can come downtown and that there is a network of support – including the Toledo Regional Chamber of Commerce with its small business group that can assist them – their chances of success are much better than they are other places. We need to be marketing, and it just isn’t happening.
RM: A wonderful confluence of change is also in the offing with a change in the City administration. We’re going to have a new mayor – we don’t know who it’s going to be – and we’re working hard to outline what our three to five year plan is as separate organizations and as the GDBP. We’re going to sit down with both of the final mayoral candidates – Keith Wilkowski and Mike Bell – and talk about our plans for the future of the downtown. I think we will be able to convince them to become supportive and to become partners with us in our efforts to revitalize downtown; we’re looking forward to that opportunity and to what that might bring.
There are certainly all kinds of indications that the economy is starting to come back. We want to be ready to take advantage of that and help existing property owners that have businesses and vacant properties downtown. And we want to make sure we create a family-friendly environment, like what exists with Fifth Third Field. That’s going to continue to be the focus of the multi-purpose arena, and we want that to be the focus of the rest of the downtown and the entertainment district as well.
TBJ: Are there any other issues you would like to discuss?
RM: We have made presentations to the Ohio Department of Development (ODOD) and presented the ANDI vision to them. We’re on their radar now in terms of tax credit possibilities, and we’re going to stay in contact with them. We went down to Columbus hoping to access some stimulus money to do some of the streetscape improvements, but we were told that was not the type of project that stimulus funds could be used for.
We’re going to sponsor a session, sometime this fall, to try to educate people and make them aware of the existing State and Federal programs that are available. Early next year there’s an opportunity for a round of applications for some of those New Market Tax Credits for some of the projects people are considering.
We’re always going to have an educational component to what we do, either with the universities or with the property owners / stakeholders of downtown Toledo.
RS: Another thing is that we have a 2002 master plan for downtown Toledo, adopted by City Council. We want that to be on their desk 24 hours a day. TDC is going to be the stewards of that master plan, update it, make the presentation to City Council in conjunction with the Toledo-Lucas County Planning Commission, and take on that responsibility.
RM: The Master Plan should be a working tool. So often these studies happen and get a lot of publicity, and then they go on a shelf and aren’t actively used as a blueprint for moving things along. They’re not meant to be static, but they are meant to be part of what helps a successful downtown and development happen in a coordinated way.
RS: In 2002, there wasn’t an arena. So that’s a major change and impact on downtown that needs to be addressed in the Master Plan update.
RM: We’re planning to meet with members of the planning commission staff to talk about what kind of process we want to engage in to update the master plan. Downtown Toledo Inc (DTI) originally created the master plan. DTI has kind of morphed into the GDBP; GDBP, the Toledo Design Center, and the Downtown Toledo Parking Authority, and the Downtown Toledo Improvement District came out of DTI and we should all be thankful for the hard work the DTI board and staff accomplished for us in the past as part of that organizational effort.
We don’t have the corporate leadership in this community that we’ve had in the past when One SeaGate was built and much of the riverfront was developed. And now our strength is really with the smaller businesses, and the variety of businesses that we have in the downtown. In the future, our strength is going to be in our diversity and keeping from being so dependent on a handful of corporations that could go away.
GDBP has to replace that corporate leadership, but we want it to be more of an inclusive process that engages the people that actually have an investment in the downtown so they have a say in what happens. Our success is tied to their success and theirs to ours.
Finally, we need a mode of free public transportation downtown, which we have discussed with TARTA. We need some kind of vehicle where you can park your car across the river in International Park, have dinner there, and either take the ferry across to an event or get on a vehicle with a regular route that connects all the major entertainment venues, including the Warehouse District, the Uptown District, North Toledo, and East Toledo and the Marina District.
We don’t want to suck the life out of all these other successful areas. We want this plan to make it possible for people to park once and experience all of what these different places have to offer. That has to be part of our vision and mission for making the downtown successful and making the other entertainment areas around the downtown continue to be successful and grow.