Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2008 > April > 23
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Is the region ever going to love its river?
Talk about perfect timing.
On Monday, April 28, the University of Dayton is sponsoring a River Summit at College Park Center.
On April 22, The New York Times did a big take-out on how Oklahoma City has turned the Oklahoma River — once a “ditch” that had to be mowed — into a destination.
The peg for the story was partly that canoeists and kayakers were in town trying to qualify for the U.S. Olympic team.
UD and the Miami Conservancy District have lined up a gaggle of presenters to talk about riverfront development and what it can do for the region — from Sidney to Fairfield. UD, of course, is focused, in part, on this effort because it wants to extend its campus to the river’s edge.
Judging from The Times story, Oklahoma City has done a lot right. Once known for football and rodeo, it’s now a hot spot for water sports.
The like and similars between Dayton and OKC are striking, including how much effort was put into preventing floods — efforts that ultimately drove people away from a natural natural resource.
Here’s a Q&A that Reporter Steve Bennish and I did in 2006 with Five Rivers Metro Parks’ Greg Brumitt and and the conservancy’s Dusty Hall, both of whom are outdoor enthusiasts and passionate advocates for the Great Miami’s economic development potential.
Q What are we missing about Dayton’s rivers?
Brumitt: Water has been the basis for urban development for centuries around the world. Water is magic. It pulls people to places.
Look around - from Paris to San Francisco to Chattanooga to Dayton. Water has been a focus of the development of cities.
Hall: Dayton and the region’s cities are along the river because of the river. A sense of interdependence between the river and the cities has been lost. That probably happened from the 1913 flood forward.
The remarkable environmental comeback of the rivers also is not widely known and appreciated.
Q Does the lack of appreciation have to do with the fact that many people don’t have access to, or use, the river?
Brumitt: You can’t have a relationship with something you don’t use. But don’t misuderstand: There are lots of enthusiasts who are using the river.
Hall: The levees protect people and property from flooding, but there’s no question that they also pushed people away. It’s going to require a deliberate effort to get them back. But as we get people back, they’re providing the energy to bring others.
In the last two weeks, I’ve had complaints about powered watercraft users, fishermen and jet skiers trying to share the same section of the river. Each has a sense of ownership that is so passionate that they want the others out. What a great problem!
Q What’s possible?
Hall: The hearts of our downtowns are not river-focused or river-centric today. In our watershed - from Piqua to Hamilton - the tradition has not been to front major development on the river.
Type “riverfront development” on your search engine and you’ll see the massive number of cities that are turning back to their rivers for economic development.
Look at San Antonio. A portion of the San Antonio River is essentially a concrete canal that gets drained once a year to clean out the mud. But the river walk along that canal pumps nearly $1 billion a year into the San Antonio economy.
That community doesn’t have nearly the river assets that we have, but it has an incredibly thriving riverfront life that creates vitality for their city.
If the leadership in the region’s cities begin to understand the value of the rivers as a development asset, you have the opportunity to present something unique.
What area has 70 miles of cities that have great riverfront development potential with lots of recreation-based connections between them?
Brumitt: Twenty or 25 years ago, Chattanooga was an old steel town and not doing very well. Now it has focused development on both sides of the river downtown. It’s built an aquarium and a new park focused on outdoor recreation activities like bouldering and climbing. The art museum has expanded. It has 10 miles of recreation trails, and they’re so proud.
We have 60 miles of trails just within Montgomery County. Chattanooga has a program not unlike Five Rivers Outdoors called Outdoor Chattanooga, and it just merged with the city’s parks and rec department. Their job is not only to build new facilities, but to promote Chattanooga as an outdoor destination.
There are places we can look to that are doing great things with rivers.
Hall: You have Sidney and Piqua to the north, and Hamilton to the south. All the river cities could be working together to create amenities that are complementary - with greenways and blueways connecting them.
This certainly would be good for older core cities that, at times, have been out-competed by the suburbs.
It begs the question: What do the core cities have that the suburbs don’t?
It’s the river.
Brumitt: Most other regions don’t have a really well-defined, connected network of recreation trails. When you put that well-defined network of trails along rivers, and when you also have large parks on those corridors, you have an impressive greenway-blueway system.
Look at the Katy Trail, which extends about 200 miles out from St. Louis along the Missouri River. Initially everyone along the trail was against the trail. But today little towns like Augusta and Hermann have wine festivals, and you can bed and breakfast your way for miles out from St. Louis.
Given the network we have, I’m surprised that we haven’t developed more businesses along the trails. It will take focus, but it can happen.
Hall: I predict that within a few years there will be an active canoe and kayak livery on the Great Miami or the Mad River that serves the downtown Dayton area and the proposed whitewater park.
The fact that groundwater actually flows into the surface water during the driest periods of the year means that we will have water here when practically nobody else in the country does.
In conversations about the whitewater park, the designers were very excited that we would have flow here when other parks across the country are shut down.
Brumitt: There is a very large paddling community here that the whitewater industry pays a lot of attention to. The kayaking community is acknowledged in the industry to be one of the largest in the Midwest.
Five Rivers Outdoors, just this year, has taught about 400 people how to kayak. When we did our indoor kayaking classes at the downtown YMCA this year, more than half the people were over 50. We had 25-year-olds, and we had 70-year-olds.
Hall: You can get kayaks into consumers hands for $300. A few years ago the pace of registration of hand-held watercraft was outpacing all other boats combined.
There is a whole new generation of water enthusiasts. They’re looking for places to recreate. The whitewater park in South Bend now has to limit the number of people who can go in on any given day. They quit talking about their park because they don’t want any more people to come.
You can stimulate economic development by having a very active recreational community. People are attracted to places where there are things to do.
Q Is there a flaw in the plan that we only have five or six good months of weather a year?
Brumitt: To the core enthusiasts, kayaking is year-round. Many times the season is better in the winter because there’s more water.
Hall: Most paddlers will enjoy an eight- or nine-month season. Baseball, football and other sports seasons are usually six months or less. But the economic spin-offs can be year-round.
Q What’s the time frame for the whitewater park?
Brumitt: We’re going to see most of the studies come in in September. We’ll have to develop more detailed designs and cost estimates. We hope that we can do this sooner rather than later.
Hall: The project has a lot of momentum. People are talking about it. People haven’t been excited about something like this since baseball.
Q Can you paint a word picture of Dayton’s riverfront in 2015?
Brumitt: The whitewater park is the first initiative. It’s about making the river accessible again.
If we also can connect to other MetroParks, and to other communities that are building venues, and out to Wright State and to UD, you can see how the greenways and blueways come together.
If we build on what we are already doing by adding even more access points, rest stops, cafes and even overnight camping areas, the trail of amenities add up to a destination. We should be shooting for being a premier recreation site.
Outdoor recreation is beneficial in of itself, but how we develop the rivers for users can change how people think about Dayton.
Hall: I can see a lunch-time migration of downtown workers to River-Scape on a scale 10 times greater than today - at venues from the confluence of the Mad River all the way around on the river to Carillon Park.
I hope there will be new access to the river from the University of Dayton’s Campus West. Just a little farther downstream, you’ve got Carillon Park. A little bit upstream, there’s Wright-Dunbar, the Dayton Art Institute. Who has such a fantastic, eclectic array of opportunities?
I see people kayaking at the whitewater park, and boaters playing in the river, and, for everyone of them, you’ve got 7 to 10 people watching and eating lunch. I picture that whole area behind the YMCA thick with kayaks because the safety hazards associated with the low dams have been eliminated.
You can see the area alive with waterrelated activities, bikers and walkers.
Q What have you learned about promotion and marketing?
Hall: There’s an experiential learning to marketing. Get people on the river, on the trails - let them experience what others are experiencing. Then they become the biggest advocates.
There’s nothing better than giving people an experience that they can talk about. People are yearning for something that gives a positive vision for the future.
We should be planning for more and more conflicts in use. People are going to bumping into each other, their paddles are going to be clanging against each other, and fishermen are going to be angry because the boaters are making too much noise, and the water skiers are going to be mad because the kayakers have crowded them out.
What a delightful thing that will be.
E-mail Brumitt at: gbrumitt@metroparks.org.
E-mail Hall at: dhall@miamiconservancy.org.
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Antioch still making the NYT
The April 20th New York Times dissected Antioch College’s demise.
It’s a succinct, interesting history, but if you’ve followed the controversy, you won’t learn much that you didn’t already know. (It was a bit surprising to find out that the college cafeteria serves Brussels sprouts. Only at Antioch.)
This year’s graduation is Saturday, April 26, and that could be eventful. There’s also talk of a few faculty offering classes in their homes next fall.
Plenty of people are angry about the closing, but one thing that’s glossed over is that this temporary coma — or death, if that’s what it comes to — had a long onset. This author, a former Antioch student, says the diagnosis could have been made 35 years ago.
For all the university’s commitment to radical change, it moved awfully slowly when its own existence was at stake.
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