(upbeat music) (dramatic music) - [Dan] At first, there was uncertainty.

Then, the question became, how bad will this get?

As spring rolled into summer, 2020, the answer became apparent.

- It would impact the workforce, the supply chains, the finances, the tenancy.

Every part of this job.

- What was gonna happen?

Were we gonna be shut down?

We started seeing some material issues.

- COVID really affected our supply chain.

The two big ones were the elevators, a lot of the parts were made overseas and then all the appliances.

- We weren't sure if we were gonna get appliances for the residential apartments.

- [Dan] And then, there were work force issues.

Scheduling a massive construction project is a complex undertaking even in the best of times.

One trade comes in, does their job and clears out.

Then, the next trade comes in.

It's carefully orchestrated.

But in 2020, that didn't happen.

Delays came at critical moments.

Two weeks of binge-watching Netflix became known as quarantine.

- It was probably not at the most opportune times as you're trying to wrap something up whether it's your painters or your finishers and all of a sudden, guess what?

They're out for 14 days.

- There were tons of delays because of COVID like somebody got sick on the millwork team and now they can't get the millwork done.

- You gotta be nimble and pivot.

I mean, it's just that simple, if you can't paint then you do something else.

- [Dan] That attitude kept things moving.

As some spaces inched closer to completion, the strings of utility lights were replaced by a different kind of illumination.

(upbeat music) - I think lighting could be one of the most important elements of any project.

When lighting is poorly done, it doesn't set the right tone, the right feel.

It's the way that lighting can make a place alive or feeling a little tired.

It's the color of light that you choose.

It's the way the light casts.

It's the unexpected elements that lighting can bring.

- I loved my lighting design, like, I worked really hard on that.

And then the bids came in and it was too expensive by a lot.

And so it was either we were gonna have to figure out how to make it work with new fixtures or completely lose some of it which I was kind of worried about.

- There was a lot of discussions on lighting.

We're trying to cut budget.

We're trying to still create great impact.

- [Dan] That intersection of cost versus impact is where Amy Laughead makes her living.

Her studio, 37 Volts, is located in Cincinnati.

- After many, many years in the business, I have a lot of different vendor relationships and I'm able to tap into those to assist me to find products and solutions that meet the design criteria and ultimately fall within both the client budget and their design requirements.

Joining the team as one of the last team members to come on board was a bit of a challenge and it was figuring out where the design already was and what the team members already created, being respectful of that design and helping them find the right solutions to reduce cost.

- She has access to some specialty manufacturers that will create light fixtures that are kinda custom but still at a reasonable price.

So, we were able to cut the lighting package drastically.

- There were things that she showed me that I had never seen before, that was really helpful and I'll be able to use that again.

And I felt like she was very respectful of my design which helped.

(upbeat music) - [Dan] A blueprint or a CADD design shows things like walls, windows and stairs.

But how do you show the effect light will have on the design?

- Because light has an intangible quality, we don't really know what it does until we turn a light switch and actually aim or adjust a light, we use software to try to predict what's going to happen.

We use different types of software but in the end, that is really producing what we call a photometric study.

It consists of having a 3D model that we're plugging information into, and as it runs those calculations, logarithms, it helps us predict a picture of what the lighting might look like.

Which helps us make overall decisions and a luminaire recommendation.

- She does all her photometric studies and we look at, okay, this light's gonna cast like this and it's got this kind of spread.

Not only are you trying to not put too many lights in and spend too much money but you're also trying to do it in a way that it's comfortable, inviting but yet special and not just the same old two-by-fours in an acoustic ceiling.

Amy from 37 Volts has been just incredible.

- Lighting can transform the ordinary into the extraordinary and take an extraordinary space and make it a memorable space.

This whole project is about transforming the Arcade and creating new memories.

(upbeat music) - [Dan] Part of that transformation meant going back in time to the original concept.

- We've taken some buildings that were originally residential and we brought them back to residential.

It was interesting, if you look at the size of the spaces that they lived in, they were pretty small.

So, there was a fair amount of bringing some spaces together to meet local codes and our financing requirements and so on and so forth.

But what we had is some great bones, right?

And the bones always start with the windows.

And they have these just spectacular windows and they have great arches and they go down to the floor and you just don't find that anywhere.

and then knowing that the building was a high finished building to begin with.

When I say high finish, it wasn't just a warehouse space, it was plastered ceilings, plastered walls and finished floors.

The original carpenters on there were from Barney and Smith Car Works.

- [Dan] The Barney and Smith Car Works was a Dayton company.

A leading builder of luxury rail cars in 19th century America, their craftsmen were known for their intricate wood carving.

- A lot of the woodwork was Tiger Oak, which is quarter ton oak.

Just nice details, clean, fresh, built-ins, fire places, we were able to re-incorporate some of that back in.

Faux, but aesthetically pleasing.

- [Dan] From the very beginning, food has been an important part of the Arcade experience.

And it will be again.

But COVID is casting a long shadow.

The virus came like a thief in the night and stole the heart and soul of the restaurant industry.

- For me personally, it was just terrible.

For someone to say, hey, guess what?

You're closed now.

I mean, it's very hard to take.

- [Dan] Christian Alvarez and Andy Routson own and operate Crafted and Cured, a completely original Dayton culinary establishment.

- You have to just be resilient, that's the restaurant industry.

If you just sit back and cry in a corner, nothing's working, then you're not gonna make it.

You have to just pick yourself up, do what you gotta do, get it goin' and try to get the business to survive and thankfully, we were able to get to this point.

- [Dan] Getting to this point meant starting over in the Arcade.

- It's the Arcade.

I mean, ever since I was a little kid it's been instilled in me that, the arcade, the arcade, the arcade!

My grandparents went there.

My parents used to work across the street and they said they'd go over there all the time for lunch.

And just every story you ever hear about that Arcade is filled with joy.

- [Dan] Walking through the space revealed a diamond in the rough.

- [Andy] When we first saw it, it was pretty much a blank canvas of concrete, pillars.

- Our original concept and our original design came from MODA4.

We're working with Becca and Jason.

- [Christian] They were very familiar with our brand.

The first time they presented a rough sketch, we pretty much looked at it and said, "Yeah, that's Crafted and Cured.

You guys did your homework.

We did a virtual reality walk-through and that really helped us to see elevations and more texture that's going on in the space and that helped us to get the space closer to an end product.

- The previous location, we were looking at an occupancy of 30.

But we're probably looking someplace around the 100 mark, with patio maybe up to 140.

So, a lot changes with that aspect.

Your inventory, your staff, all the way up to the actual workflow process.

- [Dan] The previous location was designed to maximize interactions with customers.

- And that's the biggest challenge with expanding the capacity.

You wanna still keep all those little things that makes Crafted and Cured unique but still being able to handle that volume.

- [Dan] While Andy and Christian were working out the details, major transformations were taking place in The Hub.

- What we're doing with the Arcade is we're taking 1902 with a 2020 twist.

And the 2020 twist is really the way that we've reused space and incorporated new vertical circulation into different parts of the building.

And one of them was using this light well between the two buildings, the Rotunda and the McCrory, and using it not only for vertical circulation but for natural light distribution.

So, you're bringing light in from the fourth-floor level all the way down to the basement level.

- But still having those brick walls, those exterior walls kind of reminds you like, this was actually between two buildings.

This was not always like this.

- [Christian] We have two bridges that kind of flank the north and south side of the atrium area.

It's how you take a building that one floor doesn't line up with another and you use the bridges to connect floors.

The light well, the connection between the McCrory Building and the Rotunda Building, that was the genius of Dave Williams, something that I could have never conceptualized, but it's almost as dramatic as the Rotunda.

- [Dan] The light well stair lies at the end of Innovation Hall, a long corridor flanked by glass walled offices.

Just as COVID has affected the restaurant industry, it has also altered the business office landscape.

All of a sudden it changed the whole way we look at our buildings.

So, what's the number one thing that's changed during this last year of Zoom and Teams?

Has everybody learned that life in the work world could be a little bit more flexible than it was?

Therefore, impacts the need for space.

What are we selling?

Space and place.

They completely are kind of butting up against each other.

- [Dan] But The Hub has some inherent advantages compared to traditional office space.

- The Hub is a great alternative because it does a couple things; provides you your own private office, allows you to be socially distanced.

Secondly, it provides you short-term commitments.

A typical lease in a commercial deal is five to 10 years.

We're talking a one-year commitment with a 60 day out.

But yet it also allows you to meet people and be around people that you might not have been able to meet before.

So, you have a lot of opportunity for huge flexibility in something that's just a way cool modern space and some great old historic fabric.

(dramatic music) - [Dan] The team was transforming the Arcade.

But the COVID delays had a cumulative effect.

Heading into December, 2020, the project was in a precarious position.

- The pressure was UD was supposed to move in technically at the end of the year and they didn't because the space wasn't done.

- [Dan] And there were even bigger issues.

- All of our funding is based on timelines, associated with tax credits.

We had to have a temporary certificate of occupancy by December 31st, or the project was at risk of losing task credits that was a major portion of the funding of the project.

- The impacts are pretty severe when it comes to the loss of funds.

- It was pretty important.

I don't really wanna be the person that screws that up.

- Everybody understood how critical it was.

August, September, October hit and then you see the amount of work that's in front of you and then you just really had to put a plan together and had to have subcontractor to buy-in on that plan to get the job done.

And come December 1, you still probably had three months worth of work that has to be completed in one month.

- [Dan] And then, things got worse.

- Early December, I started chills and body aches.

I had COVID.

Before I knew it, I was really struggling and had to get in the hospital and I was there two different times on oxygen.

- [David] Dave Williams going down was a big deal.

- He's the decision maker, like, he's the one that makes those quick, fast decisions.

He knows where the money is, he knows all the background.

- [Dan] They did what great teams do in a crisis.

They came together and got things done.

- They kinda gave us the reigns to get the job done, to push it to the end.

- It was the team that we had put together with the city of Dayton and their inspectional team and without their help and support, I'm not sure we would have pulled it off.

- The Model team, Cross Street, Sandvik Architects, MODA4, and the city of Dayton, if everybody wouldn't have come together, it wouldn't have happened.

- The important lesson to take away is how many years have we heard, this will never happen?

This will never happen.

And here we are and it's happened.

So, when I look at any of these temporary short-term challenges, I think we've come this far, we can keep going.

- [Dan] They won their Certificate of Temporary Occupancy.

The funds remained intact.

More areas were moving toward completion.

One in particular was exceeding expectations.

- The basement is kind of unique just because, who wants to work in a basement?

Is kind of your first thought.

So, I kinda wanted to play up the fact that you're in a basement by using the darker finishes but then we lit the space differently than we have anywhere else in the building.

Kind of like, thinking to like, almost like a tunnel or subway, kind of look but then bringing it up a notch.

- The basement is probably the most utilized basement in any downtown space hands down.

And it's not only that, it's a way cool space.

It's a lot of fun.

It has some really unique elements.

- [Dan] One of the unique elements is called The Tank.

- Before we infilled the floor of the Arcade Rotunda, we dug it out deeper in the basement level, to allow us to create kind of a cool, little theater in the round and it was all designed as sort of parlay with what's happening in The Hub.

The Hub's about innovation, telling a story, bringing in Angel Investment.

It would be great to have an event space that really spoke and fed that opportunity for sharing information and getting partners.

- It's a great presentation space.

I can envision putting folks pitching in our pitch event really kinda under the spotlights, so to speak, the hot seat.

The Tank is a space that I'm sure we will be utilizing quite a bit.

- [Dan] Future entrepreneurs will benefit greatly from their UD experience.

But that alone won't build a stronger community.

- There's lots of research and lots of data out there that shows that blacked owned businesses are under-represented in start-up eco systems.

They're under-represented from a resource standpoint.

They're under-represented from a capitol standpoint.

- [Dan] The University of Dayton made a commitment to change that.

- The Greater West Dayton Incubator is a strategic initiative, to help support historically under-served and under-represented entrepreneurs in Greater West Dayton neighborhoods.

- [Dan] The Greater West Dayton Incubator has a satellite office in The Hub at the Dayton Arcade.

- At the satellite office location, what we're able to do is provide one-on-one coaching and mentoring and counseling.

We're also able to introduce them to the Small Business Development Center, to the Minority Business Assistance Center, all the way to Parallax Research and Launch Dayton.

- [Dan] All these entrepreneurial service organizations are centrally located in The Hub.

And that makes The Hub a fantastic resource.

One of the Incubator's first collaborations will be with Rich Taste Catering, a veteran owned, minority owned West Dayton business.

Rich Taste will be a food vendor for Startup Grounds, a bistro run by UD students.

- Together we got started in this business by, I gifted him the opportunity to become a caterer.

And from there, we just kind of grew our business by networking and talking to people that were interested in great food.

- She gifted me the catering company through a surprise birthday party.

She showed up to the birthday party with chaffing dishes and tools and LLC, a website, a phone number, business cards.

So, she gifted me a lot of years of hard work and blessings.

(upbeat music) I definitely have fun in making any dishes that we make here at Rich Taste Catering.

I think the fun is ultimately in presenting food that meets the expectation of the customer.

And bringing a fresh, new approach to it.

- Rich Taste is doing great, have a great name, great reputation.

And I think, when we're talking about supporting Greater West Dayton entrepreneurs, sometimes seeing is believing and being able to see entrepreneurs that look like you have a similar background and story and you can see the path and the journey that they've taken, have been successful.

That's really, really critical.

(upbeat music) - [Dan] Meanwhile, at Crafted and Cured, the dream of building the perfect space was being tested.

- It's a rollercoaster every single day.

You plan, you plan, you plan and try to get as meticulous as you can down to where the outlet is laid out because the cord is on the left side of a six-foot-long piece of equipment.

Then you come in and realize there's HVAC or plumbing in the way and the outlet can't go there and you've gotta re-design the piece of equipment.

- So, it's challenges like that that just come with the building that you can't plan for.

- [Dan] These challenges, along with all the other difficulties facing restaurant owners, could be a recipe for insomnia.

- For me, I don't think it's ever been fear.

It's just something that you're...

It's what you're doing and it is what it is.

And the waking up in the middle of the night is usually more of a what can I do to make sure this is as unique or is as great as we want it to be instead of worrying about, will this work or not?

'Cause if you get into that mentality, it goes downhill after that pretty quick.

- [Dan] Whatever challenges the old building presents are outweighed by the prime location in arguably the most iconic and emotive building in the city.

- It's thrilling.

I mean, you get goosebumps.

Knowing that your part of that now and bringing new life to a building that's been dormant for 30 years.

It's a feeling you really can't put into words until you're in there and get to experience the building.

(gentle music) - [Dan] And that's the highest priority.

Get sections completed.

Get them open.

And get people in.

The heavy lifting is over.

The work has gotten smaller in scale, but it's no less important.

Now it's all about the details.

- We've been checking to make sure things are being done according to the design and then having to come up with solutions when things aren't working out.

- [Dave] You gotta know where to sweat 'em.

Where to sweat those details and where not to.

There are somethings that matter and don't matter and so it's just putting your energy in the rights spaces and places that give you the best impact for your funds.

- [Dan] You have to know what to look for.

That comes with experience.

- [Jennifer] He would see stuff and he'd be like, "That's not supposed to be like that."

- And they're not big things but it's all those little bits and pieces that ultimately everybody doesn't really notice in the same way but it sets the tone for the whole space.

- [Jennifer] He was the one that would bring it up like in a conference call.

- From that perspective.

'Cause I was in there today just checkin' it out and obviously they did not contain the dust.

- He'd take you out onsite and walk you around and be like, "What's this doing?

Why is that like that?"

- [Dan] There's a list for that.

As a section nears completion, issues are noted and a punch list is generated.

(upbeat music) - We create this list and we give it back to the subcontractors and they come in and make the repairs.

The ultimate goal is to provide a great product that's gonna last and you want ownership happy.

You want the person that you're working for to be satisfied.

(upbeat music) (dramatic music) - [Dan] January 22, 2021, was a cold day in Dayton, Ohio.

Before the day was over, the Rotunda Dome would be wearing a crown of brightly colored stars.

Over 3,000 pounds of metal and wire.

423,000 lumens of magic.

A collaboration between Scenic Solutions and Amy Laughead.

(upbeat music) - Seeing the lights come on for the first time, it made me think about the history of the Arcade.

All the memories that had been created there before and now we had the opportunity for a new lighting design to illuminate new memories.

- [Dan] New memories.

A first date.

A last dance.

Concerts.

Exhibitions.

Weddings and graduations.

Celebrations of all kinds.

Building the rich fabric of a community.

(dramatic music) The Arcade team faced an unprecedented challenge.

They never stopped moving forward.

The next challenge is getting spaces finished and open and getting leased up.

Every day is a step closer.

Vince Lewis is giving his new students a glimpse of their future.

Everyday, more and more people are coming here to work.

For the first time in 40 years, people are now calling the Arcade, their home.

And in May 2021, The Contemporary became the first tenant to open their doors to the public.

The transformation is happening.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)