Downtown Dayton has seen a couple of big redevelopment wins in recent years.
The Dayton Arcade is now fully open, with restaurants, apartments, a hotel, and the new retail concourse off of Third Street. Across Main Street the long-vacant Centre City Building, now rebranded as The Mainline, is well into its conversion to senior, workforce, and market-rate apartments and ground floor commercial space.
Plenty of other proposals are still waiting their turn, though, and several involve large vacant buildings I get asked about a lot, both online and on my downtown walking tours.
Back in 2019, when the Arcade redevelopment was finally confirmed, I wrote about what pending downtown development could come next, and a few of the same buildings are still on this list seven years later, with more recent news since then.
Below are 10 proposed downtown Dayton projects, ranked by the impact I think they could have on the city, not the total price tag or the likelihood they are to actually move forward soon.
I also did a full video of these sites which you can watch here:
Downtown Dayton’s Top 10: Vacant Building Proposals, Stalled Projects, and New Construction Plans
The projects range from a riverfront sports bar to the vacant Dayton Daily News Building, and for each one I’ve included where things stand as of October 2026, along with links to my earlier articles on the history of each site.
10. Riverfront Sports Bar, 5 W. Monument Ave.
In August 2025, new owners Erin Parrott and Edward Joiner Jr. bought the building at 5 W. Monument Ave., home to Bar Granada, and told the Dayton Business Journal they planned to open a sports bar.
There have been plenty of bars and restaurants that have opened and closed in recent years, but I put this one on my list for a couple of reasons.
First, the idea was to lean into the location right on the Great Miami River. Despite all the riverfront land downtown, very few bars or restaurants actually overlook the water, and the owners described the concept as a destination worth the drive from neighboring suburbs.
Bar Granada has since closed, but there haven’t been any public updates on the new project.
(And downtown did gain a sports bar this summer when The 8 opened across from Day Air Ballpark.)
9. Reed-Steffen Building, 16-18 W. Fifth St.
This three-story building from 1921 has one of the most elaborate classical facades in the Terra Cotta District around Fifth and Ludlow. Columbus developer Triad bought it in 2018 and in 2020 announced a $3 million plan for residential and office space on the upper floors with retail or entertainment on the ground floor.
By May 2021 the budget had grown to $5.1 million, and the project applied for $1 million from the Ohio Historic Preservation Tax Credit Program, but there haven’t been public updates since. The neighboring building at 20 W. Fifth, whose roof had collapsed, was demolished, and the Reed-Steffen Building now sits completely vacant next door to the Fidelity Building.
8. Wilkinson Plaza Public Housing Tower, 126 W. Fifth St.
Wilkinson Plaza opened in 1975 with 200 apartments and gave many residents an affordable way to live downtown for about 50 years. After years of problems, including mold complaints dating back to 2014, Greater Dayton Premier Management began moving residents to other housing in 2023, estimating that the tower needed about $30 million in repairs, and later submitted a federal Section 18 application to demolish it.
The agency’s director has said it is looking at “out-of-the-box ideas, probably something much smaller,” including a possible partnership with Sinclair to serve groups like young parents returning to school.
A smaller replacement could also move away from the “tower in the park” layout, a product of the urban renewal era that leaves the building feeling cut off from the street around it.
7. Former Dayton Grand Hotel, Third and Ludlow
The hotel at the southwest corner of Third and Ludlow opened in 1898 as the Algonquin, and over the years it went by many names, including the Gibbons, the Daytonian Hilton, and the Radisson, before closing as the Dayton Grand by 2016. In 2022, new owners proposed a $23 million conversion into 103 apartments and a “prohibition-themed entertainment destination” with boutique bowling and golf simulators.
The project received $3.8 million in Ohio historic preservation tax credits in 2023, but the hotel went up for auction that October and there haven’t been updates since. Its location across from City Hall, Courthouse Square, and the revitalized Arcade, along with an attached parking garage, makes it one of the most important sites downtown that’s still in limbo.
6. Downtown Office Towers and Stratacache
Office vacancy has been one of downtown’s biggest challenges since the pandemic shifted working patterns. Digital signage company Stratacache bought Kettering Tower in 2019 and renamed it Stratacache Tower, then added 110 N. Main St., promising 100 new high tech jobs there, and also reached an agreement with the city to take over the KeyBank Tower.
In 2026 that momentum reversed, with layoffs the company tied to tariffs, supply chain disruptions, and surging memory chip prices.
By August, Stratacache had sold three buildings at auction, including 110 N. Main, to a Maryland-based investor. More than 1,000 people worked at 110 N. Main before the pandemic, compared with about 200 in 2023.
There is some new activity at street level, however, like the Lumpia Queen restaurant now open in Stratacache Tower.
5. 34 N. Main St. (Paru Tower)
Built in 1926 as the Third National Bank Building, 34 N. Main later served as the Society Bank and KeyBank Building. After KeyBank moved out in 2008, a new owner briefly ran a restaurant and grocery on the ground floor before the building was foreclosed on in 2013. The City of Dayton acquired it in 2016 and selected Coon Restoration as a preferred developer the following year, but no public updates followed.
In March 2025, a windstorm caused part of the parapet to fall, damaging windows at Stratacache Tower and closing Main Street. Emergency repairs and stabilization since then have brought public investment in the building to roughly $5 million, and an advisory committee convened by Congressman Mike Turner is now exploring options. I covered more of its history in Fidelity Building and Paru Tower: History and What’s Happening Now and in my look at lost buildings at Main and Third.
4. Fidelity Building, Fifth and Main
The 12-story Fidelity Building was built in 1918, expanded in 1929, and has been vacant since 2008, when a burst water pipe forced out its remaining tenants. It sits in a prominent spot along the southern entrance to downtown, behind Levitt Pavilion and across Main Street from the convention center.
The building has won state historic tax credits more than once, including $4 million in 2018 toward a $22 million plan for 94 housing units and $4.9 million in 2023 toward a $50.6 million plan for 101 units, but neither project came together.
The owner pleaded guilty in 2024 to a federal charge related to asbestos inspection, and in 2025 the Montgomery County Convention Facilities Authority began eyeing the building for a hotel conversion, estimated at about $42 million for 130 rooms.
You can read more about its history in my article on the Fidelity Building and Paru Tower.
3. New Convention Center Hotel, Fifth and Jefferson
Following a $45 million renovation of the Dayton Convention Center, a new Marriott-branded headquarters hotel with 200 rooms is planned for a narrow site at Fifth and Jefferson, with an estimated cost of $77 million and an anticipated opening in 2028. Convention center leadership has pointed to market studies calling for at least 500 hotel rooms within walking distance to help Dayton compete for larger events.
The plan raises questions, too. Downtown has added the Fairfield Inn, the AC Marriott, the Hotel Ardent, and the Hilton Garden Inn at the Arcade since 2018.
And the 287-room hotel already attached to the convention center, the former Crowne Plaza that reopened as the Vitality Hotel in 2025, announced its closure in August 2026.
2. Apartments on the Parking Lot at Second and St. Clair
Likely the most unexpected pick on this list isn’t a building at all. In 2024, Columbus-based Marker Development proposed 114 apartments with first floor retail on part of the block-long surface lot at Second and St. Clair, across from the downtown library and next to the Fire Blocks. It would be the firm’s first project in Dayton.
Replacing a central surface lot with housing would help connect downtown’s popular destinations, which are still interspersed with parking and quiet blocks, a theme I explored in Why Parking Is the Key to Downtown Dayton’s Rebirth.
Marker had an 18-month due diligence period before finalizing the purchase of the property, which unfortunately ended several months ago without any public announcement.
1. Dayton Daily News Building, Fourth and Ludlow
The old Dayton Daily News Building is a Beaux Arts-style landmark designed by Albert Pretzinger for publisher and future Governor of Ohio James M. Cox.
Pretzinger modeled it after New York’s Knickerbocker Trust Company building, and its massive Corinthian columns and elaborate entrance make it one of Dayton’s finest pieces of architecture.
It’s the only piece left from a botched 2013 redevelopment that accidentally demolished a historic portion of the building and left a debris-filled crater on the block for three years.
Proposals submitted to the city in 2017 never moved forward, and the rest of the block remains one of the few completely vacant lots in the heart of downtown. A development here could help connect Sinclair Community College to the rest of downtown while also preserving a key landmark that’s currently exposed to the elements and deteriorating, before it becomes another case of demolition by neglect.
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