Jason Dorsey, designer and developer with Windsor Companies, said he painstakingly redesigned virtually every detail of the building to make it into something very special, that’s basically meant to be a work of art.
“I wanted to give Dayton something it had never seen before,” Dorsey said. “The building is art.”
Dorsey said Windsor Companies’ total investment in Dayton is now around a quarter billion dollars. The company has roughly a dozen projects in the city.
The Deneau
The Grant-Deneau Tower, now just called the Deneau, is an old office tower at 40 W. Fourth St., across the street from the Dayton Arcade. The mid-Century modern skyscraper at the southeast corner of Fourth and Ludlow was Dayton’s tallest building when it opened in 1969.
But the building has been vacant since the 2010s, after Premier Health relocated its headquarters to North Main Street. Premier previously occupied 18 floors of the tower.
Windsor Companies has spent about five years and tens of millions of dollars revamping the building, which had not seen major updates since the 1990s. The company received millions of dollars in state historic tax credits to help finance the rehabilitation.
The Deneau now has 147 luxury apartments, spread across floors 7 to 22. Tenants started moving in Tuesday.
Leased units include three of the building’s six luxury penthouses.
Apartments have large windows, quartz or granite marble countertops, luxury vinyl tile floors that look like linen, Dutch-style lighting, millwork cabinets and decorative wood paneling.
Dorsey said his design choices were inspired by Italian fashion trends from the 1960s that favored bold and bright colors and patterns.
The Deneau will have artwork on every floor. But Dorsey said his goal was to make almost every element of the entire building art, from the floors to the walls to the ceilings, lighting, furniture and finishes.
“The design of the building is minimalist with a little bit of crazy mixed into it,” he said.
The lower floors of the Deneau are leasable co-working office spaces. Dorsey also said a tenant recently signed a lease for a first-floor restaurant space.
The mezzanine will have a lounge with a bar, fireplace, kitchen, coffee kiosk and ceiling lights designed to look like the night sky. The building also has a large gym and an attached parking garage.
The Deneau has energy-efficient vacuum-insulating glass windows that have earned national recognition.
The lobby has ceramic floors that look like marble, hanging ball lights and a bright orange, curvy couch. The lobby is eye-catching, which explains why passersby on the street often peek through the windows and snap photographs on their cell phones.
The Grant-Deneau was the first commercial high-rise constructed in Dayton in about three decades.
When it was built and opened, When it was built and opened, the tower was part of a pioneering effort to revitalize downtown Dayton to try to help it compete regionally and be an alternative to the emerging suburbs, wrote Tony Kroeger in his book “Hidden History of Dayton.”
“The new tower was to lead Dayton into a new, modern era,” wrote Kroeger, who is the city of Dayton’s planning division manager. “The front of the sales brochure for the tower proclaimed it was ‘destined to be the landmark office building of the new Dayton.‘”
Kroeger told this news outlet that the Deneau was and remains to this day a symbol of faith and confidence in downtown.
“I think it’s a gem,” he said.
Some people say the Deneau is a great companion project for the Dayton Arcade, which is located right across the street and is nearly finished with a massive, multi-phase rehabilitation. Until recently, the southwest quadrant of downtown was pretty sleepy.
Windsor Companies has invested heavily in downtown, particularly in the Fire Blocks District, which is the area centered along the 100 block of East Third Street. The Fire Blocks now has a diverse collection of first-floor businesses and shops, with housing and offices on the upper levels.
Windsor Companies is based in the Columbus area, but most of its portfolio of projects are in the Dayton market. Dorsey said development opportunities dried up in the state’s capital.
“It’s a saturated market,” he said. “All the land is taken up, all the space is taken up and you can’t even buy a yard for under $1 million.”
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