Urban Sites Property Management has been a leading developer of apartments in Over-the-Rhine. When it bought the former Volunteers of America building at 14th and Clay streets last year, it planned to turn it into apartments — until a few dot.com folks ooh'd and ah'd over the loftlike spaces.

        So Urban Sites decided to make the building, just one block off the Main Street technology alley — its first office project. A year ago, partner Jim Moll said he'd already showed the building to 40 potential tenants.

        An opening was set for April 27, but then the unrest hit. The first floor was ransacked, and every tool was stolen. An electrician was pulled from his truck and beaten. All the subcontractors quit.

        Combine that with the Internet crash, and the building is set to open later this month with no signed tenants. Mr. Moll said last week that he still has some prospects and he's pushing ahead with a marketing plan.

        He knows the problem isn't with the building, built in 1904. Drop ceilings and office partitions “hid all the structure and beauty of the building,” architect Mark Gunther said.

        They were torn away to reveal hardwood floors, brick walls and 18-inch solid wood beams.

        A conference room sits in a kind of crow's nest on the top floor, and a door leads to a roof-top patio.

"Cyber districts' emerge

        Empty office space in the city's digital neighborhood might just be a hangover from the civil unrest. Maybe it goes away, but if it doesn't, it's bad news. A new report from the Milken Institute, Knowledge-Value Cities in the Digital Age, remarks how technology centers spring up in places such as Over-the-Rhine.

        The report talks about “cyber districts” in cities such as San Francisco and Chicago “that have transformed large blocks of formerly destitute warehousing and manufacturing space into highly desirable post-industrial hubs. In many cases, these districts have become knowledge-value neighborhoods with strong residential, retail and cultural components.”

        The report cites a number of cities — Dayton among them — with once-decayed industrial centers that are drawing technology firms.

Mix of resources

        “Once seen as 'basket cases,' these regions have begun to attract significant investment and growth in their technology-related sectors. ... They often offer lower costs than the first-tier urban centers, but often possess an impressive mix of rich architecture, history, cultural activities, institutions of higher education and well-developed transportation infrastructure. These comeback cities represent perhaps the most dramatic evidence of the potential for urban centers in the information age.”

        Cincinnati isn't cited in the report. One of the report's authors, Joel Kotkin, will be in Cincinnati May 15, as keynote speaker for the “Cyber Cities Symposium” at the Westin Hotel downtown. Register at 852-6888 Ext. 158.

        E-mail John Byczkowski at johnb@enquirer.com or call 768-8377. Find a list of local New Economy companies at http://enquirer.com/neweconomy/.

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