No Holiday for the Holiday Inn?
BEFORE AND AFTER: McDonald’s changed designs for its proposed Bricktown restaurant after meeting resistance from the Bricktown Urban Design Committee.
“Urban designer? I’m not an urban designer, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.”
-Brett, Oklahoma City, at www.newsok.com
Today’s story about the owner of the Quality Inn at 1800 E Reno and his plans for a Bricktown Holiday Inn Express isn’t sitting well with all readers, if online comments today at www.newsok.com ,www.okctalk.com, www.okmet.org/bb are any indicator. The Bricktown Urban Design Committee, tasked with approving such projects, will consider the project at its next meeting at 9 a.m. Wednesday in the second floor conference room at 116 E Sheridan Ave.
The criticism seems to focus on two different aspects of the application: the demolition of the old Steffen’s Ice Cream building, parts of which date back to 1917, and the construction of a new Holiday Inn Express that would have what appears to be about half of its facade consisting of a sythetic stucco.
Bob Blackburn advises to consider the first action very carefully – read his arguments here. It might be informative to look back at previous projects in the past couple of years that also clashed with standards set by the Bricktown urban design ordinance.
It was just last summer that McDonald’s pitched plans for a restaurant across from Bass Pro Shops. Officials claimed the restaurant was designed specifically for the entertainment district. But it didn’t take long to find the same design recently used on new McDonald’s in Mustang and other suburban areas. The design was even featured in a national advertisement. The McDonald’s folks tried to lecture the Bricktown Urban Design Committee on what they could and couldn’t require from the fast food giant. But with an hour-long special airing on cable that same month on how McDonald’s had constructed special restaurants to match historic districts, the company had a change of heart, hired a local architect, and came up with new designs that won unanimous praise throughout Bricktown.
When a Hampton Inn was proposed for Bricktown, it too was to include some synthetic stucco in its facade. The committee required the facade consist of brick, and the developers agreed without any argument.
Here are some questions not pondered: is the design of the proposed Holiday Inn Express, shown below, an example of franchise architecture or does it appear tailored to Bricktown?
- Steve
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Comments
As to your last question Steve, “does this appear tailored to Bricktown…?”
This is NOT an example of franchise architecture, and it is NOT something you would see just anywhere. The flat roof, the colors, the squarish architecture… They have tried to make this Bricktown. They have tried. And the rendering really looks GOOD, if you didn’t know that it was EIFS on most of the structure, which obviously is considered “NOT OKAY” by a lot of people, especially when any razing is involved.
This same design would fit in, of course, in Lower Bricktown, where everything has a little EIFS- I WISH the Residence Inn looked like this (but bigger). It might work in east Bricktown. It might even work on any surface lot. But I don’t think it should work when it requires demolition.
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I don’t think we should tear down any historic structures in Bricktown. There are plenty of surface parking lots, or other open areas of land in Lower Bricktown, where this Holiday Inn Express could be built, without having to tear down a historic building. Here’s a novel concept….why not locate the hotel within the old dairy building? Convert the old dairy building into a hotel, without tearing it down.
As far as the design for the Holiday In Express. Overall, I don’t think the design of the building is bad, I just think it needs to be all brick, to fit in with BRICKtown. I actually like the columns planned for the main entrance, and I like the alternating angles on the building, instead of a solif flat wall. But, I think it should be brick.
So, in summary, build it somewhere else, and make it all brick.
Why not raise one of the old Stewart buildings and replace it with this hotel? They’re not architecturally significant…they’re just steel buildings.
I still like the idea of converting the dairy building into a hotel though.