Let's Pretend….
It’s empty and available. Got any ideas?
An interesting parlour game discussion is underway at www.tulsanow.org that asks the following:
Many times, we talk about certain locally-owned businesses going in (or worse, leaving) downtown, the creative re- and mixed-use of buildings, and high-quality urban design. We always want these local, creative-types to open places for us, but we don’t really go out and do it ourselves…So I’d like to challenge each of us on here to create an idea for a business of our own that incorporate all of these elements. I think it could be fun…If you could open up any kind of business in downtown, what would you open and why? …Or, if you don’t want to open one, what would you like to see downtown?
I’ve taken the questions that followed and changed them so they might relate to downtown Oklahoma City. So tell me:
-Your location/intersection (or current building) within downtown
-How you would re-use a current building or construct to match
-How many floors is the building?
-Who will occupy the upper floors?
-What would the inside look like? (Bricktown? MidTown? Flat Iron? Western Avenue? Paseo?)
-Would you incorporate green building materials?
-What type of business is it? Restaurant/Retail/Entertainment, etc.
-What segment you cater to?
-How would you draw people in from the suburbs who don’t patronize downtown establishments?
And to take this discussion one step further, what would you do with the following properties along Sheridan Avenue just west of the Myriad Gardens and Stage Center? 
Thank you for joining our conversation on OKC Central. We encourage your discussion but ask that you stay within the bounds of our commenting and posting policy.
Comments
Definitely, definitely the Fred Jones factory off Classen. That is my favorite historic building in OKC. If I had $50 million I would put it into that. Green? Nope. It would be traditional, antique-ish, and preppy..not Green. I would carve about 100 lofts out of it with about 50,000 SF of retail which would be split up into a westside IHOP, a book store, one or two coffee shops, and a news stand. Very traditional. I took a bunch of pics that I’m going to post soon at OkMet so be on the look out for those.
I would buy the Court Plaza Building at Harvey and Kerr and put in small for-rent apartments. I would keep Subway but give the boot to the office tenants, and I would attempt to get a Panera, Jamba Juice, or similar healthy food option, and maybe a sit down restaurant or upscale bar.
Well, if you keep going west on Sheridan, you run into Film Row, which is an interesting mixed-use sort of area: they keep telling us that there will be lofts carved out of it, and there’s at least one designer showroom down there.
So between there and Stage Center? Small retail, maybe.