So Who Was That Guy With The Shorts And The Hoodie?
No, it wasn’t Mayor Mick Cornett’s appointment to replace Larry Nichols as a board member at the Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority. After seeing one comment after another on local message boards – notably www.okctalk.com and www.okmet.org - by members insisting on more openess and vows to go to a meeting, digital downtown finally caught up with virtual downtown.
A week earlier, I met with Nick Roberts, otherwise known as “Spartan,” at The Buzz and discussed all sorts of issues involving downtown. For me, this opportunity to meet with the operator of okmet.org was a chance to get a better insight into what’s driving continued interest in downtown development, what stories I might pursue, and how I can improve my reporting so that it stays relevant to you the reader.
Nick is a bit embarassed by the attire he wore to Wednesday’s Urban Renewal meeting – he was running late after traveling from Norman and trying to find the meeting locale, and didn’t realize the small confines of the board room where the commissioners meet. But consider this: Nick took the time and effort to see firsthand how development is guided by Urban Renewal and what discussions do and don’t take place.
That says a lot. I can’t recall another time when someone from digital downtown took such an effort to cross the gap into virtual downtown. We’ve seen near misses – one poster actually called into Urban Renewal’s offices several months ago criticizing a pending selection of a developer and vowed to show up leading a protest (no such protest followed and the person in question, who I’ve also met, has yet to appear at any Urban Renewal meetings that I can recall).
Nick, it was fun and enlightening meeting you over coffee, and I hope you learned something Wednesday.
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Ha, I know how Nick feels about attire… I went to the Council/Planning workshop a month ago or so and even though I did dress in a polo and nice jeans- church attire- I felt way underdressed! And I stuck out since I was the only one under 30! But it wasn’t so bad…