Good Luck With That…
After having covered Bricktown for more than a dozen years, you begin to see the cliche mistakes the minute they begin.
Here’s a classic. Guy comes into Bricktown buying up property without knowing how the district works and employs a suburban real estate broker who is also clueless about the intricacies of a seasonal entertainment district.
Before long, the same delusion comes into play: “Why can’t I get $20 a square foot for my space? After all, this is Bricktown! I’m here to get rich!”
Now, this guy might be blessed with having good stable tenants who actually pay their rent on time and cause no problems (believe me, this isn’t as common in Bricktown as one might think).
But their rents aren’t at $20 per square foot. So what’s next? You guessed it – he’s going to double the rent knowing he’ll lose the good stable tenant. He thinks a new lease will be easygoing – heck, his suburban real estate guy even thinks so!
Now, let’s back up a second.
The first floor of the Kingman Building, formerly home to Othello’s, has been empty a year. It has yet to attract a good stable tenant since it was first occupied by a troublesome nightclub that drew gang members.
The old location of the Laughing Fish has been empty at least two years.
The old Daquari Zone has been empty for a year.
The old Varsity has been empty for months. It’s about to be leased to a nightclub, which is widely considered a downgrade for a property.
The future home of the American Banjo Museum was empty for years after a Chinese restaurant failed there a few years ago.
The Bricktown Canal is littered with empty space. That space hasn’t gone empty due to a lack of interest. Instead, the owners decided a decade ago that they can demand $20 to $25 a square foot in rent with no finish out. And so you have everything frozen in place as if it’s 1999. The owners willing to make deals for canal level space have tenants on the canal. Those who were demanding $20 or more per square foot for empty space still have empty space.
That’s just a small sampling of how “easy” it is to do deals in Bricktown. These property owners never seem to know what they had until they’ve brushed it off. And some of the people who came in with no experience and acting like Bricktown is like any other real estate are losing their shirts.
Now, I’m not saying any of this is related to what’s coming next, but….
Uncommon Grounds, the coffee shop on the ground floor of the Mercantile Building is closing in December. Gary Berlin, who bought the building a year or so ago, confirmed he tried to double the shop’s rent after the lease expired. He thinks he’ll have no problem leasing the space for an even higher amount of rent once it’s empty.
He said there is no truth to a rumor at OKC Talk that he has a new tenant lined up for the space. Uncommon Grounds has been in business since 1995.
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Comments
Such a sad day to see Uncommon Grounds leaving because some over-zealous fool of a property owner got a little greedy.
To the property owners: take care of the tenants that are there already. New ones will come if you run your business right. Get greedy and you may end up with more vacancies instead of less. Then try to sell your empty building with no good tenants remaining…
Yep. People have done and continue to do some really stupid things around here. No wonder we’re continually trying to ‘get on the map’ and ‘become big league’, there is no continuity around here, no ‘institutions’. Always looking for the next big thing, and in most cases ending up with something of lesser quality.
We may as well close all the restraunts and replace them with taco bells, destroy all our architecture (whats left) and replace it with (more) big boxes……all for a quick buck.
Humble opinion.
It’s incredibly embarrassing when boat tour passengers ask about the half-excavated storefronts on the canal level of the Oklahoma Hardware Company building and I have to explain that they’ve been that way since the canal’s initial construction.
Bricktown will have to realize that they’re not the only game in town anymore for urban entertainment. Midtown and A-Alley, even the CBD is growing quickly with entertainment options. If things continue as they are, Bricktown WILL diminish in importance and be remembered only as the springboard for the rest of the downtown neighborhoods.
Bricktown’s landlords should revisit Dallas’ West End history… As soon as Deep Elum became the cool place the West End was sucked dry and died almost overnight. Steve’s right: the Ford Center and Convention Center might assure a meager survival, but MidTown and other new hot spots can and will drain the vitality out of Bricktown if landlords remain too greedy.
There does seem to be some property owners maiking questionable decisions in Bricktown, but let’s slow down with the “Bricktown is dead” comments. In the next 9 months, there will be at least 6 restaurants and bars open, 5 floors of offices in the Candy factory, 1 Hotel open, another break ground and a new Banjo museum.
By the way, just curious Steve, are there any bone-head property owners in the CBD, Auto Alley or Mid town?
[...] “Good luck with that,” says Steve Lackmeyer: The Bricktown Canal is littered with empty space. That space hasn’t gone empty due to a lack of interest. Instead, the owners decided a decade ago that they can demand $20 to $25 a square foot in rent with no finish out. And so you have everything frozen in place as if it’s 1999. The owners willing to make deals for canal level space have tenants on the canal. Those who were demanding $20 or more per square foot for empty space still have empty space. [...]
Steve, is there any way the cost of rents can be regulated? Can the Bricktown Association put a cap on it? I know this is probably a weird off the wall question but it would help keep businesses down there and open.
Figured this much. I wish Bricktown property owners would figure out a good balance of what is good for the district and what is good for their pocket book.
The canal should be the “centerpiece” of the district, and of MAPS I. Instead, it just looks good when you have a creative photographer taking a picture, avoiding the empty spaces.
My office is in Bricktown and I can’t tell you how many times that my crew has gone to lunch and wandered the canal and noticed how dead and quiet it is, even on a Friday afternoon.
Too many white elephants, and no concept of how to integrate the spaces to attract people.
Steve, are you sure about Gary’s question? I mean NYC has rent control. Free enterprise IS free enterprise, but I imagine this could be true IF the Bricktown Association voted it upon themselves, at least the majority voted that way. I think it would be a good thing and help save Bricktown.
Maybe, but NYC doesn’t have rent control on commercial space – only residential space. And politically, NYC might as well be on another planet. Do you really think Oklahomans will go for a law that creates rent caps?
Now, there are other intriguing possibilities that I’ve heard of that I’ve been meaning to check into … if I get a chance to breathe I’ll see if I can’t get to that later this week. For now, thanks to all for keeping this blog lively while I’ve been out chasing news stories.
I just don’t understand the strategy of some of these property owners. Isn’t it in their interest to have properties that are leased so that they can make money? It seems sitting on vacant property is a money drain.
[...] another take on the post I wrote the other day on the pending closing of Uncommon Grounds from Lynette Hendrix, assistant to [...]
I said a while back that Bricktown is going down hill and everyone said I was crazy. Several people stated the NBA coming was a clear sign of Bricktowns popularity. It’s sad to see all the boarded up, ugly buildings next to nice properties. Bricktown needs to stop thinking so far ahead that it forgets the present and start taking care of business. Before it ends up being bars and clubs and people won’t go down there.
[...] in the comments section of yesterday’s post about my top 10 annoying Americanisms – a couple of which, my (American) wife and mother-in-law point out, I occasionally use [...]
When will these bonehead property owners get a dose of reality and start leasing for realistic rates. Bricktown is dead and overhyped. Look at all the most prime real estate in the heart of the densist part of the canal, tons of vacant space. You’d think after a few years of no tenants they would get it, but nope, they keep their pie in the sky dreams visions of prestigious national tenants to come to town, which never do, meanwhile, all of us downtown locals prefer MidTown, Automobile Alley, Arts District and the Triangle. Bricktown’s days would be over if it wasn’t for the Ford Center and Cox Center proximity, that’s the only thing keeping it alive. Wake up property owners while you still have a chance to make something out of Bricktown!