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Welcome!
A lot of people are pretty excited about you. Your resume is impressive, and don’t be surprised if some of what you’ve done to date won’t be up for consideration here in OKC.
A quick primer for you:
- Downtown OKC has a rubber tire trolley run by MetroTransit that tries to please everybody and seems to have made nobody happy.
- A downtown visitor center … in the right place, that sounds like a pretty good idea.
- Promoting retail. You know how tough it is. I’ll be curious to see if it’s any easier here.
- Critical meet-and-greets. Me. Bricktown Association. Downtown Rotary. Mayor Mick Cornett. City Manager Jim Couch. Assistant City Manager Cathy O’Connor. Greater OKC Chamber President Roy Williams. CVB director Mike Carrier. Former Mayors Kirk Humphreys and Ron Norick (old mayors have a way of staying powerful after they leave office). Larry Nichols (he’s got a building project coming up you might be interested in). And of course, your new bosses.
- Biggest challenges: convincing those who have been key to downtown’s resurgence that while everything accomplished to date is great, we still have a long way to go. And we don’t know squat compared to what’s been done elsewhere.
- Biggest landmines ahead: COTPA’s flirtation with selling several downtown parking garages, emergence of budget hotels in and around Bricktown, pending moves to tear down several older buildings that some consider to be historic, subtle rivalries between CBD and Core to Shore.
- Biggest cool thing ahead: this is a city that is really in love with the MAPS concept… next year it’s possible to see a MAPS 3. (you can also consider this to be an item under “Biggest Landmines Ahead”)
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I am assuming it is for the new DowntownOKC Inc. Director.