Mayor Mick Cornett Looks Ahead – Downtown, Core to Shore

Today marked the speech Mayor Mick Cornett probably would have delivered last year if not for the pending relocation of the Sonics/Thunder and need to improve Ford Center.

So, without any further delay, here’s a bit of what he had to say:

I urge each of you to check out the Fixed Guideway Study that provides our blueprint for a 21st Century transit system. It can be found at on the Internet at OKFGS.org.

Fully implemented, it calls for a greatly enhanced bus system, including Bus Rapid Transit, and there are also light rail and downtown streetcar components. This blueprint is complete. You may recall we spent a year and a half on the study.

We now know enough to get started, and there are a number of places we can start. But the key is that we need to get started. Not so much for today, because we are not in a public transit crisis. But transit programs take years, if not decades, to implement. Most cities wait until their highways are at gridlock before they begin taking action. Our city has a history of planning for the future, and now is the time to get started. It will take vision from each and every one of us. When gas if affordable and traffic runs smoothly, it can be difficult to gather support for public transit. I will need your help.

The large central park in the Core to Shore project is also critical to our city’s future, and necessary to our ability to adapt to the relocation of Interstate 40. A year ago, in this State of the City address, I showed you the first conceptual images of the Core to Shore project.

Since then you’ve seen them in many other places, and you’ve probably followed the announcement of the first signature project, the Oklahoma City SkyDance pedestrian bridge over the new I-40.

We have never built anything like this before in Oklahoma City, and this bridge will become an iconic image for the millions of motorists who pass through our city. Let this be the first signal that we are serious about Core to Shore, and it also serves notice that we are raising the standards for design in this city. But there is much more to Core to Shore.

The Core to Shore plan is the result of a large and inclusive civic planning process, and it illustrates the benefits of building a large central park that connects the core of downtown to the shore of the Oklahoma River. Also central to the project is the at-grade boulevard that will replace the current I-40. This boulevard won’t just be a street that gets you from point A to point B. With this boulevard, we have the opportunity to create one of the most special streets in the United States.

This opportunity comes upon us because of the relocation of I-40. That relocation will remove the physical barrier that has separated downtown from the River and everything in between. Now, we have the opportunity few cities ever get. We can create a new urban center, just blocks from our central business district. The park and the boulevard are the lynchpins, and they serve as the catalyst for future retail, housing, and a potential Convention Center, which I’ll discuss in a moment.

A fully programmed urban park that ties to the Myriad Gardens and retail development along the new boulevard will be yet another eye-popping signal that Oklahoma City is moving forward. Combined with a public transit system that we can be proud of, a citywide sidewalk program that is already under construction, and a growing trend toward density in the inner-city, the park can be another giant step towards creating the pedestrian-friendly community that we desire. The timeline is doable. Keep in mind, the interstate should be relocated in 2012. The resulting boulevard that will be built along the current interstate alignment should be in place by 2014. The park, ideally, needs to be ready at the same time, roughly five years from now. But like an expansion of public transit, the park is not currently funded.

Together, better public transit and the creation of the Core to Shore park are significant “quality of life” amenities. You have heard me say before that nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come. I suggest that for transit and the Core to Shore park, that time has come.

You have heard me say before that nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come. I suggest that for transit and the Core to Shore park, that time has come.

The only decisions left are how we proceed and how soon.

And while these two initiatives are focused directly on the quality of life for our residents, we have a third important opportunity that focuses directly on our economy and indirectly on job creation. And that is a resolution to our undersized, and thus underutilized, convention center. We are in it today. This building was constructed in 1972 and was last improved in 1999. In 1999, we had one downtown hotel and it wasn’t doing all that well. Now we are soon to have seven downtown hotels and counting. And it appears they are all healthy. But we are currently losing convention business we could otherwise obtain because of the size of this facility.

Now, that didn’t stop us from securing a lot of other events. Let me mention two. Coming up this year in March is the American Choral Directors Association national meeting, which is bringing 4,000 people to Oklahoma City. And next year, the 2010 gathering of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. You know, I think my fellow mayors were just so sick of hearing me talk about Oklahoma City – that it couldn’t possibly be as great as I claim – that they finally just had to come see it for themselves. But that meeting, scheduled to occur in June, 2010, though large in influence, is not numerically much larger than the number of people gathered in this room. But there are dozens of other conventions that attract many thousands of people that we could also host, except that we don’t have the convention facilities. Everything else is in place. We have built a city that groups and organizations want to visit, but we don’t have room for them.

And tourism is a wonderful way to boost your local economy because it takes dollars that were generated somewhere else and it deposits them in your community. Listen to this – tourism in the last year for which we have data brought in 6.6 million visitors to Oklahoma City and accounted for 1.2 billion dollars in economic impact. That type of economic growth creates jobs, and not just tourism jobs, but jobs throughout the community. And our tourism is growing every year.

Our experience with MAPS in the 1990s taught us many things and perhaps above all, it taught us the wisdom of investing in ourselves. One thing we learned, however, is that by paying cash and building the projects as the dollars accumulate through sales tax, as opposed to taking on debt through a bond issue, it takes quite a while to get things built. MAPS was passed in 1993 and the final project, the Ron Norick Library, opened in 2004. Eleven years later. That kind of time lapse is another reason to put a new convention center on our list of priorities now. If we decided to vote on a MAPS 3 initiative in the next year or two, it would most likely be at least ten years from now before that convention center would open. By then, our convention center will be nearly 50 years old. It’s hard to argue with the theory that you need to replace your convention center every 50 years. In the Core to Shore planning process, the committee reserved a spot for a new convention center that would be near the boulevard and near the park. I believe we are approaching the time when we need to pursue that reality.

These three items are not the only good ideas. We also need to make some improvements along our outstanding and ever-growing river. In fact, each of us could come up with a list of items for MAPS 3, and thanks to our open idea process in 2007, you did. You may recall, two years ago in this address, we put out the call for entries. Over the next four months, we received over 2,700 ideas, 668 of which focused on transit. Each of your ideas probably has merit. But let’s just not forget the priorities: transit, the Core to Shore park, and the convention center. These ideas are fully-formed, they will continue our renaissance at the same pace we have grown accustomed to, and their time has come.

But let’s just not forget the priorities: transit, the Core to Shore park, and the convention center. These ideas are fully-formed, they will continue our renaissance at the same pace we have grown accustomed to, and their time has come.

All indications are that the vast majority of people in this community want to go forward. That same web site recorded that over 85 percent of respondents said they wanted to pursue a MAPS 3. It is evident that this community still has needs, and it still has ambitions. MAPS has been the vehicle for our progress, and it should remain so. But exactly ‘when’ we move forward is less clear, and that’s the conversation we’ll be having over the course of the next few months. We will come to a community consensus no later than the end of this coming summer. MAPS 3 is no longer a distant dream. The opportunity to continue this city’s momentum is before us. The opportunity to create jobs for the next generation, and therefore to keep our kids and grandkids in Oklahoma City is approaching.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Powered by Wordpress | WP Premium theme by WP Remix
Copyright 2007. OKC Central. All rights reserved

• Home
• RSS Feed
• Steve’s Website | NewsOK
• Steve Lackmeyer’s Bio
• Core to Shore
• Healthy Eating
• Business | NewsOK