By the way, based on a previous post, turning Sante Fe station into a community welcome center for OKC would seem to be a logical idea…just expand it under the tracks to open it up a bit and give access to the other side of the railway. There can be plenty of visitor orientation space with a small history of Bricktown/OKC museum area along with just small shops, food carts or convenience stores (like you would see in any major city rail station). But I digress.

With that in mind, my questions would be: Is this timeline still on the board? Who is currently putting together the MAPS3 proposal? Are there city council meetings being held either openly or in the background to resolve any differences of opinion between council members, civic leaders, Mayor’s office, etc.? Is public input still being actively sought by any person at the city level, and if so, by whom (a natural venue would be the MAPS3.org site, but this site no longer appears to be active)? Will there be any town hall-style meetings on MAPS3 for the public to be able to voice any ideas/concerns? If a member of the public wanted to get involved in some capacity with MAPS3 is there any current means of doing so? I probably have a dozen other questions about how the process alone is currently being run, not to mention the actual ideas out there, but I’ll leave it at that.

1. I don’t like the overall size of the proposed downtown park. I have never heard of a reason that this park can’t be much, much larger. If the city were to buy every square foot of land in south of I-40 to the river would be best. Build a PGA style golf course, fishing ponds, a beach area, horse trails, dog parks, kids playgrounds, nature center, sports areas, etc.

2. I am not sure about the location of the convention center. I believe that the “Cotton Gin Location” makes more sense.

3. The transit needs to be very detailed to get my vote. Something small, would be a good start. Build confidence in the system then look to expand.

4. A Canal extension sounds good, but the existing Canal has so much wasted space (parking lots, vacant canal hill, blighted canal level buildings, poor designs by Residence Inn), that sits there year after year.

The mayor is right about needing to do this soon, if we want to keep doing MAPS at all. Once we drop the tax for a while, reinstating it would truly be a tax increase, and harder to sell.

The mayor is wrong about keeping his plans close to his vest. The city council, the media, and the public need to be involved.

A plan with no council/public input is at risk of failure, as is a plan that spends more on the developers (convention center) than on the people (transit). The central park concept is obviously a boon to developers, but the public might see it as a great place for them too. Also, a transit plan with no commuter portion is only a sop to those residents who want transit and have been working for it for years.