Those people reveal themselves to be passionate one-issue people (there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that) who get really uncomfortable with anyone intruding on their “turf,” which they deem to be getting people from one place to another. The truth of the matter is that transit and highly walkable areas only complement each other, and need each other. Those people also appear to believe that streetcar/transit is some sort of panacea that will address every problem, which is not based in reality. Their position would be stronger if they recognized the limitations of their product and admitted that there is room for other solutions too.

Listen, I am not anti-streetcar in any way. I would probably be one of the people who uses it heavily. I am very familiar with the T, the L in Chicago, the streetcar in Portland, the Tube in London, and have seen or ridden several others. But even to compare streetcar to the T to the canal is an apples and oranges and watermelons comparison. A streetcar carries what..60-70 people? A train on the T carries at least a couple hundred. The canal extension is designed for thousands, at one time.

Streetcar is fantastic for downtown workers and residents looking for a ride from home to work to dining and entertainment. But nobody has yet answered the question of how that is supposed to address the need of 5,000 (or 10,000) people exiting an event at the same time. If you had 5 streetcars and pulled them all from regular service to dedicate to an exiting event (which would likely anger regular downtown users), you could carry only a tiny fraction of the convention attendees. Apparently nobody is thinking about the actual FUNCTION of a convention center.

Those people need a safe way to WALK to lunch and after-hours entertainment. The holy grail for the convention business is for a center to be a safe, convenient 5-10 minute WALK from hotels and entertainment. Currently, that exists, and it’s one of the reasons Bricktown and the current convention center are so successful. The place where they are looking to put the new convention center breaks that connection, and streetcar, as great as it is, does not address that very specific issue. Sorry.

Nick,
In every instance you listed, the use preceded the highway. Although the uses (bungalows, etc.) have been made to function adequately in these transformed locations, they were NOT originally intended to abut major highways. Nestling bungalows into the armpit of a highway interchange is NOT the best use for that land.

“Our city council leaders seem very ignorant concerning the principles of pedestrian-friendliness. I’m worried this is going to be a disaster…” – Kris Bryant

Kris, the city council has been surprisingly silent on the matter of Core to Shore. While we have to assume that they will support MAPS 3, obviously, I almost feel like the city council isn’t even very involved in the process. Ultimately they will be the deciders, but I don’t know how many original thoughts they have. I can’t judge for myself, because there is no known, 100% reliable way to determine the original thoughts of a largely silent group of people, with the exception of the Supreme Couty.

That said, I just wanted to point out that it wasn’t city council leaders that created the plan we deem as pedestrian-God-awful. It was actually an ensemble of local architects, Hans Butzer and Anthony McDermid (great guys..and I had Butzer for a class even), City Planner Russel Claus, and Sara MacLennon. MacLennon was the leader of a planning firm brought in (and paid about $100,000) to help design C2S. The firm was not even from within 1,000 miles of Oklahoma..I believe they had some planners from Denver and Omaha that I met at the public meetings in the Cox Convention Center. I have to question why people with no clue about Oklahoma City were brought in as the professionals behind the C2S project, when there are plenty of planning firms here in Oklahoma. Of course, there is a separate C2S Steering Committee, which does include city council, as well as dozens of community leaders.

“Everybody now… Let’s paint by numbers! (Bungalows abutting I-235/I-40??) Please, let’s give SOME credit to the real Planners.

The proposed convention center must function with the existing convention facilities. The design should first accommodate good functionality within THAT use, THEN good functionality with Bricktown. We can’t have both… (Partition the use with a strangely wide boulevard AND an elevated railway?!)

This can be batted around all day long, but unless “they” expose the C2S design to a public charrette none of our ideas will be considered. (A charrette would be a ridiculously unmanageable event and a futile exercise, unless those invited to attend had germane credentials.) Extreme interest and passion for the subject is good, but something more is needed to get us to the design table.” – Dennis Wells

Dennis, I don’t see the problem in having a bungalow neighborhod adjacent to I-35/I-40. The reality is that there is still a wide right-of-way separating the neighborhood from the freeway interchange that the intrusion is minimal, and the reality is that in cities all across America that are neighborhoods that back up to freeways. Crown Heights backs up to I-235 (and what will return to being a construction zone, at that) and the separation would be equal. Jefferson Park is right up against I-235. There are upscale neighborhoods off of I-35 in Edmond, and freeways all over the metro pass through close proximity to residential neighborhoods. A dense single-family unit neighborhood is the best use for that land, or else it will just go as dead space in the middle of the city.

The main reason I moved the convention center wasn’t because it wasn’t close enough to Bricktown, but because it was too close to the existing Coc Center and the Ford Center, and the park. I feel like it’s imperitive to break up these super-block structures or else we will be stuck with a huge vacuum of 24/7 activity in the middle of C2S. In order for the park impact to be fully realized on development, the park edge needs to be lined with as much development as possible, and as few super-block structures as possible. It happens to be a huge benefit that the alternative site is across the street from Bricktown. As for the boulevard in my alternative being huge and inhibiting access, I would say that’s wrong, and that’s actually one of the main points to my alternative. My alternative boulevard is mirrored after Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, and is the complete opposite of the Okie Champs Elysees that the C2S planners have envisioned.

“Here is a suggestion: It doesn’t take an artist to draw a city plan…let’s have a Core to Shore-off! Everybody draws their ideas, we post them here, and let the comments ensue.” -Andrew (Cuatro deMayo?)

This is a great idea. We don’t need a charrette, we just need for concerned citizens to show what they can do. I think that those of us that live and breath in OKC can design a far-better masterplan for Core to Shore than anyone that has to be paid in the ballpark of a hundred grand to come to Oklahoma. Seriously. We’re not talking about designing a real estate project; we’re talking about designing the center city of a community that is filled to the brim with talented, creative citizens.

I lived in Boston for seven years, working directly in the city the past two years, and I rode the subway and train almost every work day. I rode the Orange Line to the Back Bay, walked across Copley Square, and caught the Green Line at Copley. That is conventioneer ground central, as the Hines Convention Center is just up Boylston Street. I routinely saw tourists (all wearing badges, caps, t-shirts, and toting bags emblazoned with the logo of whatever conference they happened to be attending) eagerly walking around looking for the T stops or on the trains happily looking at the route maps. Boston public transit was, like Copley Square and the Public Garden, just another point of interest for visitors to the city. It was something to see and do…with the added benefit of being helpful to their efforts to get around.

Boston isn’t the only place, though, where transit systems are used by visitors or conventioneers. When I was driving across country to come back to OKC (just three days ago, in fact), I stopped for a night at the Cleveland Airport Marriot. I had no idea that Cleveland had a light rail system! You know how I found out? There was a conference of NASA scientists staying at the hotel and they were all abuzz about taking the RTA (Cleveland’s Regional Transit Authority) train into downtown Cleveland.

One more point. A streetcar system will connect all the hotspots of our growing downtown…and will then make moot the fact that 3/4 of a mile may be too long for some visitors. I don’t think it’s too long to walk, but some people might, and for those people, it sure would be nice if we built a system (not a rubber tire “trolley” but a real streetcar) to bring them to and fro and back again.