Interesting premise. Which I think really gets to the core of the discussions that have occured so far. My opinion is that the boulevard should be designed to complement the park or parks. The new I-40 should serve as the main artery to get the main throughfare traffic east or west. Therefore in my opinion the level of traffic that will need to be handled by the new boulevard should be low. Maybe on the numbers of what Reno handles today. I know traffic numbers have been discussed with general figures being thrown out by Speck, but I haven’t seen any traffic figures as to what the boulevard designers where baseing their plans on.

The boulevard should cater to the park…in the sense that it encourages pedestrians to naturally flow from the Myriad Gardens, across the boulevard, and on to the central park. As the latest Core to Shore report indicates, the boulevard should function as a bridge, not a barrier.

The boulevard should definitely cater to evolving downtown of 2030 or so… More than likely, traffic wise it will not carry even 10k so a decorative boulevard thru downtown and possibly recover some of the space for other purposes.

They should compliment each other equally, and their adjacent parts should be designed concurrently.

I-40 will always be a cancerous laceration that completely subdivides C2S’s North & South segments. In addition to the linear physical barrier of the wide roadways and median and shoulders and retainage structures etc., there are the nuisance-barriers of fumes and constant NOISE that will further increase the width of the barrier. It will function very much like the Berlin Wall… unless the passage gates are frequent, friendly, and wide.

If the boulevard is 6 lanes deep, plus switchback lanes etc., it will be ANOTHER barrier regardless of how well-designed it is.

An equally important question about the boulevard is what happens at its East and West ends, and how does it traverse the Shields/Railway wall? It’s easy to envision a beautiful boulevard from Exchange Avenue on the West to Bricktown on the East (except at the Shields/Railway wall), but what becomes of the rear-end of the industrial warehouse zone West of Exchange?

Development of a wonderful central park is easy compared to the challenges presented by I-40 and the boulevard…

I agree with Dennis . They should indeed compliment one another. However, I think the Boulevard should mimic the organic nature of the central park. If the boulevard’s design mimics an organic shape, I believe it will be much more inviting. It should not take away from the park’s atmosphere.

I like Liz’s idea, but take it a step further. Shut down the street to cars thru the park and make it all pedestrian. Cars can go around it. It could become a pedestrian mall similar to Boulder, Denver or Austin. That is, if we have to have a boulevard.

Too bad they didn’t put I-40 underground like they did in Boston.

Actually, it might work nicely if the boulevard were routed south of old I-40 so that the new convention center occupied the Ford dealership site and the existing I-40 space plus a bit more… This would give better proximity and critical mass to the convention/hotel district, and put the boulevard in its proper place between convention facilities and the park…

I like it.

Design the Boulevard to transform into part of a Formula 1 race track several times a year. Would create another big event for downtown every year.

Ed, that idea has been tried before. Didn’t work out too well – but I’d need to leave that bit of history for Blair Humphreys to retell.

Dag nab it :~)
Wish OKC could get a Nascar Track if they can’t do Formula 1

I think Broken Arrow has called dibs a few time on an Oklahoma NASCAR thing..

if the boulevard is raised, how could it possibly NOT interfere with the central park? that’s like building a dam and wondering if it might interfere with the flow of the stream.

A raised Boulevard is essentially the same thing as the current I-40 crosstown that is being relocated.

Both should compliment each other and believe the Mayor has said ideally both would be open at the same time (but unlikely).

Have to remember both Core to Shore (or the Central Park element of it) and the Boulevard are unfunded at this point. Even though MAPS 3 hasn’t even been voted on yet, the City has spent millions buying up property in the area thats said to be where the Central park will be located.

Although it sounds nice in theory and looks nice in the drawings, is there really even a NEED for a Boulevard? Downtown is already a convoluted mess of streets, does adding yet another street into the mix make things any better?

There seems to be a consensus that the Boulevard will serve as a barrier between downtown and C2S. Several articles have mentioned that the Boulevard will follow the same path as the current Crosstown (just be at street level). Has anyone bothered to look at a map? The crosstown is NOT a straight path and IF the Boulevard does end up following the same path there are going to be places where it crosses at very odd angles to existing streets and in some places will literally be within a few feet of existing streets.

Seems like a better idea would be to practice a reverse sort of eminent domain and return the crosstown property back to private ownership and encourage the development of said land. At the very least, the property would then be returned to the property tax rolls