Not Everyone Will Be Happy to See This
Cosair Cattle Co., which owned some of downtown’s boarded-up buildings for years only to flip them for prices observers felt were inflated, now owns this gem of a building on Main Street. Property records show Cosair bought the building from the Downtown Baptist Mission for $330,000 on July 31. Maybe, just maybe, folks can hope for something better this time around. To be fair, the Smith brothers have started improving some of their buildings following some significant sell-offs in MidTown.
What's the Easiest Way to Get My Comments Yanked at OKC Central?
1. Use racial slurs, personal attacks.
2. Hijack discussions with unrelated topics.
3. Lie about your identity/steal someone else’s identity.
What won’t get you yanked:
- Question and debate posts by the blog’s host.
- Engage in meaningful, great discussions.
If you find your comments missing, either they’ve got caught up in the spam filter or you now know they’re never going to appear on this site.
Downtown OKC 2020: Jim Stafford
Today’s Downtown OKC 2020 guest blogger is former Oklahoman collegue Jim Stafford, who is now working with i2e in the Oklahoma Health Center. Jim is your typical Edmond suburbanite who has suddenly found himself bitten with the downtown bug. He says he’s not qualified to comment – I disagree.
I never thought of myself as a downtown kind of guy. I live in far north Oklahoma City with a fashionable Edmond address. I worked up north along the Broadway Extension. Then one day I changed jobs and found myself working as close to downtown as one can get without actually working there – in the Presbyterian Health Foundation Research Park on the OU Health Center campus.
The Oklahoma Health Center - perhaps the most important downtown district that isn't quite downtown.
So now I often venture into downtown to eat lunch and to visit the post office and the offices of friends in Leadership Square. Sports keeps me downtown at night a lot because I enjoy the Redhawks games in Bricktown. My family shares Thunder season tickets with my mother-in- law.
With all that said, I’ve been following the debate over the future of downtown largely through this blog and Steve Lackmeyer’s articles in The Oklahoman. I’m not sure that I have the passion for downtown that Steve is looking for in this, but I will share my point of view on the future of downtown in 2020.
By 2020, there must be light rail service both within downtown and TO downtown from outlying suburban areas such as Edmond and Norman. Once upon a time Oklahoma City had trolleys that went north , south, east and west. I think it’s imperative that we have that again, only this time extend rail into the suburban areas in every direction. And trains need to run from early morning to early morning seven days a week with frequent departures. Oh, and it will have to connect to downtown to the airport, too.
Maybe I have a one-track mind, but I think last year’s gas price run- up proved that we can no longer depend upon automobiles to get us to and from work or to and from shopping and entertainment. Let’s invest in ourselves and ensure that we CAN get to downtown in 2020.
In the past six years I’ve visited six major cities from San Francisco to Atlanta and they all have rail that made it convenient to get into town from the airport — and lots of other places. I didn’t take a cab in any of them. OK, one: San Diego.
I’m intrigued by the city’s Core-to-Shore plans, but know that we need to iron out the future of our intracity transportation first. Let’s hope that I’m not out here alone on an island shouting into the wind and that the rest of Oklahoma City will support a public transportation plan that includes rail as a key factor.
Too Quiet
Yeah, I know, I’ve skipped posting a couple of days. I’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, coffee talk time! Today’s question: Should the proposed Core to Shore central park be designed to compliment the boulevard that will replace I-40? Or should the boulevard be designed to complement the central park?
And guess who has a very definite opinion on this question?
The Journey: Can We Have a Different Kind of Discussion About Parking?
Going through photos from my trip to Texas, I have so much more to talk about. Let’s start with this sign – one of several uniform parking signs I discovered in Deep Elum:
It’s a sharp looking sign – far nicer than what we see used in Bricktown, though it’s also an obvious way to bombard visitors with more display advertising.
Comparing the signs, they both have their pros and cons. The Deep Elum is sharper looking, though it really delivers less information than the Bricktown sign. The Bricktown sign, meanwhile, adds nothing to the look or vibe of the area and some might consider sign clutter.
But can we learn from other downtowns in terms of parking signage? In 2008 the following real time parking information signs were installed throughout downtown San Jose , California.
What a great idea. A sign that not only directs you to available parking but also gives you some comfort spaces might be available when you arrive.
Which leads me to wonder: what would happen to the appearance of downtowns’ streets if the kind of sophisticated design of the Deep Elum signs were combined with the usefulness of the San Jose signs?
And here’s yet another thought to ponder: I’ve read articles about downtowns across the country going from one-hour to two-hour parking. With the new “boot” enforcement now approved by the city council, what would be the harm of giving a bit back to visitors by letting them have that extra hour? In many ways we’re still operating under rules and practices dating back to the 1950s. Could something be gained by advancing ahead a few decades?
Before We Dismiss What Buildings Remain Standing in Core to Shore…
Candidates for Demolition? Not under Urban Renewal.
The same buildings today - home to the Deep Deuce apartments clubhouse.
The Littlepage Building - boarded up and ugly, right? Once again, the Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority chose a new course of direction and required developers to build around the blight.
The Littlepage Building today - home to Sage Cafe and Gourmet Market, a corporate furnishings store and apartments upstairs.
Another building that needed a savior and could have been torn down in the name of progress.
Maybe it's easy to write this building off - the north facade's windows are broken and covered with graffiti as city officials have turned their backs on building maintenance in the area.
The same building in its heyday - once home to the Oklahoma City branch of International Harvester.
Another building that doesn't appear in any Core to Shore plans.
Yet another building not shown in Core to Shore plans.
Definitely not shown in Core to Shore plans. Once the original Film Exchange building.
While no other buildings have the architectural significance of Little Flower Church and Union Station, several notable older buildings, such as the Latino Community Development Agency building, contribute to the character of the area and could be incorporated into development projects if economically feasible.”
Going Back to the Journey
Downtown Dallas - stunning architecture, but ...
A few weeks back I traveled to Dallas and had this to say:
Downtown Dallas is missing something.
None of it really links together. The streets aren’t walkable. Downtown Dallas has a lot of “districts,” but not one of them, not even West Village, is enough to rise up and say “this is Dallas!”
Looking back, my criticism of some of the newest development in downtown Dallas didn’t go far enough. To be blunt, if having a W Hotel in Dallas is considered tops, I’ll take the Skirvin and Colcord over that any day. I’m sorry, but the W is like everything else around it. The Victory area architecture, in particular, is one great tribute to self-absorbed architects who clearly spent little to no time trying to figure out how it could all relate to life on the street.
Friday afternoon in Victory, downtown Dallas. Lifeless.
An editorial in yesterday’s Dallas Morning News nails it home:
What downtown Dallas needs more of: street-level bustle that entices worker-bees out of their cubicles and draws people at night and on weekends. What downtown Dallas has enough of: indifferent, monumental buildings whose sole contribution to urban life is bulk.
The drawing looks great. And I’m sure similar drawings were released before Dallas city leaders began construction of the Victory development. But the razzle dazzle of the drawings often cause you to overlook what’s missing:
What is different in this picture of Victory in downtown Dallas and the rendering of what's envisioned for Core to Shore?
It’s too clean, too tidy, too spectacular to have life. To have soul. To have character. To have a personality.
And inevitably, if Core to Shore is come to pass, it will likely mean the demolition of buildings like these:
Imagine this building not as it is, but what it was and what it could be. It stands where Mayor Mick Cornett and the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber have suggested building a convention center as an anchor for Core to Shore.
No Such Thing as Free Parking?
The free parking that Americans love isn’t really ‘free’ at all. A recent parking garage project in New Haven, Conn., for example, cost more than $30 million for almost 1,200 spaces – that’s more than $25,000 per space. If you were to finance it using a mortgage, the actual cost would be over $40,000 per space. This breaks down to roughly $135 a month, or $1,600 a year per space – not including externalities like the air pollution and congestion created by increased trips drawn by cheap parking. Even when garages and meters charge for parking, they rarely charge the real value of the parking space. (In Vauban, by contrast, drivers must purchase a parking space in the garages at $40,000 each.) All this amounts to a massive subsidy. Shoup calculates that in 2002 the total subsidy just for off-street parking was between $127 and $374 billion (for comparison, the budget for national defense that year was $349 billion).
Read the whole story here.
Are the Bricktown Water Taxis Among the Best?
Are the Bricktown water taxis among the best?
From Kim Searls at Downtown Oklahoma City:The International Downtown Association (IDA) is working with USA Today in preparation of a travel column this month featuring the 10 best boat rides along rivers, canals and other waterways in North America.
IDA is looking to feature big cities and small towns with good geographical representation across the region. IDA has developed the following survey and plans to supply the results to USA Today.
Vote here.
Please take a moment to vote yes for Oklahoma City and indicate reasons why the Bricktown Canal and Bricktown Water Taxi should be included on this list.
Please respond by August 10, 2009.
If You've Got to Ask …
It wasn’t him.
