The Oklahoman's Steve Lackmeyer covers downtown OKC brick by brick.

Archive for

What is the Best Blog inTown?

That’s a difficult question for me to answer. My juvenile side has a particular favorite, a site I won’t name but I suspect most of you know about (if you don’t, ask the closest 20-something in your office and they’ll tell it to you).

Then there’s www.dustbury.com. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I admit to getting story ideas from this incredible general interest site that offers Charles Hill’s thoughts on everything from cars to computers to politics to women’s shoe fashions.

But if I had to pick a favorite, it has to be www.dougdawg.blogspot.com. Some of the most influential people in town keep tabs on this site by Doug Loudenback (important people at both City Hall and the Greater OKC Chamber have courted his opinion). Now, more than ever, it’s essential daily reading if you’re interested in the city’s past, present or future.

---

Downtown OKC 2020: Nick Roberts

 

Nick has been very kind to me in that he could have said “hey idiot, you didn’t run all the Downtown OKC 2020 posts!” Instead, he simply asked if all had been run. Well, he, better than I, sadly, knew the answer to this. Because Nick had one great guest blog post I’ve not run.  With posts titled “Why Core to Shore Sucks” on his blog www.downtownontherange.blogspot.com and his new downtown blog http://downtownokclist.blogspot.com it’s encouraging to see 20-somethings like Nick so in tune with the community but also willing to challenge the status quo. It gives me hope that our city’s resurgence isn’t close to being done. Now, here’s Nick’s thoughts on what’s ahead for Downtown Oklahoma City:

Seems like just yesterday it was 2000. I had just graduated from kid’s meals to big kid’s meals, and all of my teachers in junior high believed the world was coming to an end..in the end though, all everyone got was a killer computer virus. Britney Spears had just hit it big, along with NSync, the Backstreet Boys, and Jennifer Lopez. It was a simpler time. In Downtown Oklahoma City, leaders were beginning to brace for an expected wave of investment in the inner city after the completion of MAPS 1. Again, it was a simpler time. In the end, what they had anticipated was exceeded again and again and again by what actually came to fruition. Nobody had predicated that the post-MAPS surge in Downtown would have been near as wildly successful as it has been.

Today I think it’s possible we’ve gotten a little full of ourselves. We all need to take a big step backward, try as we might, and remove ourselves from our place in order to get an accurate picture. In order to visualize Downtown OKC in 2020 we have to visualize Downtown OKC in 2000, and 1990, and so on. Most importantly I think we need to visualize Downtown OKC in 1920, 1930, and 1940. OKC needs to go back to the future to a time when it had excellent downtown parks, a great streetcar network, and downtown vibrancy. This period was undoubtedly the golden era for Downtown, so as we turn not to the nearest Core to Shore planner, Chamber exec, or out-of-town planning corporation but instead to our own local historians and downtown buffs, we could gain from looking at all of the grand schemes that never made it to fruition. This spirit behind Core to Shore is nothing new, OKC has always had a uniquely strong desire to want to reinvent itself as the next Seattle. The bottom line is that while there has been a major plan every 10 years or so that came up, there has only been ONE of these grand schemes ever since the 1940s that actually was successful in the end. That was the Metropolitan Area Projects passed in 1993.

That’s not to say that if I.M. Pei’s Urban Renewal was successful, it wouldn’t have been a cool thing, or that if the String of Pearls had been successful, it wouldn’t have been a cool thing, and so on. I am sure there is a lot I don’t even know about, but I do know this: MAPS is the only thing out of everything we’ve tried to actually arbitrarily add value to downtown that was successful. Because MAPS was successful doesn’t mean that MAPS 3 has to be successful, either, success does usually breed more success. The momentum we have going right now is great, and we can’t risk loosing it. The results of MAPS 3 will just be beginning to be seen in 2020, and it will either be all the difference in making that giant leap forward, or it will just keep OKC on its secondary-city track.

The bottom line is that I don’t owe any allegiance to Oklahoma City, in fact, almost none of us do. I have a great amount of admiration for the small few who actually feel compelled that way, however, the deal is that I am a student about to have my Master’s, and I live in a part of the world where luckily I’m free enough to move from one city to another as I want. Personally, I’m a lot more likely to chose a city based on how comfortable I feel there, rather than settling down where my family is. Why should I move to OKC after I graduate, instead of Seattle, Calgary, Austin, Charlotte, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Vancouver, Dallas, Houston, or Atlanta, and so on and so forth? OKC’s task to be competitive is most daunting because, while critics will argue for a slower pace and say that you can’t make up for 50-60 years of decline in 10 years..if this is going to work anytime soon, it is going to have to come close.

The reason I should consider settling down in OKC is that I believe OKC can be just as competitive as any given city. There is no reason why OKC can’t be the next Seattle. It’s a matter of playing your cards right, investing in yourself, and keeping the boastful civic pride alive. Pride is a commitment that shows through in every thing you do, and Oklahomans should be proud of the city they have set in motion recently, yet cognizant that there is a long ways to go, and mindful that mistakes being made here and there in small places have indeed been holding OKC back. Core to Shore poses a wide array of mistakes about to be made, and brilliant ideas that deserve high praise.

My advice is to listen to Jeff Speck and completely rethink Core to Shore. Extend the timeline on the projects designed to stretch urban infill all the way to the river (but not the ones close to the CBD), and consider breaking up super-block structures. Is it really a good idea to have a contiguous clump of 20+ blocks (central park, new convention center, ford center, cox center, myriad gardens, and more) that isn’t broken up by development? I think that sort of just turns the central park into a front lawn for the new convention center, but that’s just me. Having this huge cluster of civic space in the middle just turns the streets into dead space that isn’t immersed by a vibrant neighborhood.

The boulevard is obviously a waste of money and a bad idea that will backfire. Instead of encouraging pedestrian walkability, it will hinder it by being as wide if not wider than the current Crosstown Expressway. In truth, walking across the current Crosstown is far easier than crossing this proposed 8/10-lane boulevard, you just have to start walking and hope a berm holding up the highway doesn’t come down and pulverize you.

The convention center and central park also need to be reconsidered. The two sites need to be separated, or else I fear that the central park will just turn into a front lawn for the convention center as I said earlier. The convention center needs to be moved to just across the boulevard from Lower Bricktown, where OKC Rocks is. The OKC Rocks silo can be creatively incorporated into an ultra-modern convention center/convention hotel complex that would be the toast of the architecture world. The central park needs to avoid copying Millennium Park item-for-item, which is probably what will happen. If we do so, the park will never get near the notoriety of Millennium Park but instead just be a footnote of, “Oh yeah, and then in Oklahoma, _______, and _______ they also copied this pretty much.”

The focus of Downtown OKC right now needs to be achieving a critical mass of housing, ASAP. There’s no doubt that there is demand for a real downtown filled to the brim with a multitude of housing options, the glaring problem with that however is that nobody wants “downtown living” when the lots surrounding you are still mud pits that aren’t breaking ground on development anytime in the near future. It’s a massive scar on people’s romanticized vision of “downtown living” in all its glory. There isn’t a doubt in my mind that this will change, and that more housing will slowly break ground (hopefully as soon as the credit markets thaw, OKC will benefit from being a stable market that gets a lot of investment from outside). The current rate that we’re moving on housing development just isn’t good enough.

To my knowledge, there aren’t very many developments that broke ground and exceeded my expectations after they were finished. The Centennial is one of the few, Block 42 is another that exceeded my expectations. The Legacy at Arts Central looks nothing like the renderings, the Maywood Park projects might not move forward, The Hill is just a disaster in the making, and not to mention the dozens of developments that never got past the drawing board. The national economy has been the culprit 99% of the time, so it’s hard to blame any particular developer. You just have to keep downtown going and hope that some of these projects will stick, and make it a more attractive environment for more.

Downtown streetcar is probably the thing that can get development rolling the fastest. It would have an incredible array of uses beneficial to downtown, but it’s main attribute would be in attracting investment. Developers can see the rails in the ground, and the wires above the street, and know that the train will pass through here regularly. When you see a bus stop sign, you don’t have the same confidence, and you don’t feel like you’re along a fixed transit line, because you aren’t. The much maligned city buses and Spirit Trolleys aren’t cutting it, whereas rail could solve our parking problem, effectively circulate pedestrians through downtown, and create pedestrian-friendly corridors that cross downtown. There is no other alternative, not even “bus rapid transit” that can do this. I promise, if Oklahoma City passes MAPS 3 and builds a streetcar system, not only will it go to good use, but it will be the development impetus needed in order to build up a critical mass of downtown housing quickly.

When I look in my crystal ball at how Downtown OKC will appear in 2020, I occasionally see things from the point of view of a skeptic that is underwhelmed by the downtown development that actually has happened, and then more often I see things from the point of view of an optimist that is amazed at the potential of everything happening. It is my great hope that OKC can emerge from these great attempts as an urban, walkable, clean city where everyone would want to live. In 2020 I want to see very few vacant lots in the formerly-called “Triangle” area (most of which is Deep Deuce) and MidTown. I hope that there will be a grand ceremony unveiling a brilliant new central park. I hope that whatever concept is chosen for the boulevard, it works as intended. I hope that the convention center is something we can all be proud of, which for $250-400 million, it had better be. This convention center has the potential to bring in thousands of business visitors a week, so it deserves the bells and whistles. Obviously the new Devon Tower, which will be about 7 years old in 2020, will have become a symbol of Oklahoma’s urban resurgence. It’s important that Oklahomans take seriously the idea of “an urban OKC” or else people outside of Central Oklahoma certainly won’t, and nothing will have changed.

The people of OKC, who have to be the most wonderful people I have ever known, deserve a Great American City, one that can be listed among the ranks of places like Dallas, Seattle, Minneapolis, and Atlanta. OKC can be well on its way to achieving this by 2020.

-Nick Roberts

---

OKC Back in the AFL?

Casey Cornett brings this to our attention via Twitter: ESPN reports new AFL league emerging.

---

Is The Moratorium Being Ignored?

That’s my question after seeing another excellent photo essay by Doug Loudenback, this time on construction of the new Interstate 40 Crosstown Expressway. One photo captures a new billboard awaiting the highway’s opening to bring some billboard company a lot of money.

But here’s the catch: the city council banned billboards along the new highway a few years ago. Is anyone at City Hall watching to ensure the law isn’t violated? Or did we see another case of a permit “accidentally” being granted by public works (I say “accidentally” because I still don’t buy the last time this excuse was given).

---

MAPS 3: The Ballot

The projects promoted by the mayor aren’t on the ballot. They will be on a council resolution of “intent” on how to use the tax proceeds. A resolution is non-binding and can be changed or nullified at any time by a vote of at least five council members at any time after the ballot is passed.

The original 1993 MAPS ballot listed all of the projects that were to be funded by the tax (to see copy of ballot found by Doug Loudenback, go here).  A court ruling later determined such an all-or-nothing ballot cannot be duplicated. The council is set to decide Tuesday whether to submit this ballot to voters on December 8.

Discussion?

---

Each Day is Precious

In June my son and I took a trip to Dallas where I got to stay with my old friend Ryan McNeill and his wife at their apartment in West End. The view of the skyline from their apartment is stunning – and this was the building I admired most each time I woke up and looked out the window.

I’m stunned to see the following story.

---

Jim Cowan on MAPS 3 – the Lost Post

I hate database conversions.

It’s painful. And sometimes things get lost. I could explain everything that happened. Instead, I’ll let the smart guy do it:

Alright, the blog is back up. We had to move all of your posts and images from the former resting place to a new installation and just clone the look of the old OKCCentral.

Here is a quick rundown of what happened. Due to the fact that we had to move all of your content as quickly as we did I haven’t had time to look into all the factors leading to the problem. Basically, the JavaScript that was used to embed the video player from News 9 was interfering with JavaScript that controlled several parts of your blogs (the search area, tabs, and multiple admin features). When troubleshooting the issue I began deactivating all of the sidebar widgets to make sure it wasn’t something in one of those that was causing the issue.

After deactivating all of the sidebar widgets I pulled down the News 9 video post. When I went back to the widgets to put them back up after figuring that the JS in that post was the problem I found that all of the widgets in the admin had disappeared and were not available to repost. I looked for about 20 to 30 minutes for an answer to this new problem but decided to go with the backup plan and export all of your blogs content, create a new blog and then import it back in.

Upon doing this we lost some of the posts, among these was the post that had the News 9 video JS. Sorry about that. I think there were other drafts that didn’t make it over as well, but I didn’t take thorough inventory before making the switch.

You have all the rest of your content ready to go. Let me know you are missing anything else.

Nick

Nick Tankersley

Web Editor

NewsOK.com

This left us without one of the most interesting posts of the week. The post in question here consisted of just the video, and it was really nothing spectacular. But as is often the case, it was the comments that followed that were most interesting.

A reader helped recover some of the comments. After doing some more online sleuthing, etc., I’ve recovered the rest. What follows is the entire conversation that followed the rather dull video:

Comment by Doug Loudenback on September 19, 2009 @ 3:44 am That was a pretty shallow interview, in my opinion, perhaps the main fault lying with the interviewer for failing to aske the right questions, I don’t know. A fairly halting (in speech) Jim Cowan was never asked about the location of the convention center or other specific impacts of the MAPS III proposal upon Bricktown, and he only gave glossy generalizations which shed no light upon a MAPS III/Bricktown analysis. Weak. Very weak.

————————-

Comment by Jim on September 19, 2009 @ 7:33 am

Doug:

Every Friday I do a segment on News 9 to talk about “what’s going on in Bricktown”. It is usually in the Bricktown Studios, but occasionally I do it in studio like this. It is always very casual in nature.

The intent of the interview was not Maps 3, but since it had just been announced the day before, it made sense to discuss it.

——————————-

Comment by Doug Loudenback on September 19, 2009 @ 9:08 am Well, maybe it was just that the right questions were not being asked.

It did come up, of course, and so in the discussion it was a natural (to me) go consider the matter of the convention center location, given concern about that by former mayor Humphreys and others. It isn’t clear to me whether the convention center location is fixed in the Maps III proposal. Sorry if I was overly critical, no foul intended. But that’s how it sounded to me. Lots of smiles, little substance.

————————–

Comment by Nick Roberts on September 19, 2009 @ 9:54 am I thought the interview would have been a lot better had Jim been allowed an opportunity to discuss why moving the proposed convention center to the better location would help Bricktown avoid becoming the next West End.

Not only is it better from Bricktown that the convention center be moved just south of Bricktown, but also it’s better for Core to Shore in my opinion, because I don’t want the park to turn into a ‘front lawn’ for the convention center.

————————————-

Comment by Doug Loudenback on September 19, 2009 @ 10:14 am Jim, listening again, I see that you made an opportunity when you began talking about the new convention center and then quickly went to street cars and then your visit to Charlotte and discussion about the white water rafting area there.

So, you did give yourself a place where the convention center location could have been brought up — perhaps you thought this wasn’t the time or place, or perhaps convention center location isn’t that important to Bricktown?

—————————-

Comment by steve lackmeyer on September 19, 2009 @ 12:35 pm Guys, why don’t you come up with a lit of questions for Jim and maybe he can answer them on this site.

——————————————————–

OK. Here are mine, keeping the list simple:

Jim, if you will, here you are:

1. Is it your understanding that the convention center’s location is settled?

2. If so, what is your understanding – south of the Ford Center or south of Lower Bricktown in the Cotton Oil area?

3. Whether or not the location is settled, which location would better serve Bricktown’s vitality and growth? Why?

- Doug Loudenback

—————————————

Doug asks some great questions. To avoid duplicating them I’ll just copy his as my first three.

1. Is it your understanding that the convention center’s location is settled?

2. If so, what is your understanding – south of the Ford Center or south of Lower Bricktown in the Cotton Oil area?

3. Whether or not the location is settled, which location would better serve Bricktown’s vitality and growth? Why?

_______________________

4. If MAPS1 was about Bricktown and MAPS3 ends up being about an area that currently does not exist south of downtown, does this pose a major threat to Bricktown’s long-term vitality?

5. What has been keeping Bricktown from growing into the kind of “complete” urban district with an even mix of housing and business?

6. Does Bricktown actually need an even mix of housing in order to sustain neighborhood growth in the long-term?

7. The Canal Extension proposal put out by the Bricktown Association, was that the route merchants were most comfortable with?

(I really like the idea of a canal extension but that proposal just made me cringe from an urban planning perspective)

8. Do you think a canal extension down Sheridan, into the Myriad Gardens would achieve the same desired result of “finishing the canal” and connecting it to the action across downtown?

- Nick Roberts

 

———————————————

Doug/Nick, great questions…

1. From what I have heard said publically, the site hasn’t been determined.

2. It sure seems like the City is leaning towards the site just South of the Ford Center.

3. The Cotton Gin site would be better for Bricktown, but the other site would work if there is a plan on how to connect it to Bricktown.

4. I don’t think it’s fair to say that Maps 1 was “about” just Bricktown. The Canal and Ballpark were just two of nine projiects. The renovations to the Cox Center and building of the Ford Center both had positive impacts on Bricktown, but also helped all of Downtown.

The Core to Shore project can be a huge asset for all of downtown, depending upon how it is developed. It’s the details on “how” that many merchants in Bricktown will be interested in following.

It’s really this simple, as major development happens all on all sides of Bricktown, we believe it’s in the district’s best interest to maintain or create some form of Connectivity to it. That is the best way for Bricktown to grow long term.

---

The New Devon Tower Gets a Place Marker on Google

That means it’s got to be a done deal, right? Of course Google maps is still missing several new hotels, housing developments, two garages in its aerial photos. And when this photo was taken the Colcord was still Class C office space.

---

MAPS 3: The Renderings

The Greater Oklahoma City Chamber has launched its campaign site for MAPS 3 and it looks like the city council will vote 8-1 next week to send the ballot to voters. It’s always interesting to see the campaign renderings, though one must realize these renderings are just that – campaign renderings – and the project designs will likely change quite a bit before everything is said and done (assuming MAPS 3 passes).

These renderings show what’s being proposed for downtown. Despite assurances by the mayor and others that no site is chosen yet for the convention center, it’s interesting to note nobody is budging from the Core to Shore site. The folks in Bricktown are quite afraid city leaders won’t reconsider the site and will continue to put all their emphasis on Core to Shore at the expense of Bricktown restaurants and merchants. That said, the Bricktown Association is listed as endorsing the ballot on the www.yesformaps.com website by the chamber.

So what are your thoughts?

---

Coffee Talk: Transit

I’ve been battling a bad cold this week and I’m struggling to keep up with everything. Today I’m going to rely on you the readers to keep this site interesting. So, here goes… do you approve or disapprove of how MetroTransit has operated the Oklahoma Spirit rubber tire trolleys. If you disapprove, why, and then explain why or why not MetroTransit should be trusted to operate a streetcar system as is being proposed as part of the MAPS 3 ballot.

---