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Steve Lackmeyer columns from NewsOK

• Jim Brewer’s legacy built upon by his sons March 16, 2010
  It’s been more than a year since Jim Brewer, the larger-than-life figure who dominated Bricktown for 25 years, died.Read more on NewsOK.com […]
• Core questions help shore up city plans March 11, 2010
  A panel of development experts from the Urban Land Institute will arrive in Oklahoma City later this week to study plans for the Core to Shore project and make recommendations on how best to proceed.Part of me wishes I could be in the room as these experts meet with various downtown players and city planners.Read more on NewsOK.com […]
• Planning experts’ visit to city is turning heads March 9, 2010
  The Urban Land Institute spent one week in Oklahoma City, spoke to dozens of people, and came out with a report that seemed to have enough material to stun just about everybody.The panel of experts, led by former Indianapolis Mayor Bill Hudnut, a legend in the urban planning community, praised efforts to date for visioning the Core to Shore project area sout […]
• Urban land experts foretold future March 2, 2010
  The experts at the Urban Land Institute are back in town examining Core to Shore, and this weeklong visit marks the third such involvement by the group at a critical moment of development of the city’s urban core.Instead of looking forward today, I’m looking back — and going through the report issued in the months after the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murr […]
• Progress may be ugly in downtown Oklahoma City, but consider the results February 16, 2010
  A lot of people enjoy a good steak. But nobody enjoys watching the butchering of the steer.It’s difficult to recall another expression that so thoroughly explained the challenges facing city and business leaders as they attempted a MAPS-fueled makeover of downtown in the mid-1990s.Back then, MAPS was truly a four-letter word, with most people swearing they h […]
• Future appears bright for investment in city February 8, 2010
  Go back. Go way back to 1993.Read more on NewsOK.com […]
• Cellar Restaurant rose above its peers in city February 2, 2010
  In its heyday, the Cellar Restaurant was the ritziest eatery downtown, a place where the city’s most powerful each had a cubicle for their private liquor and a discreet table where deals could be done.It was Frank P. Johnson, onetime president of First National Bank & Trust Co., who built the Hightower Building in 1928 and opened the Cellar in the buildi […]
• Options seem limited for downtown school January 19, 2010
  Angela Banks, 16, likely will never get to enjoy learning in an Emerson High School renovated by MAPS for Kids.But that didn’t stop the student from participating in an hourlong public forum last week in which residents, educators and civic leaders discussed what should be done with one of the city’s oldest schools.Some decisions already have been made — mos […]
• Are Oklahoma City ghosts to blame for NBA Knicks’ loss? January 13, 2010
  Boo!It’s not Halloween, but some humiliated New York Knicks players are blaming ghosts for their trashing Monday by the Oklahoma City Thunder.It was inevitable, really, that the legend of the Skirvin Hilton Hotel’s 10th floor being haunted would become a national story.Read more on NewsOK.com […]
• Downtown set to see return of retail sales January 12, 2010
  With the recession still at full blast, retail leasing and development has entered a virtual freeze across the country. And with several hotel and residential projects on hold, one might think retail growth would also be at a standstill in downtown Oklahoma City as well.Think again.At this very moment at least four significant retail openings are pending dow […]