Sunday Flashback: Advice from the Urban Land Institute
In today’s Oklahoman I have a story about the Urban Land Institute arriving at yet another critical crossroads in development of Oklahoma City’s urban core. As this esteemed panel arrives today, I thought it might be interesting to look back at the ULI’s last visit:
City Manager Don Bown speaks as part of a ULI panel presentation following the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
City Told to Take Its Problems on Road Floridians Explain Workings Of Public-Private Partnership
By Ellie Sutter
Saturday, April 7, 1990
Edition: CITY, Section: NEWS, Page 04
Oklahoma City officials should visit other cities to see how they solved their urban renewal problems, two Jacksonville, Fla., experts advised Friday.
Jacksonville city councilman Terry Wood, immediate past president of the city council, and Mark Hulsey, immediate past chairman and chief executive officer of the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce, told about 100 Oklahoma City officials over breakfast how they tackled some of their city’s economic woes.
Their visit was sponsored by the Urban Land Institute District Council in association with the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce and Second Century Inc., a public-private corporation created to revitalize the city.
The Florida pair explained how their unique public-private partnership of the city council and chamber of commerce works to create development in their 800-square-mile city.
Hulsey said city officials are active participants in the chamber.
Wood said, “This way we don’t sit around and be surprised at what the chamber of commerce does. It’s not them, it’s us.”
Hulsey said a part of this partnership, the Jacksonville Community Council Inc., has produced enormous results.
The council forms a traveling group. After the group identifies a problem, it finds a city which has solved a similar problem and goes there to find out how they did it. Each member pays his or her own expenses, although there are a few chamber “scholarships” available, he said.
Hulsey said the group went to Minneapolis, looked at a restored theater, came home and restored a theater in downtown Jacksonville.
It traveled to San Antonio, came home and developed a river walk.
A trip to Seattle resulted in an automated skyway express.
In Indianapolis, Inc., the group learned about downtown housing and is working on this idea with a downtown church which owns 12 square blocks.
“We went to Japan to see the 10 largest banks in the world to get them to spend some money in Jacksonville and they did,” Hulsey said.
The group also visited mass incineration operations in Japan and Indianapolis.
He said that America must do something about its garbage problems or “We’ll be standing in it up to our necks.”
Jacksonville has started a recycling program which will become mandatory in 18 months.
Wood said his city also has an advantage in that for the past 21 years it has had a combined city-county government. There are 14 wards and five additional council members are elected at large, Wood said.
He said a combined government reduces squabbles between governments and is economical because duplicate departments are eliminated.
Oklahoma County District 1 Commissioner Shirley Darrell said later she did not believe combining Oklahoma City-Oklahoma County governments would work.
“We have 16 other cities (in Oklahoma County),” Darrell said.
She said she did not see Edmond wanting to give up its identity for this type of consolidation.
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Comments
Would we have to redraw some county lines to consolidate the city and county governments? Or is that even possible?
Steve: unrelated but the e-mail function isn’t working from the regular story level. Recently the Oklahoman has updated their feedback areas and in doing so they have wiped out all previously posted comments. I had reposted a comment to one of the stories and they have all been wiped out once again. Just checked a bookmarked story for added comments and they were wiped out (Core questions help shore up city plans). Now can’t even leave a comment at all. If you can let someone at the paper know of the bug. Thanks!
know this isn’t the preferred method but the paper’s electronic feedback methods seem to be broken (comment, e-mail etc). Thanks in advance and feel free to delete these 2 messages as you see fit.
I wish I was old enough to really remember details of downtown at this time,but I had just turned seven.
However, this time I am here, aware and will be present Friday morning at the ULI and really look forward to hearing what they have to say.
Brian J – “Interesting how Jacksonville is now looking to Oklahoma City for ideas.”
Unfortunately there is a slippery slope here, a trap that some in our city have fallen victim to.
There are a lot of people in Oklahoma City who think we invented downtown revitalization, when in reality the only truly innovative thing we have ever done is fund large-scale public works projects with a sales tax. That’s not discounting some of the great successes; only saying they have previously been done in other places.
Rebuilding of downtowns was going on elsewhere for years before we started doing it here. Other cities have had just as much or even more proportionate success with it as we have had. Yet we seem determined to ignore consultants’ reports and are disinclined to apply lessons from other cities to our own. The question is: how much of the ULI report will we listen to, and how much will we ignore?
Larry, it does look as if NewsOK is installing an updated comment system. Sorry if it’s screwing up threads over there, but discussion is much better over here anyway!
These “traveling groups” are a good idea.
No surprise that Commissioner Darrell believes that it would be a mistake to get rid of county government– it would put her out of a job. As an aside, I don’t see why Edmond would need Oklahoma County services, either. In fact, giving Edmond what limited powers Oklahoma County continues to exercise within its borders would make Edmond’s identity stronger, not weaker as Commission Darrell suggests.
How about another idea: scale Oklahoma County back so that all of incorporated Oklahoma City within its boundaries is excluded?