Comments on: A Tale of Two Cities

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:58:21 +0000

The conventional wisdom to some is that many wonderful buildings were razed. Not so – in my opinion. Compare OKC now with OKC 40 years ago. Now: We have regular crowds of 18,000 at the new arena. Now: We have brisk traffic in Bricktown. Now: We have a good Redhawks baseball venue in Bricktown. Then: The 89ers did not draw well at the Fairgrounds. Then: Much of Downtown was in my opinion dead and hopeless. People totally avoided it.

Sure, we might like a do over on some of the the decisions. But overall OKC is much better than in 1960′s.

By: kent

kent — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:54:35 +0000

Whats eerie about this plan is how parts did happen in spite of everything. Note the water feature that was planned east of St Josephs church…. Its now the Murrah Building Memorial with its water feature. I’m thankful that alot of the buildings proposed in this plan never got built. We would have had a city of mundane concrete boxes with lineal windows. Boring Boring Boring.

By: Jeffrey

Jeffrey — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 03:30:36 +0000

I find comments like Pat and Digger’s amusing. Yes, OKC looked great . . . and very dense . . . on a flyby at 750 feet. But did you pay attention to the shots of what some of those streets actually looked like? The downtown you look back on and sentimentally mourn was a place you would have never gone, never taken your family, and never suggested to any of your out of town friends that they visit. If you had to do business downtown you would have made sure to be out by 6:00 to be safe. I am saddened that much of downtown OKC once looked like the bad part of Memphis. The dilapidation of downtown caused the immense suburban sprawl that many of you detest. The flight to the suburbs caused the deterioration of downtown businesses, schools, and churches, not urban renewal. I would hope that as you watch this you realize that IM Pei and the Urban Renewalites were desperately trying to SAVE downtown, not destroy it as many wrongly suggest. In retrospect some things were good, some were not, like just about everything you do in life.

I wonder what OKC citizens 50 years from now will say about our ideas of downtown, or will they be considered just as obsolete, outdated and wrong-minded as we believe the Pei plan was.

By: Kris Bryant

Kris Bryant — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 02:57:33 +0000

Those early renderings almost seem spooky to me. The cold, lifeless facades. The blank superblock structures. The renderings didn’t even include cars or people, and I’m pretty sure the outcome would have reflected that kind of desolation.

By: Larry OKC

Larry OKC — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 02:47:00 +0000

Interesting to say the least. 35 years later much of the same ideas and plans that we are talking about with Core to Shore etc.

By: Digger

Digger — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 17:37:09 +0000

The pedestrian scale of what used to be downtown was really wondrous.

By: OKC Ex-Pat

OKC Ex-Pat — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 17:11:07 +0000

Got a bit of a chill when they panned by where the Murrah Building would later be.

I’ve always wondered what downtown was like before urban renewal, and now I know. What a shame that was all lost. Seems like simple zoning changes and tax incentives would have done a lot more good than just tearing everything down. Downtown would be so much cooler now if we hadn’t torn out all those great buildings.

By: Jeffrey

Jeffrey — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 16:59:43 +0000

JF,”OKC, Second Time Around” by our own Mr. Lackmeyer answers much of your questions concerning the Biltmore.

By: JF

JF — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 12:07:18 +0000

That’s fascinating. Can’t wait to see part 2. It looks like the Biltmore hotel remained part of this vision. I wonder when it was decided to level that one. Thanks for posting this interesting bit of history.

By: Larry

Larry — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 05:31:36 +0000

Parts 1 abd 2 are very interesting in giving an insight to what the thought process was at that time. They obviously had some ideas that were similar to those that we have today only the means to achieving those ideas are very different.