Is All of the Information Presented to the Board of Adjustment Accurate?
SandRidge Energy attorney Frank Hill told the board the India Temple, YMCA and Kermac buildings were all empty for three decades. But then we hear this:
My name is Brian Young. Back in March 2006, I was hired by Kerr McGee as a legal contractor to work on environmental litigation. Initially, 5 of us were assigned to go through various reports and files. Due to the quantity of files for this particular project, there was no room in the regular Kerr McGee tower for us to go through everything. So KM put all of us over in the India Temple building. At some point, our employment shifted from Kerr McGee to Tronox (in fact, I think it shifted within the first week or so)
I worked there from March 2006 until January of 2007, when the project was completed. The number of people working in that building varied over the course of the year, but it ranged from 5 people up to about 10 or 12. We worked on the 4th floor of India Temple. All the lighting, electrical outlets, and plumbing still functioned. Kerr McGee/Tronox sent over some IT guys that summer to hook up computers and high speed internet access. They ran standard ethernet cables through the walls and ceiling as well.
The only safety hazards we ever encountered were a warning that the middle of floor could not hold the hundreds of file boxes we were searching through (we had up to 200 on the floor at one time with no issues), and difficulty in going down the old emergency stairs when a transformer exploded and left half of downtown without power (there were no emergency lights installed in the stairway and they had to send over someone with a flashlight).
Now, no one may have had their permanent office in that building, but it was continuously in use. While I only worked on that one project, my understanding is that the India Temple building was where KM sent various overflow projects that were too large to handle in their tower.
We’ve also heard over and over again from those supporting demolition of the buildings that if they were good candidates for redevelopment that a person would have done so long ago. But then Doug Loudenback reminds of this 2005 comment by former Kerr-McGee Chief Executive Luke Corbett:
Corbett said his company has fielded numerous offers for the properties over the past decade, but he said the ideas or timing was never quite right.
“What’s captured our attention is what has happened to the downtown area after MAPS,” Corbett said. “If you look at the momentum we have in this city and the growth that’s occurring downtown, it’s breathtaking.”
Thank you for joining our conversation on OKC Central. We encourage your discussion but ask that you stay within the bounds of our commenting and posting policy.
Comments
Keep the feet to the fire Steve, those high-priced Sandridge attorneys are very persuasive, but good at dodging questions.
I am with Jeffrey. So what? Maybe he was referring to documented, permanent tenants. It was illegal to do run the IT stuff over there without a permit.
Find the permit to do the work over there back in 2005. You won’t find it because if they did it legally, then the building would have had to been brought up to code. That, my friend, is a city ordinance.
What it comes down to is proof, and how many more of SandRidge’s erroneous assertions we should let them get away with as they argue the case for the largest building demolition downtown has seen since the 70s. We all know how that one went, and we all regret what we lost.
How the one in the ’70s went is a matter of opinion and believe it or not there are more opinions about that than just yours Nick.
My gosh, what was the total number of buildings taken out in urban renewal and what percentage of those were truly irretrievable treasures? 10%, 20%, 30%. Do you regret 100% of the buildings taken out? Lots of those buildings absolutely needed to go. The jury is still out on Urban Renewal in OKC in my opinion.
So there’s a way to support socialism and civic building monopolies? Only a few irretrievable treasures: 5+ downtown theaters, streetcars, the rail terminal, numerous department stores, Baum Building, County Courthouse, Delmar Garden/Wheeler Park, Biltmore skyscraper, Overholser Opera House..and like 50+ other notable buildings among the hundreds that were razed.
Downtown skyscrapers aren’t tear-down shacks that land values outweighs building value.
Urban renewal was an authority that coerced an unpopular vision of tearing down distinctive, well-designed, sturdy, and beautiful buildings and replaced them with either nothing or buildings that were of markedly less quality in every regard, save for maybe 4 skyscrapers. That is not defensible. Then consider that it ruined downtown investment–it is now impossible to get a downtown project off without significant local incentive. The economics of downtown are also among the many “irretrievable treasures” that were lost. Now the city should be endeavoring to incentivize a critical mass of development to get downtown back over the tipping point where it can be economically self sufficient in every way, which it is currently not thanks to urban renewal from the 70s.
Nick, explain your first sentence.
Your last paragraph, I agree with your “economics” of downtown. I just can’t take you to seriously when you say “well designed, sturdy” in a sentence. Not every building is worth saving. Who were the architects that designed and built those buildings?
I think I could make a convincing argument Nick that in the economic climate of the 70′s, the almost entire dependence of the OKC economy at the time on the energy industry (even more so than today), the lightning exodus of people to the suburbs (which had begun in earnest before Urban renewal), that what happened economically downtown would have happened anyway. OKC is a relatively young city with lots of room to spread out that came into its own in the age of the automobile. No one gave a second thought about moving away from downtown because downtown was a crumbling mess and if you did need to get downtown it was easy with OKC’s road system. I think we would probably have ended up somewhere close to where we are now with the one difference being that downtown would still have a quagmire of unusable structures and no money to deal with them.
Your assertion that UR just went around targeting the greatest buildings in town to tear down just for the heck of it or to line their own pockets is revisionist history that must be rejected. I’ve spent time talking to people in the office at urban renewal – I’ve talked to retired cops that walked the beat downtown in the 60′s. Needless to say, their opionions about some of the buildings differs sustantially from yours.
In regards to your first statement, Jeffrey, if Sandridge didn’t know that Kerr McGee regularly used that building, including officing employees there, then how are they able to, in good faith, make the statement that the buildings had been out of use for 25 years? Their lack of knowledge of KM’s use of those buildings would indicate that they *don’t* know how those buildings have been used over the years. They obviously don’t have access to all of Kerr McGee’s old records.
It seems from some of the discussion here that there is a question whether KM’s use of the buildings as reported by Steve might have been a violation of city ordinance. If (and I’m saying IF) KM was using the building in violation , then you’re probably not going to find records that say when and how the building was used. As Matt said, if they indeed ran ethernet cables through the walls and ceilings, that should have been approved by the city, which would have required KM to bring the entire building up to code.
If the extent of KM’s use of the building was to stealth about 12 employees over there for occasional overflow projects, I’m not sure one can claim a breach of good faith. The Brian guy above even admitted that no one had permanent offices there.
With all the momentum we have going now, we can’t get re-use of the older buildings we have now funded without use of substantial tax credits and public incentives. Why does anyone think the dozens of unusable buildings from 30 years ago would be any different today. A few buildings were significant, but many were fairly abandoned rat-traps. Even the ones cited here like the Biltmore were havens for bums, prostitutes and worse. Romantic memory doesn’t make for fact. OKC was deteriorating from the downtown and needed something to jolt it into life. That is WHY Pei was brought in. He didn’t just come up with a plan to make our lives pathetic.
SR probably never knew that KM put a dozen employees over there for occaisional overflow projects – certainly no permanent offices,projects or personnel were assigned there. It evidently was however, a building with a rood that didn’t leak and electricity – though if there was no emergency lighting, I wonder if KM violated any city ordinances by putting people there? I wonder what other safety violations there are in that building?
Is this is the smoking gun you were hoping for?
I’m also not sure a quote about the economic situation which was very true in 2005 has any relevence at all to the situation now in 2010. When “the timing is never quite right” what I hear is “we really don’t want to develop these building but we don’t want to appear like we don’t want to develop these buildings.”