Wow, this is the view of the head of DOKC?
It makes you wonder…

Yeah… makes you wonder why the building-huggers are having so much trouble smelling the coffee…

Steve, when comparing the paper version of today’s Oklahoman with its on-line version, and after noticing your article, “State historian says Oklahoma City panel erred in considering registry eligibility for SandRidge buildings” which is located here in the digital version, I was unable to locate the article in this morning’s (Saturday) paper version.

Was it in the paper version and I just missed it? If it was not in the paper version, are you in a position to explain why it was not in the paper version?

And, last, if a citizen would want to be sure that the article were communicated to the Board of Adjustment, would that be incumbent on individual citizens to print a copy and forward it to the city clerk, or is that already taken care of?

Thanks in advance.

My mistake. I now see that the article was included on the back page of the business section.

Is this the only thing that Jane has done since she started her job? Maybe she wasn’t the best candidate for the job. What retail has she brought to downtown? I guess she likes suburbia. We should send her back to suburbia not our downtown!

This is so irresponsible. I thought this lady was the one for the job. I just am really disappointed. This is just going to happen and none of the superior people in charge are going to blink an eye. We can’t do anything. This just makes me lose so much hope in Downtown when you’ve got all this big wigs just joining hands and destroying an entire block of dense downtown buildings. They don’t even have the state of mind to replace those buildings with something that might actually encourage an urban atmosphere better than those dilapidated buildings currently. A park is just the worst case scenario.

This demonstrates how Downtown Oklahoma City, “Inc.” is more of a business entity than it is an engine to promote urbanism. Their job is to keep the businesses happy in the downtown area. We might as well call it the Downtown OKC Chamber.

This is what you can expect from spineless Jane.
Her board says jump and she says HOW HIGH!

Wow. It wasn’t too long ago that lots of folks, including Steve, were trumpeting Jane’s experience and qualifications for the job – what a good hire this was. Now she’s spineless, irresponsible and needs to be sent packing – why? Because she happens to disagree with your take on the situation? Gees!

Has anyone else noticed that when you disagree with the preservationists you automatically become a traitor, a moron, corrupt or all three? Newsflash: There are lots of intelligent, smart people of integrity in this city who like the Sandridge plan or will at least concede that, although they don’t particulary care for the plan, Sandridge should have significant say in how its HQ is developed. They’re not stupid, they just disagree with you. Time to grow up folks and crawl out of the crib. No tantrums allowed. Why all the venom?

Honestly, it’s been disappointing that it seems most of the name calling and nastiness has come from the preservation side.

Mike, Jane is hardly spineless. This is much more than a simple black and white issue.

Wow. Sadly I’m not surprised. I haven’t been impressed with Jane from the get go. At that level of executive you’re supposed to walk-in swinging. The suppporters were saying give her time to settle in but it’s been over a year and what do we have to show? They haven’t passed the bid renewal yet to my knowledge, the new format of downtown tour had mixed results at best, and is now supporting a very questionable and controversial issue. It’s not like she was endorsing MAPS3, which was a no brainer that it’d benefit downtown. Steve, correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t Sandridge pay a good sized fee into the Downtown OKC Inc. BID fund?

In the past 2 months I have been to Philadelphia, NYC, and just yesterday got back from San Francisco. I think everyone would agree that these cities have tons of history and in the case of SF and NYC are the top urban environments in the country.

I can tell you from looking at the buildings (I have lots of pictures too) that even these cities with their history and urbanism kept a small percentage of their older buildngs. They didn’t keep every old building, just because it was old. I know because among all of the new, shiny towers are wonderful examples of preserved old buildings. The buildings in OKC that have everyone up in arms are the ones that were destroyed in NYC, SF, and Philly.

I want one preservationist on here to tell me how they plan on saving one of these buildings with 10′-0″ floor to floor.
These buildings were built cheap back then, and instead of getting a shiny new glass building, we would get to keep these brutalistic (India Temple) and crumbling (KerrMac) structures. That would be good though, because then we wouldn’t get any development and no progress would ever get done. These would just continue to be empty.

It is my PERSONAL opinion that Jane was waterboarded.

I would like to address several issues here:
1. The proportion of existing historic buildings retained in NYC, Philly and SF are substantially higher than in OKC due to the Urban Renewal Demolitions of the 70′s. Nuff said.
2. The buildings that are currently proposed for demolition have a substantial amount of historic character defining features lying underneath the “brutalist” facades that can be restored/rehabiitated for far less than consturuction of new buildings with the same level of quality.
3. In defense of Jane Jenkins: she is a former Director of the SW Office of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Fort Worth. She is in no position to professionally advocate for the preservation of these buildings. She is obliged by her position to reflect the direction of her Board, which has in this case missed the mark on what is best for DT OKC.

This should not come as a surprise to anyone.

Yes they did keep a lot of historical buildings in NYC and SF, but the ratio is the same in OKC (These buildings aren’t historical). In SF and NYC there are many new buildings that have historical buildings sprinkled about here and there downtown. I imagine 60-80 years ago there were substantially more “older buildings” that were sacrificed to make way for a newer, better downtown. Unless you want us to believe there were empty lots in NYC and SF.

Number 2. There are underlying features that nobody knows for sure if they are intact or not. To say that they can be restored for far less is laughable. It isn’t a true statement.

Barrett, you are an architect, how would you propose to make the ITB viable, considering it has 10′-0″ floor to floor? Are you going to put AC units in the windows? That probably won’t do much to help the facade.

The fact is, most buildings in downtown OKC are old. Bricktown, Midtown, Film Exchange, Flatiron, The Skirvin, First National, Colcord, City Place are all old. The nondescript buildings are old too.

You are confused because NYC and SF have old iconic buildings, but they are iconic cities.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. One thing to keep in mind is that Jane does have a board to answer to. And anyone who wishes to criticize her might want to look at the overall context of her career and accomplishments.
I am curious as to what “formal, collective support” means. There are city officials on that board – does this mean they voted as well?

Matt,
You can get very creative with A/C ducts now. When we renovated The Sieber we had 8’1″ ceilings in all the upper floors except the the top floor which has 9’1″. You cann ask anyone they are quite comfortable and livable.