Will these new apartments actually be occupied by people?

Well, we all know the major potential candidates for renaming the Ford Center, 3 energy companies, 2 utilities, a hospital group, and Steve’s employer.

Here are a few other suggestions….
Sonic
SW Airlines
Dell
York
And, the company that Larry Nichols is trying to lure into the current Devon Tower.

And some to perhaps decline….
Taco John’s
Anadarko
MG Motors
GM
Lucent
Bridgestone
AOL

Has Lee Allan Smith chimed in yet?

Maybe it’ll be the ChesaDevonRidge Center.

How bout the THUNDERDOME!!! (you have to say it with a booming voice)

Oh Steve, OKC Talk went down yesterday actually, right?

Nick, It went down on me sometime overnight…think it was around the 2 am mark on Thurs

the new complex should be a great addition to maywood park .. and its design should look great across the street from the Aloft hotel. It will be very cool watching them go up together.

ThunderDome

Kris, you do realize for rent apartments do very well downtown don’t you? It’s the selling $350K+ condos that are what is hard to sell currently. Once we get some critical mass, I think things will start to snowball.

Anyone have a link to these new apartments or the article? I don’t know what is going on with them and they sound very interesting?

Are there any renderings of the new apartment complex that’s going up on 2nd and Walnut that Steve wrote about today? It really does seem like a splendid concept. OKCTalk is still down as of this am…

One thing is for sure – the Ford Center will NOT be renamed Thunderdome, If you think that it is because you don’t understand how naming right works (unless of course there is a company out their named “Thunder”). Plus, it isn’t even a dome.

Kerry, it was hardly a serious suggestion.

Rarely a facility’s naming rights go to the community. Madison Square Garden. Rose Garden. New Orleans Arena. And so on.

I fully expect to see the Chesapeake Center or the Devon Dome or something like that. But THUNDERDOME would be awesome.

I realize that rentals are what we need, but most of the new housing downtown is for sale, and way overpriced. It sounds like the developer is aware of this dynamic and is strategically planning this development for “real” people.

Thunderdome is the nickname and always will be. You can’t really strike a business contract with someone without using their name, that’s kind of the whole point.

Thanks for posting the renderings, Steve!

Finally someone looks like they get it, an apartment complex with structured, interior parking. Its taken too long for someone to get this done. I look for this to be a big hit.

The design is probably going to change somewhat, although the rendering is important because it shows us what the developer is thinking right now. It looks amazing. They only just completed soils testing, according to some eyewitness accounts that were on OKC Talk, and these are very preliminary renderings is my understanding.

I think we are finally starting to see the smaller infill projects catch up to the major things we have in the works, and that’s exactly what we need for downtown to be successful–that’s what is imperative in order for Devon Tower and MAPS3 to actually translate into momentum for downtown. I’m even more impressed by all of these suburban guys getting involved downtown.. I understand that the suburban market is the big money maker, but it’s awesome to see more people in OKC business involved downtown, more diversity among developers, see downtown win over some suburban builders, and so on..

If this is open topic though, I think that the biggest question we’ve got going on right now is Nicholas Preftakes. The fact that a developer just bought up an entire block across from Devon Tower has completely fallen off the radar, despite that we all know Preftakes is up to something. I am dying to get some idea of what..

i like the street-friendly design, but there’s too much glass and not enough (any!) architectural detail. it’s scared the poor people into looking like ghosts…;)

Speaking of Preftakes, Main Street between Walker and Hudson has the potential to become a truly activated and charming corridor. It has great retail frontage, wide sidewalks, street trees, landscaped median. It only needs a little rehab from Preftakes, plus a new development on the north side of the street to replace the surface parking lot used by city employees. If you fill in the missing teeth, it can become one of the city’s best urban experiences.

nick i think the goal is to get approval and to break ground in January so i would think that these are more than preliminary

I imagine McKown, as the developer, would be able to turn around and break ground on something right after project approval since he is a builder himself. It’s not like Jim Thompson having to work separately to come to terms with construction contractors..

Not really backtracking or defending anything, I just think that this guy is moving along way faster than everyone else–these could be way more than preliminary drawings, but its evident how fast he’s moving on this. They’re still compiling data about the site–although that may just mean that they’re in the final stages of drawing up the final designs.

Speaking of drawings and plans, and since this is Open Topic.

Steve, have you seen anything on the Whole Foods drawings or plans?