The Oklahoman's Steve Lackmeyer covers downtown OKC brick by brick.

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“An American City That Is Getting It Right”

More kudos for Oklahoma City, this time in Baron’s:

Normally we use this space to offer up examples of investment success.

But given the crises that local governments have been facing, — including declining tax rolls, rising demand for services, and widening budget gaps – we decided to shine the spotlight on a city that is defying the national trends.

So hats off to Oklahoma City.

Known to many Americans as the site of the worst act of domestic terrorism before Sept. 11, the capital city of Oklahoma is rebranding itself with its economic success.
In the midst of a weak national economy, the city is experiencing job growth, a stable housing market, and increased infrastructure spending.

Someone has the public relations machine in overdrive … Read the rest of this Baron’s article here.

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Great Video, But Still Cutting Corners

At www.okctalk.com this video is being hailed as the best yet for the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber, and overall, I’d have to agree. All too often I’ve seen these videos recycling very old video clips and doing an injustice to how far downtown has come.
The good news is the video clip of the canal right after it opened, with an incomplete clock and elevator tower at the JDM building and unfinished patio in front of the Hunzicker Building, is gone. Bad news: they still have footage of a jazz musician playing in front of the Deep Deuce Jazz Club – a business that was open for a few seconds almost a decade ago. That can be forgiven. But the closing footage showing Chase Tower as Bank One Tower (now that’s old!) and a dark and empty Skirvin Hotel – please, why end such a great video with such an old and stale shot! I just don’t understand the need to cut corners on a video that is supposed to show Oklahoma City as it is NOW, and to show how much it’s changing.
Just saying …

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The Elusive American

Back in 2004 Oklahoma City leaders were approached with a deal they were told they couldn’t refuse. But they did. Here’s the story I wrote back then:

Nobody at City Hall doubts that a 17-story sculpture of an American Indian will draw travelers off the interstates.

But Oklahoma City officials, while enthusiastic about the project, still had questions after meeting Tuesday with artist Shan Gray.

Promoters of a planned American Indian Cultural Center along the North Canadian River have yet to announce $5 million in matching private funds needed to secure more than $60 million in state and federal funding for the museum. The city is a contributor to the museum, as well as to the Oklahoma Land Run Monument being built along the Bricktown Canal.

Gray insists the city doesn’t need to worry about the $26 million price tag for “The American.”

“I’m not going to do anything without showing them we can’t do it with the funds we have,” Gray said. “The beauty of this project is it’s a gift to the state.”

Gray said the project is a for-profit venture that will pay for itself, including an endowment for its long-term upkeep. He is asking Oklahoma City and Tulsa to provide sites and infrastructure including roads and utilities.

Gray’s proposal calls for the winning city to share in the monument’s ownership in exchange for the land and for visitors to pay to ride an elevator inside the sculpture to a viewing platform.

The project would be administered through two entities, Gray Deer: The American Project LLC and The American Project Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

The Edmond artist’s previous work includes a statue of Olympic gold medalist Shannon Miller, and he has been in talks for the past several weeks with Tulsa officials about building his dream sculpture in the state’s second-largest city. Gray estimates the project’s economic impact will range between $500 million and $1.6 billion a year.

“It will be a benefit to whichever city gets it,” Gray said. “They know it will increase their tourism.”

Gray said he plans to select a site by April 1, with completion before the state’s April 2007 Centennial celebration.

The project originally was intended for Oklahoma City, Gray said, but site selection moved to Tulsa after the sculpture was left out of the proposed Native American Cultural Center being planned along the North Canadian River between Interstate 35 and Interstate 40.

Blake Wade, director of the Oklahoma Centennial Commission, said the sculpture was turned down because museum promoters feared their project would be overshadowed by such a large structure.

Gray said investors, whom he would not identify, urged him to reconsider Oklahoma City for the sculpture, with prime sites near the crossroads of I-35 and I-40 and Bricktown.

Councilwoman Willa Johnson, whose Ward 7 includes the interstate junction, welcomed the project — if it doesn’t require support from the city’s operating budget or from federal grants.

Ward 3 Councilman Larry McAtee said the project, which would include elevators allowing tourists to visit an observation deck inside the sculpture, reminds him of New York’s Statue of Liberty.

“It is a very intriguing concept,” McAtee said.

Mayor Mick Cornett, a proponent of interstate tourism, also expressed cautious support for the project.

“We’re interested — we’ve got to be,” Cornett said. “Our single largest untapped resource is I-35 and I-40 and all the traffic we have along there.”

Cornett said if the city is chosen, questions remain, including a site and the city’s involvement.

“It’s such a large project, and the upside is so large, you have to look at it,” Cornett said. “But you can’t help but look at worst-case scenarios. And the worst-case scenario here is the thing not being properly funded, so the city would have to protect itself.”

Being a pesky reporter, I was relentless in asking the public relations folks employed at the time with The American to list the financial backers. Such detail was repeatedly refused. Sources claimed there was an effort to play the OKC/Tulsa rivalry bit, that there was a message  of “If Oklahoma City doesn’t jump at this, Tulsa will.”

Oklahoma City didn’t jump at the deal. Tulsa did. Year after year promoters promised construction was on the verge of getting started, that financing was just about complete. Six years later, we have an interesting update from the Tulsa Business Journal. Tulsans are being told if they don’t rally behind the project, other cities (once again, no names), might succeed in current efforts to grab it for themselves.

Read the Tulsa Business Journal story here

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Will the Hotel Marion be Lost to History?

I’m not a building engineer. I don’t play one on television. And no, I didn’t sleep at a Holiday Inn last night. The Hotel Marion at NW 10 and Broadway is one gorgeous building – and also a heart-breaker. The building’s owners, Bob Howard, Mickey Clagg and Chris Fleming, have shown themselves to be good stewards of the properties assembled under former MidTown Renaissance lead Greg Banta. But without any attached parking, and purchased for more than it was probably worth, this building won’t be easy for anyone to tackle.
Time, I fear, may be running short.
We’re all familiar with what the front facade looks like:

But how often do we look at the alley facade of the property?

If we look really close, we might not like what we see:

I’m not presuming the owners to be negligent or in way targeting this building for demolition. But if preservationists are looking for a way to rebound from SandRidge, some creative ideas might be needed to prevent Mother Nature from taking the Marion down. City leaders -could Murrah funds be available for this building? National Historic Trust – are there any grants that can be found?

Readers, should we even care whether the Marion is around for another decade?

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The Fall of the Rise of the Creative Class Theory

Get out your coffee. Sit down. Relax. I’m feeling provocative today. I’m ready to start up a debate. Who am I? How do I fit into things? What says more about me – the fact that I love the Plaza District, Paseo and enjoy the communal tables at Big Truck Tacos? Or am I defined by the fact I choose to live, work and play in Oklahoma primarily because I believe it’s a great place to raise a family? Am I defined by how I enjoy performances by the Flaming Lips and love their involvement with Oklahoma City and revival of the urban core, or am I defined by the fact I’m neither amused or enamored by Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne’s use of profanity and seemingly casual attitude toward drugs? Am I a hypocrite to admit to both views toward this Grammy-winning band with a worldwide following?

Maybe I’m a bit confused. But I’m less and less confused by the legacy of Richard Florida’s 2002 book “The Rise of the Creative Class.” In case you don’t recall, Oklahoma City didn’t fare too well in these once hyped rankings:

Large Cities Creativity Rankings

Rankings of 49 metro areas reporting populations over 1 million in the 2000 Census

Top Ten Cities

City	Creativity Index	%Creative Workers	Creative Rank	High-Tech Rank	Innovation Rank	Diversity Rank
1. San Francisco	1057	34.8	5	1	2	1
2. Austin	1028	36.4	4	11	3	16
3. San Diego	1015	32.1	15	12	7	3
3. Boston	1015	38.0	3	2	6	22
5. Seattle	1008	32.7	9	3	12	8
6. Chapel Hill	996	38.2	2	14	4	28
7. Houston	980	32.5	10	16	16	10
8. Washington	964	38.4	1	5	30	12
9. New York	962	32.3	12	13	24	14
10. Dallas	960	30.2	23	6	17	9
10. Minneapolis	960	33.9	7	21	5	29

Bottom Ten Cities

City	Creativity Index	%Creative Workers	Creative Rank	High-Tech Rank	Innovation Rank	Diversity Rank
49. Memphis	530	24.8	47	48	42	41
48. Norfolk, VA	555	28.4	36	35	49	47
47. Las Vegas	561	18.5	49	42	47	5
46. Buffalo	609	28.9	33	40	27	49
45. Louisville	622	26.5	46	46	39	36
44. Grand Rapids	639	24.3	48	43	23	38
43. Oklahoma City	668	29.4	29	41	43	39
42. New Orleans	668	27.5	42	45	48	13
41. Greensboro	697	27.3	44	33	35	35
40. Providence	698	27.6	41	44	34	33

Eight years have passed since Richard Florida released this best and worst list of creative class cities. Surely you remember the creative class rankings – it was all the rage in the early 2000s and Florida had a great gig selling books and earning speaking fees addressing the importance of the creative class. He became a lecture tour superstar after the 2002 printing of his book, “The Rise of the Creative Class” in which he used U.S. Census data to show that economically successful cities are the ones that embrace immigrants, gays and artistic people he calls “bohemians.”

I’m not dismissing at all the importance of the creative class. But I was always a bit skeptical of Florida’s seemingly simplistic view of what makes a city successful. He’s a consultant with a niche – but I always wondered if the success of his much ballyhooed cities was at best fleeting – and not a sure thing.

Eight years later, four of his top five cities are an economic disaster. Home values are still in a free-fall in California, Massachusetts and Washington. Austin is the exception to that old top five list. So if a thriving creative class was the key to future success, why are four of the five cities faring so horribly in 2010?

Unemployment, 2010:

San Francisco: 9.7 percent

Austin: 7.8 percent

San Diego: 10 percent

Boston: 9.2 percent

Seattle 8.9 percent

Oklahoma City’s unemployment rate, by the way, stands at 6.9 percent. Housing is faring much better than elsewhere in the country. The economy isn’t great, but it’s not in a free-fall either.

How is this possible? It’s not as if Oklahoma City shot to the top of Richard Florida’s creative class chart. We’re still home to legislators Sally Kern and Randy Terrill – not exactly outspoken adherents to Richard Florida’s view of the world. And churches still dominate social life in the community.

The creative class that has gained more prominence locally in recent years is not comprised of newcomers doing things that were not being done in 2002. Indeed Wayne Coyne and Flaming Lips, the students attending the ACM@UCO, the artists in Paseo – these folks were around in 2002 when Richard Florida ranked Oklahoma City among the worst creative class cities in the country. Oklahoma City has, for years, been far more tolerant (do I dare say even “accepting”) of being home to not just artistic colonies but also a credible, vibrant gay business district centered around NW 39 and Pennsylvania Avenue.

When listening to and reading Richard Florida’s views a decade ago, it seemed as if he was almost dismissive of the importance of a city not just being friendly to the creative class, but also remaining a good strong place to raise a family. And at times it seemed as if Richard Florida was dismissing the role of Oklahoma City’s creative class simply because it remains home to a population that is still far more traditional, conservative and family friendly than the cities in his 2002 top five list (explain to me, with home prices starting at more than $200,000, could one have considered San Francisco, San Diego and Boston to be “family friendly”).

Has Oklahoma City proven the need to diversify while still striking a balance between these sometimes, but not always, different populations? And are there common interests and ties between these communities? Are they sometimes one and the same?

I’m not offering answers – just questions and a challenge to Richard Florida (not that he cares what I say) to give Oklahoma City another glance and go beyond simple statistics, anecdotes and perception. Mr. Florida, it’s 2010 and you last visited here in 2004. Go back to San Francisco, go back to Seattle, go back to Boston and San Diego. And then get a good tour of what’s going in Oklahoma City. You tell me if your measurements still work.

I leave you with this article from The Atlantic:

Why Oklahoma City Could Represent the Future of America
Sep 13 2010, 5:20 PM ET | Comment

The last time the United States suffered a recession this deep and painful, it was the Great Depression. That was the era of the Dust Bowl, the California pilgrimages out of Oklahoma that John Steinbeck etched into America’s memory with The Grapes of Wrath. Eighty years later, California’s housing market has run dry and Oklahoma is building river parks. As families gravitate back to the heartland, with its cheap homes and lower unemployment, the migration patterns of the Great Depression have turned backward. “It’s the Wrath of Grapes,” says Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett.

One of the under-reported stories of the recession is the emergence of the Great Plains during the recovery. The central time zone largely avoided the highs of the housing bubble, and they’ve blissfully missed the lows, as well. But that’s not the only thing buoying Oklahoma.

This afternoon I spoke with Oklahoma City Mayor Cornett and Oklahoma Department of Commerce Secretary Natalie Shirley about why Oklahoma has fared so well during the recovery. Unemployment in Oklahoma City is 6.7 percent, three percentage points below the national average. It has the fourth most resilient housing market in the country, according the Brookings Institution.

Avoiding the swelling and crashing of the housing tsunami has been a primary cause of Oklahoma City’s success. How did they miss the wave? Shirley said the answer goes back to 1982, and Penn Square Bank. Penn Square was a small, risky commercial bank that exploded in the late 1970s and imploded in the 1982 just as falling energy consumption hurt oil prices and slammed the Oklahoma economy. The Savings and Loans Crisis followed, but it was Penn Square took down the energy industry and the banking industry.

“Over 100 banks closed,” she said. “The state ground to a halt. And the bankers today remember the crisis. They’ve developed very safe, very conservative banking practices since that catastrophic event in the early 1980s.”

Built on the dependable pillars of local government spending, military (Tinker Air Force Base is the top employer), health care and education, the city is poised for strong and steady growth in the next few years. I asked the Shirley and the mayor what they thought might be the next engine of the Oklahoma economy.

“We don’t really care,” she responded. “What we’re looking at is a balanced economy. We learned from the 1980s that having a one-trick pony just wasn’t going to do it. We’re looking at creating a more firm foundation.”

That’s when the mayor offered an fascinating re-casting of the new economy: “The 20th century perspective was that people went where the jobs were,” he said. “Today the jobs are going to go where the people are. Highly talented young people are coming to us because of the low cost of living. People want to work here.”

The bust revealed a scary truth: we can’t afford what very recently passed for the American dream. We cannot run up debt equal to 122 percent of our yearly earnings, as we did during the late aughts. That means Americans will seek out cheaper places to live, where high quality of life goes for a bargain. Today, the cities that can offer that aren’t the LAs and NYCs but rather the San Antonios and Oklahoma Cities.

Put another way: In an economy where people follow quality of living, and jobs follow people, cities with low cost-of-living will be the early winners in the recovery.

Indeed, they already are. Eighteen of Brookings’ 20 “strongest cities” (all except Washington and VA Beach) have average or below average cost-of-living, according to a new Wall Street Journal story. At a time when Washington can’t seem to get employers and employees together, employment has been sticky where wages and living have been cheap.

What’s more, Oklahoma has the highest entrepreneur levels of any state, according to a recent report from the Kauffman Foundation. Mayor Cornett says it’s easy to see why. “College graduates are moving to the metro area in high numbers because they see how far their money goes in housing and living,” he said. “You’re raising a generation of people who can’t afford their own house. The American dream is alive and well in Oklahoma City.”

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My Drive

Over at www.okctalk.com, Doug Loudenback and other contributors are posting photos of their drives around downtown. Inspired, I downloaded some photos I’ve taken the past week:

A closer view from Western Avenue:

Driving elsewhere through downtown, I’d really like to see a historic photo of this following building at Lee and Sheridan. Bradley Wynn, Film Row historian – can you help us out?

Remember the Clark Building on NE 2 in the Maywood Park area?

Renovations continue, albeit very slowly.

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Do You Realize?

Since there’s some discussion about the State Rock Song on Twitter, I figured why not post one more music video this weekend and also share the lyrics?

Do You Realize – that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize – we’re floating in space -
Do You Realize – that happiness makes you cry
Do You Realize – that everyone you know someday will die

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes – let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It’s hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn’t go down
It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

Do You Realize – Oh – Oh – Oh
Do You Realize – that everyone you know
Someday will die -

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes – let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It’s hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn’t go down
It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

Do You Realize – that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize

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OKC Skyline Cam Shot of Devon Tower

Just pulled at 4:50 p.m. Saturday:

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History in the Eyes of the Beholder?

Apparently I’m being taken to task for writing last week that the Oklahoma River (then known as the North Canadian River) was an embarrassment to city residents before improvements were made as part of the original MAPS program.

The river, prior to MAPS, was frequently referred to as an embarrassment and a ditch. I’m sticking to my story.

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Yes, I Love to Play Minesweeper

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