It seems to be that with our budget, we’re going to have two options: build a small gem of a convention center or build a large cheap building, ala the Myriad. If the planners insist on placing it between our two showplace parks, it seems to me that a small gem would be a more desirable option. Then, put funding for an increase in size on the next MAPS ballot.

Oklahoma City as it is now is never going to attract Tier Two conventions anyway. We need more retail, including some upscale retail. We need to finish the Native American Cultural Center and we need the Adventure Line, so conventioneers and their families have something to do when they come to Oklahoma City. Very few people go to every convention offered by their company or professional society. I know I pick the ones that are in locations that I think will have interesting things to do in my free time. So, if people insist on the current site, build a building that looks great and functions seamlessly. Be satisified with Tier 3 conventions, all the while working to improve retail and entertainment options in Oklahoma City. Then, when we’ve got a city that people who go to Tier 2 conventions might consider worthy of interest, make the convention center big enough to attract them, with MAPS 4 money. A big convention center built on the cheap won’t do that.

If we take money from other MAPS projects to make the planned convention center bigger and better, we’ll never get another MAPS ballot passed. And we’ll find that people don’t want to come here for conventions anyway, as our city isn’t ready to host conventions of that stature.

Just my opinion.

The decision to deny a request for a continuance to discuss the matter of the convention center location was unprecedented at the time. Nothing would have been lost by delaying the discussion and vote on the convention center location by one week and Pete White’s efforts to that end were commendable. The decision to place the convention center between two urban parks would not receive the endorsement of many, if any, downtown planners. In reviewing the decision-making of the past, it is instructive to witness the absence of holistic planning in the process ie: what is best for downtown and the interplay between all of the new projects and not just what would be the best site for the convention center in a vacuum. This statement from the story was/is worrisome:

The only negative factors listed were that it will require a subgrade or upper-level exhibit hall (which could be complicated by the area’s water table), a less efficient truck access and potentially higher construction costs.

What was apparently ignored then was that a significant percentage of the available land for development along the boulevard would no longer be available, that pedestrian connectivity between two urban parks would be inhibited, that two urban parks separated by something as large as a convention center is virtually unprecedented, that the central park would be further isolated, that tremendous mixed-use development could have occurred on the site, that the central park could have potentially been moved north into a natural symbiotic relationship with the wildly successful urban park, the Myriad Gardens etc…

In the last convention center subcommittee meeting Mike Carrier indicated that $250 million would not be sufficient to build a convention center which would allow us to reach the next tier of conventions; that shortfall is worsened with the current convention center location selection.
What can we learn from the CS&L study on the new OKC convention center performed by the Chamber in 2009 prior to the MAPS3 vote in relation to the convention center location selection? That, unfortunately, is unknown because as of this date, some three years later, the study has still not been released to the public. In retrospect, there was nothing wrong with looking at the site favored by the Mayor. It is interesting that the consultants scored the current convention site the highest and then just prior to this story, determined that the current location could not be rehabilitated. Steve, I assume you have reviewed the engineering studies on the feasibility of rehabilitating the Cox convention center?

BethanySooner: Here is a review of the Vitagraph property sale
http://edshadid.org/sale-of-vitagraph-property-raises-a-myriad-of-questions-for-the-okc-taxpayer/