Bob Meinders, owner of all the land that was once  home to Stewart Metal Fabricators, is asking permission from the Bricktown Urban Design Committee this week to tear down this series of steel buildings at 600 E Sheridan. I can’t recall anyone saying the buildings are historically significant, though I’ve heard quite a few people say it’s a bad eyesore for those entering Bricktown from the east.

This building is still standing - but for how long?

If everything goes in the direction currently set, this building will be razed by the city sometime in the next few years.

On Tuesday I wrote about the plight of what I’ll call “lost Bricktown.” I want you to see these buildings as they were in their heyday, instead of how blighted they are today. Left alone, these buildings could someday be restored and brought back to life. But given the current momentum of development, I predict these buildings will disappear within the next few years, to be torn down not by short-visioned developers, but rather the city itself.

Forty years ago it was the mission of a woman I admired, Mary Jo Nelson, to educate the public about similar actions that were being pondered by city leaders. She documented the final days of landmarks we now mourn – the Criterion Theater, the Huckins Hotel, the Midwest Building and more.

Like Mary Jo, who passed away a couple of years ago, I can only do my best to bring these things to your attention. It’s up to you whether these properties matter in a city that has too few old buildings left. It’s up to you whether it’s a good or bad thing that these buildings are set to be torn down. And it’s up to you whether you want to contact the mayor and council, or whether you wish to stay silent.

Buddy Griffin leads the Houston-based All Star Youth Banjo Band in a performance of "Carolina in the Morning" as legendary banjo musicians and visitors join in.

And what a great sound it is – really, this is a great match for Bricktown when you consider its heyday as a wholesale district was from statehood to the 1920s, the same era as when banjo music was at its height. There was a who’s-who of performers who made the opening: Earl Scruggs; John McEuen, founding member of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band; Buddy Wachter, considered to be the most influential four-string banjoist of this generation; the Byron Berline Band, playing traditional bluegrass and swing; the Young Family Bluegrass Band; Georgette Twain the Queen of Banjo; jazz banjo entertainer Debbie Schreyer; and Doug Back classical/jazz banjo player.

A couple of big names didn’t make it. Roy Clark was a definite “yes” to attending the opening, but got sidelined by illness at the last minute. And there was hope that Steve Martin might make his way by – maybe he will another time.

Here’s a great video shot by Grayson Cook of the opening:

Candidates for Demolition? Not under Urban Renewal.

The same buildings today - home to the Deep Deuce apartments clubhouse.

The Littlepage Building - boarded up and ugly, right? Once again, the Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority chose a new course of direction and required developers to build around the blight.

The Littlepage Building today - home to Sage Cafe and Gourmet Market, a corporate furnishings store and apartments upstairs.

Another building that needed a savior and could have been torn down in the name of progress.

All of these buildings could have been declared dead and targeted for the wrecking ball under the very same logic that apparently is being applied to Core to Shore. Now that we’ve seen what happened with the infusion of new development and a decision not to tear down old structures, let’s take another look at what’s left in Core to Shore.

Maybe it's easy to write this building off - the north facade's windows are broken and covered with graffiti as city officials have turned their backs on building maintenance in the area.

The same building in its heyday - once home to the Oklahoma City branch of International Harvester.

Another building that doesn't appear in any Core to Shore plans.

Yet another building not shown in Core to Shore plans.

Definitely not shown in Core to Shore plans. Once the original Film Exchange building.

For a city that claims to have learned from the demolition spree of the 1970s, it amazes me that there appears to be no discussion of this area bounded by I-40 and Shields Boulevard. These buildings could remain standing – if the city were to decide to build a convention center south of Lower Bricktown as proposed by former Mayor Kirk Humphreys.

To date the only explanation I’ve heard for building a new convention center south of Ford Center, and thus eliminating most or all of these buildings, is that the site south of Lower Bricktown might be too expensive and that “something must be done” as one City Hall source told me, with all the land that will be opened up by replacement of the elevated highway with an at-grade boulevard.

We also now know, thanks to a regular reader of this site, that the planning report on Core to Shore had this to say about the above buildings:

While no other buildings have the architectural significance of Little Flower Church and Union Station, several notable older buildings, such as the Latino Community Development Agency building, contribute to the character of the area and could be incorporated into development projects if economically feasible.”

Ah yes, so the experts have spoken. Of course, their forefathers also deemed the Criterion Theater, the Baum Building, Hales Building and many more not to be significant either. My hero, the late Mary Jo Nelson, wrote many a story challenging those experts. I think I’ll just let the photos and the history speak for themselves.

But let’s pretend city leaders were pursuing a different path for redevelopment of Core to Shore – one that left these buildings standing. Here’s the question folks – do you believe placing a boulevard through this area and sandwiching it between Bricktown, a new convention center and a central park will or will not spur the sort of private redevelopment and restoration work that took place with the addition of apartments in Deep Deuce?

(This post is dedicated to the memory of Mary Jo Nelson)

Are the Bricktown water taxis among the best?

From Kim Searls at Downtown Oklahoma City:The International Downtown Association (IDA) is working with USA Today in preparation of a travel column this month featuring the 10 best boat rides along rivers, canals and other waterways in North America.

IDA is looking to feature big cities and small towns with good geographical representation across the region. IDA has developed the following survey and plans to supply the results to USA Today.

Vote here.

Please take a moment to vote yes for Oklahoma City and indicate reasons why the Bricktown Canal and Bricktown Water Taxi should be included on this list.

Please respond by August 10, 2009.

Not represented in the above videos: Firefly Clothing, RedHawks gift shop and the Painted Door Gift Shop.

Bert Belanger

When I first began to pursue this series of Downtown OKC 2020 guest blog posts, I wanted to feature as diverse an audience as possible. The timing of the post displays is pretty much following their arrival in my email box. But truthfully, I couldn’t have timed it better if I had done the scheduling by some master design.

 The first post, by Casey Cornett, is a refreshing bit of optimism not by a young voice not jaded yet by the reality of rough-and-tumble politics and development. The second post, by Dennis Wells, is more analytical but also a fairly optimistic look at what’s ahead and what can be accomplished. Today’s post by Bert Belanger, in contrast, is a brutally honest take (influenced by his life experience and involvement downtown) of the problems that dog us today, potential obstacles to moving forward, and a list of how he thinks we can best progress as a city.

 Bert Belanger does not come from an independently wealthy background – his stake in the game was earned by his early involvement (he’s a lawyer doing development) with tax credits in the Paseo and pursuit of Tax Increment Funding for projects in the Flat Iron area (what he and partners early on referred to as The Triangle).

Bert has his share of admirers and critics, but I’ve not heard anyone dismiss his legal instincts and intellect. I suspect this post may anger some and I neither endorse or dimiss what he says – it’s a voice, however, that I think should be heard. – Steve Lackmeyer

 

 

When I became re-involved in 2003 in OKC development, I touted TIF (Tax Increment Financing) as the means through which the MAPS sales tax incentive could be “bootstrapped” to help create a dense mixed use environment. The target: a broadly defined “triangle” bordered by I-40 on the south, I-235 on the diagonal and on the west, a north-south boundary splitting what is now known as MidTown.

The Factory - an unrealized redevelopment of an entire square block in Bricktown pitched by Bert Belanger and the McLain family in 2003.

My first efforts were with ERC on Deep Deuce, then the Arts District, then The Factory, in which I was technically “Oh for three.”

However, we learned a great deal that we have tried to apply since. We conducted a market study of 14 peer cities that had neither sexy mountains nor shorelines and found that each had between 2 percent and 8 percent of their MSAs’ population within the urban core.  At the low end for OKC, that math translates to 24,000 people. Even counting the Jail, we are under 2,000 today. 

Now that a number of players have emerged downtown, the geographic focus has naturally gotten blurred. The Thunder and Devon Tower have brought into the game two 800-lb gorillas – the NBA owners group and Devon Energy. To a significant but lesser extent, Sandridge, the Humphreys family, Roy Oliver/Mark Beffort and CHK/McClendon have gained strong positions in the core. Greg Banta/Bob Howard/Mickey Clagg and Corsair/Smith Brothers have made a number of speculative buys in MidTown that are starting to see life. Steve Mason, Chris and Meg Salyer, Nick Preftakes, BMI and Earl Neighbors have taken very different but positive approaches as user/owners.

The Greater Oklahoma City Chamber and the City Staff are clearly and rightfully feeling their oats, while the Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority has been weakened by Larry Nichols’ departure and the controversial pick of The Hill’s developer, which probably has spawned a winding down of some trustees’ long running influence. The approval of a un-Urban design for the Chamber’s building was an unfortunate reminder of the darker days in OKC history before the Bombing made consensus and grass roots projects possible over politics.

The highly-anticipated Brownstones at Maywood Park have not sold as quickly as hoped.

A perceived negative out there is that the former Triangle group has splintered, which is true but not necessarily a bad thing, as each of us can now play in their own sandboxes and probably get more done, and I think Maywood Park has been unfairly maligned as a bit of a bust as most of the brownstones sit empty. I say unfairly because I think they will ultimately sell, and because the City got exactly what it asked for from all of the Downtown housing developers – expensive, high-end for sale homes.

Neither the City or Urban Renewal wanted affordable rentals, as they turned down both of my ERC proposals for mixed income apartments in the competition for the Deep Deuce site (2002, with Benham) and the Arts District site (2003, with ADG and Raptor). The only for sale projects that have sold out have been the Centennial (albeit to mostly corporate buyers) and the Harvey Lofts rehab (only 17 units between $100k and $200k).

Dick Tannenbaum has made a very successful entre into housing development (Park Harvey and Lincoln), but not without hiccups (eg the failed attempts to condo both the Montgomery and the Classen). Block 42 has more dark windows at night than not, and The Hill deal is a ticking time bomb; the unpaid contractors will soon grow tired of waiting for their money and will no longer play as nice as they have been.

 The national meltdown has been a big factor, but the reality is that OKC has never been a big condo market. Also, no one can blame even the richest buyers for a reluctance to buy if the surroundings of a real dense and active urban village does not materialize as quickly as everyone would like.

The reality that the City is experiencing downtown is that critical mass and density matters most, and is not delivered quick enough through the linear production and absorption of for-sale housing. The decision by Urban Renewal and the City to promote and push for upper end, for-sale housing first was ill-timed to be sure, but generally a violation of real estate development fundamentals.

In my opinion, the critical path to successful infill Downtown development in OKC begins first with creating density of people using the real estate on a 24/7 basis. This happens quickest through 2 uses – Hotels and Rental Apartments, which more quickly put more heads on beds than any other use.

Everyone wants to experience an urban “Magnificent Mile” environment like Michigan Avenue, but Daniel Burnham’s Plan For Chicago took 15 years to draft and adopt and over 90 years to develop, culminating with Millennium Park, absolutely the coolest urban green space in America. That is why I think that the current Core to Shore emphasis puts the cart way before the horse. We need to finish the Core first in a most excellent way.

I believe that the following represents a better chronology for a critical path for OKC’s Downtown Development

1- Plan for Core to Shore through a broader 20 year long process and horizon, led and participated in by more than a couple dozen people, incrementally stopping and adjusting every 3-5 years to review how the market is responding. Mix in Social Initiatives like the Jail (on a more modest, phased basis, not as a response to another unfunded Federal mandate) and Homeless Center with the sexy stuff so that voter fatigue doesn’t kill the Goose that Laid the MAPs Eggs.

2- Avoid the consolidation of power in administering Business Improvement Districts comprising the current and emerging “districts” that make up the Downtown Core. Remember that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

3- Let the Neighborhoods and Districts decide where their boundaries begin and end and manage themselves through Business Improvement Districts and other Owners Associations. The localized characteristics of Auto Alley, Bricktown, Deep Deuce, Maywood Park, Midtown, Film District, Lower Bricktown, Courthouse Block, Devon/Botanical Gardens each have their own forces of will, market attraction and good design attributes that will help compel and sort out the timing and priorities of projects – politics should not.

4 – Use TIF creatively and broadly to include Sale and Room Taxes for discrete user-driven projects, as per the examples of the Skirvin Hotel and Devon Tower.

5- Inventory current infrastructure opportunities and challenges in the Core and create a priority list that gets addressed by TIF. Example on one end of the spectrum – we can cheaply double parking on Broadway through angled striping and narrowed, slower traffic; versus the other end of the spectrum – the costly Boulevard through nothing to nowhere, which only happens five years after the Feds fund I-40.

 6 – Agree that density, shared parking, connectivity and walkability are good and should be the paramount ideals for Project design.

 7 – Focus on Big Users and what they need to come into the Core.

 8 – Rental apartments can be tailored for sites big and small, renters rich and not so rich, and are the most finance-able class of real estate today and for the foreseeable future.

 9 – The Quiet Zone (property owners are seeking new gates along the BNSF railroad to quiet train noise as it passes through the Flat Iron district) is a threshold need that must happen first BEFORE any other project Downtown – it is absolutely essential to any private project of scale, and will create incremental value on both sides of the tracks for miles East and West, North and South.

 10 – Do not try to Force the Core to Shore – it is my sense that a relatively small group of parties are unduly influencing priorities. I am okay with the MAPs 3 Convention Center Idea just South of the Ford Center, but it is still a long ways to the South shoreline. Our version of Millennium Park will have to be birthed and season for 10 years before development happens naturally further South. The thing that could change this is if a huge User shows up, but none are on the horizon that I can see.

Dennis Wells

 Guests blogs on the future of downtown Oklahoma City continue with this latest post by architect Dennis Wells. Dennis is one of those guys I still need to enjoy a long cup of coffee with – most of my conversations with him have been by phone. He has become a leading voice (though not for all) in the residential section of MidTown (he calls it SoSA, others call it the Cottage District). If you’re looking for a traditional neighborhood consisting of identical Dallas-style homes, stay far, far away from the area around NW 8 and Shartel where Dennis is a leading champion for bold modern architecture. Dennis, count on me calling you soon for a cup of coffee. I’ll let you pick the place – that’s always a good insight into who a person is!

What should downtown Oklahoma City look like in 2020, and how can this vision be best achieved?   

Oklahoma has some uniquely positive attributes characterized by our people and geography:  We are abnormally friendly… We are more Native American than any other state… We reside on top of large amounts of petroleum…  We have a rich country music and blues heritage…

There are also some not-so-positive images:  We are perceived as being red-neck…  The weather is often windy, and seasonally dangerous…  Our State is not known for its high-profile natural beauty…

Our downtown should represent us by amplifying our good attributes and by spinning our negative images in surprising ways.  Amplify and surprise.  Our urban design should showcase our friendliness and somehow promote our perceived negatives as positives. 

Right now Bricktown is maturing into a truly world-class entertainment district.  Several CBD rim districts are growing into vital niche neighborhoods, and the Devon tower is ratcheting-up our urban image physically and psychologically.  This important momentum is happening even in the midst of global economic downturn, and should be protected and nurtured. 

The relocation of Interstate-40 opens opportunities for redevelopment of the abandoned highway and creates challenges for unifying the proposed Core to Shore district.  A budding river environment offers incredible potential.  This is an enviable position, and moving forward here’s what we need to do…

Protect and nurture the existing momentum:  There are certain components of the Core to Shore vision that should happen now, but opening large new parcels for development will absorb projects and stunt the growth of all the other rim districts including Bricktown.  The existing CBD and adjacent districts need more time to mature and “finish out.”  There are too many gaps in the existing downtown that need to be filled with housing and other good urban architecture. 

Validate the Boulevard design:  Why are six new lanes of traffic needed where previously there were zero?  An impressive new boulevard will be great where it’s justified, but Core to Shore will already be lacerated once by the new I-40; why would we purposefully construct another pedestrian barrier?  Where is it written that ALL of the old I-40 space has to be used for a boulevard?  What if local artists competed to transform remnants of columns and/or roadway into works of art, or unique public spaces?  The avoided demolition dollars could be used to create a signature landmark for the city.

Downtown still has several large vacant, undeveloped lots.

Create seamless pedestrian access between key nodes:  The existing pathways between the convention/hotel area and Bricktown are offensive.  There are several ways to improve them, but canal extension is the best.  Some sort of transit system that is frequent and fast should be provided between other CBD nodes and the rim districts… This service should be frequent and free between high density tourist nodes.  MAPS-3 should include a component for ensuring top-tier connectivity between Bricktown and key adjacent areas.

The Bricktown Association is proposing a $25 million canal extension be included with a MAPS 3 ballot that would ensure connection to a convention center proposed as part of the same ballot. This map assumes construction of a convention center south of Ford Center - a site shown in renderings released by the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber.

Most of us are not urban planners or engineers or politicians, but the process for determining and implementing any urban plan requires all of their skills.  Steve Lackmeyer does a great job of extracting our thoughts, and this web log is useful in that regard but ultimately we must make sure we’ve got the right planning team, and then rely on them to do their jobs well, and on the voters to approve their work.

…Now, how do we spin our redneck image?  Easy… stock the canal with giant catfish and get Larry the cable guy to host an annual Bricktown Noodling Festival, which we’ll schedule during peak tornado season!

Hint…. Jim Cowan isn’t a happy camper about all this.

David Holt, assistant to Mayor  Mick Cornett, reports the following regarding a potential MAPS 3 ballot:

“Legal interpretations of what an Oklahoma ballot should look like have evolved since the original MAPS vote in 1993. Should the Mayor and Council move forward with a MAPS 3 proposal, the process will certainly conform to the operative law, and the City’s legal office will be exploring those issues as appropriate. It would be our intention to stay close to the basic model the voters have shown themselves to be comfortable with.”