BUDC votes in favor of aspiring parking overlord Chris Johnson

The Bricktown Suburban Design Committee is absolutely pathetic. Not a whole lot that's new there, but it is what it is. The bar is now officially set so low it's even lower than Lower Bricktown.

We now have a parking "garage" (basically one elevated level of parking) overlooking people and canal taxis as they pass the canal. A surface parking lot would be better. This "garage" will essentially be a surface parking lot raised above the canal.

Does anyone even take pride in this city even more? This spot of land possibly had more potential than any other plot in downtown. Since when did we just start passing sub-par suburban developments in BRICKTOWN, surface parking and all? Pathetic.

Bob Bright is a joke. Someone who has to ask whether Wanda Jackson Way is an alley or a road is a joke, especially if they were somehow appointed to serve on the committee overseeing urban design in BRICKTOWN. The others who approved this development (ALL except Tom Wilson) are also just as pathetic as this development, except also spineless.

Stay tuned and I'll tell you how I really feel at a later date.
Avis Scaramucci and Phil Miller, where were you guys, why didn't you vote? Do you all care to prevent what is happening to Bricktown, or is urban design (the name of the committee you sit on) not important after all for an "urban" district?

Meetup photos: Bricktown

I'll slowly post a few highlights of my photos from the OKC Talk downtown photog meetup, which went very well--I think everyone who participated is looking forward to future meetups, and I hope more people in the future will join us. In general, I think it's good for people to get out there, meet each other in person, and do away with Internet communication barriers whenever possible--and hopefully it will foster more involvement by encouraging people to take their passion for downtown urbanism out to the real world.

Without further ado, here's my faves out of the Bricktown pics I took:














Notice anything wrong with Bricktown in any of these pics? I don't--and that's coming from someone who's admittedly quick to point out anything wrong with this city. I couldn't imagine a more perfect evening..Bricktown is doing WELL, despite all of the criticism and controversy it frequently attracts. Make no mistake, that goes to say a lot about Jim Cowan.

Cityshot XLVII

Peachwave Frozen Yogurt, coming to Bricktown.

Cityshot XXX

New business storefronts appearing along the Upper Canal (Envy going in at the corner, Sammy's Pizza being brought back to the space next door).

Bricktown says "stay tuned"

See headline.. "Bricktown says 'stay tuned.'" Question: When isn't Bricktown saying, "stay tuned"? The answer is never. There has always been a collective murmur coming from the general direction of Bricktown telling us that all of Bricktown's woes and inadequacies will soon be solved by the next influx of development.

So why haven't all of Bricktown's woes been solved by now? The answer is that a lot of the development proposed fails to come to fruition, a lot of new businesses are owned by entrepreneurs who aren't prepared for Bricktown, and there may be larger overriding concerns that supersede quick fixes. It always seems like these very impressive developments are constantly cropping up from developers with strong, solid track records, so it's a real head scratcher how so few of these developments have gotten off on the right foot. It's almost as if Bricktown is the place where strong track records go to die.

For those who haven't figured out yet, this is going to be a somewhat bitter post. Why? Because over a year after the fact, I'm still really disappointed that the Cotton Exchange never happened. To me there is no reason this project shouldn't have gone through, but it couldn't get financing..banks wanted nearly every unit preleased before it could begin (unrealistic in downtown development). Developer Gary Cotton had sold off other Bricktown assets to have more capital to put into this project, and also hired the sales manager from The Centennial development, hoping to get a few names off of The Centennial's wait list (that project filled up with dozens of people missing out on units). Had this project gone through, it would have given the canal some new energy. It would have anchored the canal with residential as well as some viable retail, and closed in some of the undefined space in the area of Mickey Mantle and Reno (where buildings do a poor job of defining the public realm). If this project had gone through it very well could have solved some of Bricktown's woes.

Another project would have helped do wonders for adding density in Lower Bricktown. Stonegate Hogan's proposed Centerpoint Market, or "Building 8," was a go two years ago and then never broke ground. Rendering signs went up on the site, and they may even still be there, but one thing seems certain -- this project is going nowhere. Bummer, because it would have added a significant amount of retail along the canal (35,000 sf). I also wonder why this project never got off the ground, with Stonegate Hogan (the primary developers of Lower Bricktown) behind it. Are they also having trouble getting projects off in this economy? Retail projects (as opposed to CONDO projects)? Weird..

A new hotel around Main and Oklahoma would have been nice too.. especially if it had around 100 rooms, promised to preserve the facade of the existing historic structure, and would have adhered to good urban design. Such a hotel would have been the Holiday Inn Express proposed for Bricktown, that I also happened to mention in the last post..

Then there was the Bricktown Village, proposed by local rich dude, Bob Funk (also owner of the RedHawks and several local businesses). Bricktown Village would have had..are you ready..a massive $250 million mixed-use development with 400 residential units, 100,000 sf of prime retail, a 150-room upscale hotel, a 1,900 space garage, and more.. basically a Lower Bricktown that actually follows principles of urbanism. Imagine that? Then out of all of the incredibly exciting and disappointing ways this project could have died, it had to be the City putting the kibosh on it. Why? Mayor Mick did not want to sell the land backing up to the Bricktown Ballpark to Bob Funk, many estimate it's all about bitter tensions between Bob Funk and the business establishment of the city. So they snuffed him, and Bricktown missed out on this, or at least another exciting "crash and burn" case of a project that couldn't get financing..

Another interesting project, a renovation of a small historic building along Main Street..adding some interesting architectural features. I like it. It features a metal roof, but I don't think it's done to be cheap, I actually kind of like the contrast it poses between new and old and how it's used attractively. Dunno what happened with this one either to put it so behind schedule, I just know it's only just now..possibly starting.

There are more dashed plans from the last round of development, but those are the most prominent ones. Now, that's not to say that the last round of development didn't bring a lot to Bricktown: Candy Factory office renovation, Banjo Museum, a McDonald's that's actually urban, ACM School of Rock, renovation at 222 East Main, Hampton Inn, Stanley Systems renovation on Main, and new businesses here and there, along with some that we lost. And I won't go into failed Bricktown proposals before the most recent wave of development, including the heartbreaking failure of The Factory and going way back to Neil Horton's original vision for Lower Bricktown, but I digress. What did end up coming to fruition from the last round of proposals isn't bad at all, especially the Hampton Inn. One thing that's important to note however: the canal has lost a lot of steam. There are now more vacant spaces along the canal, businesses there doing less business, less people in general on the canal. Bricktown is growing, but the canal is losing some of its luster at this point.

On OKC Talk I brought up the age-old suggestion that Bricktown should consider a public parking solution, and I was met with the typical swarm of posters telling me that there is no parking problem in Bricktown or anywhere downtown. The problem with that is that I agree with that line of thinking, however most of OKC doesn't, and believe me, you don't have to sell the idea of shopping and dining downtown to me. It's the rest that you have to pitch the idea to, and they believe that there is a parking problem in Bricktown, so for all intents and purposes, there IS a parking problem in Bricktown. And I don't blame them -- when it's $5 to park in the old part of Bricktown (never pay, just park at Lower Bricktown and walk 2 blocks, you'll live) and $10-15 if there is an event going on at the Ford, Cox, or Bricktown Ballpark. The fact that a lot of people are still operating profitable surface parking lot enterprises gives off the impression that parking is tight.



Here's two downtowns with free public parking: Wichita's Old Town and Sundance Square in Ft Worth. Bricktown has a total of 5 retail tenants (count em: Red Dirt, The Store, Painted Door, Firefly, and candy shop). Wichita's Old Town is a similar area with 28 retail tenants, total. Is it not insulting that Wichita has so much more shopping in their historic districts--they're half our size, not as economically robust, and much lamer in every way. Sundance Square kicks our butt too with 17 retail tenants, including Barnes & Noble, as well as a more urban AMC Theatres and dozens and dozens of restaurants, including a P.F. Chang's on Throckmorton Street. What is different here? They have free public parking. Wichita's is free all day, Ft Worth's is free after 5 (the solution I would recommend). Who knows, maybe they didn't even have a parking problem before, they just wanted to make the parking problem even more convenient for FW residents that are supposed to be enjoying Sundance Square.

But Bricktown doesn't say it needs public parking. Instead, Bricktown says the next round of development will solve its problems. One Bricktown retailer who posts at OKC Talk as Urbanized, had this to say about the development in Bricktown:

I don't think many of the people on here grousing about empty space have paid much attention to all of the places recently renovated in Bricktown, projects currently underway, and of course can't know about several of the game-changing deals working down here.

The comment came as a response to my suggestions to cure some of Bricktown's ailments, so essentially it's the same answer we've gotten all along: more development is what will eventually solve Bricktown's woes. Steve Lackmeyer later corroborated Urbanized's suggestion, and I would never once doubt in the first place that at any given time there are some very exciting things being talked about for Bricktown. I'm just very skeptical about how much of this will actually end up sticking. I think in order to get a good idea on what might be to come, I can offer some educated guesses, of course sheer speculation, but nonetheless I think I have a pretty good gut feeling about some projects myself, too. Jim Cowan made a post over on Steve's blog also alluding to future developments.

I think many of you will be excited to see some developments along the Canal in the first 6 months of 2010.
Restaurants, Retail, and a couple of other surprises are coming….and long overdue!

Despite being just as vague, he sort of corroborates the same thing Urbanized said. We anticipate more retail and restaurants trickling in as smaller projects, but as Urbanized put it there will be some game-changing proposals that come out soon, or as Cowan called them, surprises that are long overdue.

Well we know of some of the retail planned. We know that Sammy's Pizza is coming back to Bricktown, being resurrected by descendants of the original owner. It will be in the Hunzicker Building right along the Canal, on the Canal-level. There will be more retail and restaurants coming, too. Brent and Brett Brewer have been renovating the Hunzicker Building on spec, which is different from how renovations are typically done in Bricktown where owners like to line up a prospective tenant before ever beginning work (build-to-suit). Spec construction is also what's known as taking the bull by the horns and making something happen, something that other Bricktown property owners should be inspired by. Yeah right, nevermind it's just the Brewers..I'm sure we'll wake up one day and be scratching our heads at how they usurped design guidelines yet again..

We also know that the Bricktown fire station is finally going to be built, just 10 years after the bond election that paid for it. The arch firm selected to do the design kept submitting woefully inadequate preliminary work, and in my opinion, the design that they're going with is still a disgrace, but you almost just want to pass it just to move on from it and get it through after 10 years of this firm submitting crappy work on the project. I just don't think LWPB has much experience in designing new construction that fits in with a historic district, but I could be wrong, and it could just be a bad rendering. But the rendering we have shows a building with an inappropriate setback, a plain facade, and no evidence of $3 million being put into it. Maybe we need a slogan, "Don't Edmond my Downtown" (a spin off of Norman's unofficial slogan)? Here Steve gives an account of the design process for the project that provides insight into how this project was just so poorly designed to the point that Bricktown Urban Design just got tired of dealing with it and passed it through.

A much more interesting proposal that will likely surface in more detail soon is the "Bricktown Gateway" project that will involve the entire block between Reno and the canal, Oklahoma Ave and the BNSF tracks. The historic buildings along the south side of the Upper Canal (Zio's) are all going to be renovated, with a handful of new retail/restaurant spots, as well as 8 lofts on the upper level and office space for Harding & Shelton (a small oil and gas company). The plans also call for renovating the old Rock Island Building at the corner of Reno and Oklahoma--lofts and retail, to my knowledge.



Where things get more interesting is with Phase 2 of the Bricktown Gateway project. The gray structures only illustrate massing studies on the maximum size of development that the site can take and how it may interact with the space, but I would definitely say some pretty major infill development is proposed.

Oh, and looks like another Bricktown owner finally found a replacement tenant for Uncommon Grounds. That site sat unprofitably for 2 years after Gary Berlin raised the lease of the popular former Bricktown coffee shop (hope everyone likes Starbucks) too high for them to afford. The new business that can afford the $1300/mo rent, CoCo Flow, is a chocolate confectionary shop relocating from N. Western Avenue.

Another possible sleeping giant of a proposal is The Steel Yard, which Bob Meinders has been behind..albeit moving very, very slowly on (for years). Demolition is moving forward on the buildings on the east end of Bricktown, which means development could begin sometime early next year. Will we hear an announcement on that soon? Possibly. This could be a very exciting development, especially if there were to be a residential component added into the mix.

The rest, if anything, is pure speculation..

I can tell you that Randy Hogan has long-term plans to build out the west end of Lower Bricktown, between The Centennial and the BNSF tracks. The back portion of which site includes the U-Haul building, which is basically an ugly metal facade covering up a historic brick warehouse. The warehouse could be restored and renovated as lofts, with more development in front. To my knowledge, the site may or may not include a canal extension in the future..

Of course before Hogan develops anything, he might consider the project he still hasn't finished--Building 8, or Centerpoint Market. Could this building be back on in the near future? I doubt it.. I doubt Hogan moving forward because they seem more interested in Jenks right now, which they're also unable to move forward on at the moment.

It would of course also be nice to see some of these hotel proposals come back. If people in the know are hinting at big things to come, perhaps this is one of them. There was the Holiday Inn Express, a possible boutique hotel on the upper floors of the Mercantile Building, and the Candlewood Suites proposed against I-235.

Who knows what the future holds for Bricktown. I think that at some point you're going to start seeing spin off from bigger projects. Obviously we haven't seen it yet. But at some point soon I think that we'll start seeing the effect of MAPS 3 passing. MAPS 3 is, in a way, the entire city backing up the private revitalization of OKC, so it's passage has to add to downtown's appeal as well as add confidence in the future of downtown. I think that at some point you're also going to see Devon Tower adding intrinsic speculative appeal to downtown in general, especially including Bricktown. But only time will tell the tale.

I think this is just one of those open-ended things for now. What do you readers want to see in Bricktown? Whole Foods? Urban Outfitters? etc etc.. so basically more retail, probably. The old adage is that retail follows rooftops, so if downtown can amass more residential, that will easily help attract more retail to downtown. Retail is also easier development to get financing for than residential, esp for-sale residential.

Not to nitpick, but..

First of all I'd like to say how incredibly excited I am to have the Academy of Contemporary Music downtown in Bricktown, right on the canal. It's an incredible opportunity to further expand the cultural and night life offerings, let alone the daytime offerings in Bricktown. Especially during a recession. I am excited to see UCO doing many cool live music-themed things in the center city, with this, and also with their boathouse on the river. But with that said..I just have a small bone to pick with the tacky banner covering up the fourth floor windows.

Hopefully it won't last and they'll put something less temporary there, but I'm not convinced.. this project has been over a year in the works, getting the school ready for months, and the sign just doesn't make sense. Plus with the talk that they might be moving again to a more permanent location somewhere other than Bricktown (the Fred Jones Widgets Bldg has been a heavily rumored location). Anyway, this is the sign I have a problem with..

A canal extension that works

Well, it's not really a canal extension..but rather a Riverwalk extension. San Antonio's recently-finished 1 and 1/3rd-mile extension of the Riverwalk, extends north out of Downtown San Antonio and cuts through a dense area lined with some mixed-use development and the San Antonio Museum of Art. The entire new extension of the Riverwalk is a work of art though, in how underpasses that posed a risk as a potential eyesore were brightened up with public art. A few highlights are.. adorning the Lexington Street underpass are shimmering tiles that catch the light and sort of flitter, colored metal panels under another underpass, a new landscaped landing abutting the San Antonio Museum of Art, and under the I-35 bridge are hanging fish to take away the marr of a highway bridge, and a "grotto" theme at the Camden/Newell intersection. The entire 1.33 mile extension is heavily landscaped, which goes without saying. You can learn a lot more about the Museum Reach segment by checking out this interactive map on the San Antonio Express-News' website.

Here are some pictures taken by popnfresh on SkyscraperCity:






Why was this project a success: The reason that the Museum Reach urban segment of the Riverwalk is such a success is that the right-of-way already existed. The urban fabric already developed around the San Antonio River, and the City of San Antonio is just coming in and giving major aesthetic upgrades to an existing riverfront. The design is innovative and does two things: it incorporates existing "landmarks" along the path, such as the art museum and the Pearl Brewery, which has become a large mixed-use redevelopment project, AND the second reason is that it is innovative in covering up eyesores, such as bridges, and brightening up these dull spaces.

Why copying this would fail in OKC: OKC does not have an existing river that flows through the heart of downtown. There is no neighborhood or even single city block that matured framing a water right of way. The Bricktown Canal is an absolutely brilliant conversion of an alley way into a canal. Where dumpsters, vagrants, and utility lines once were is now an area lined with upscale restaurants, clubs, and the Bricktown haunted house. This is why future planning involving the Bricktown Canal MUST be taken from an "opposite-of-San Antonio" perspective in order to be successful. We have to look for existing right-of-ways that we can easily adapt to become a thin sliver of waterway, and truthfully it isn't a good idea to delve into Core to Shore with the Canal and expect to create a space that matures framing an urban canal. It won't work.

Alternative C2S vision...closer to 20/20

I've made an alternate proposal for C2S, which I created simply using paint basically in all of 1 hour. To be honest, I could spend an hour each night and come up with a different one, all of them probably making more sense than the existing C2S proposal. My point isn't to say this is what I want C2S to look like, but rather, just to throw out some other ideas. That's what's lacking, is alternative ideas flowing. Without further ado, here's what I came up with:



You should be able to click on it and get a bigger version if you need. But in all, I feel like this is a much better proposal for how to do C2S than what we currently have. The key differences I think are that the green space is continuous, the boulevard is a little toned down, the convention center is moved to its own little district by the head of the Bricktown Canal, the canal extension follows Sheridan instead of cutting C2S off from the CBD, and it includes a streetcar route that cuts through the area. I think I also put a lot more emphasis on the concept of "live/work/play".

• The convention center being moved, I feel, is the most important change I made. I hate the current site because it creates an impenetrable cluster of superblock civic buildings all the way from Sheridan down to the new Crosstown. By moving it across Shields it's now right across the street from Bricktown and less likely to create a huge vacuum of normal live/work/play use in the heart of C2S. But I also didn't want to move the convention center and end up segregating it so that it doesn't feel like a part of the city, so I really gave it its own little mixed-use district, that is mostly going to be geared toward hospitality, but deeper in will also include residential. I felt like it worked out perfectly that the convention center and the new district built up around it will surround the headwaters of the Bricktown Canal, which connects it into Bricktown for sure and will end up creating interesting development opportunities.
  

• Another key change is the boulevard, which I aptly named Ralph Ellison Avenue, after OKC's famed author who largely gets no recognition from the community. The boulevard represents a compromise between one faction that wants a soaringly wide, amazing, landmark stretch similar to the Champs Ellyses in Paris, and another that is more pragmatic about the likelihood that such a soaringly wide boulevard would ruin C2S. I propose two simple one-way streets that are two lanes with side parking on the outside (so really 3 lanes wide) that are separated by a wide median. Effectively, it's one street--but it is separated so that there is a wide right of way that can be used to expand should the pedestrian activity ever guarantee that a wide avenue wouldn't be a flop..but at the same time I want it to be an important artery because it is the street that will take people all the way across the center city. Hopefully tourists and travelers will make the choice to take the exit and wind up back on the highway which will show off our awesome city. By having the median park, which would have benches, fountains, walking trails, etc, and keeping the vehicular streets narrow, hopefully the environment would retain walkability so that it isn't keeping the Mongols out or something.

• I also feel differently about how the park should be planned. I think it's completely stupid to have one block that's developed as a shopping mall separating the Myriad Gardens from the elongated Central Park. It's absolutely moronic in my opinion. I moved the shopping mall (which isn't really a shopping mall, but sorta-kinda) to where the convention center currently is and proposed another such major mixed-use development on the west edge of the park along Ellison, which I'll discuss more in detail later. The way I envision it, the closest expansion zone (which is currently slated as shopping mall) should most closely resemble the existing Myriad Gardens which was never finished. Here I would simply finish the Myriad Gardens with the things that I.M. Pei planned for it to have (say what you want about the misguidedness of Pei's comprehensive plan, the Myriad Gardens are the one great thing that we got out of it). Going further down across Ellison the park can exactly resemble the design proposed by the official C2S oversight committee. I have no problem with the amenities of the proposed park! It would be Central Park NYC mixed with elements of Millennium Park Chicago, but it would all be one cohesive landmark park all the way from across the Devon Tower to the shore of the Oklahoma River, but it would just be named the Myriad Commons.

There would also be a Central Park, but it would be much smaller, and less landmark. Central Park would be a small neighborhood-oriented park to build the parkside neighborhood around. It would still be a decently sized park though, but it would be much cheaper because it would require no interesting features. Just some walking trails and tons of landscaping would be perfect there. One idea I'd love to see explored a lot more in OKC is community gardening. Maybe they can fence off an area, or heck the entire park, and divide it into community gardens that people can rent as their own for a very small fee.

• The Bricktown Canal extension should go along Sheridan, and not the boulevard. Sheridan would still go through, but for those two blocks between the edge of Bricktown and the Myriad Gardens, which mostly passes the bulk of our little "hotel district", it would be one-way entering Bricktown. The west-bound side would be taken out and that's where the Canal extension would go. The existing sidewalk for Sheridan and Sheridan Avenue itself would be the walkways along it. This would be the easiest way to extend the Canal west, and as long as Sheridan can still provide ingress to Bricktown then it works out perfectly. A walkable and attractive right-of-way is created that pedestrians can use to perfectly navigate between the CBD and Bricktown, namely, from Bricktown restaurants to the Ford Center or other attractions, with existing hotels positioned strategically. Maybe the Century Center can even be torn down and developed with a new hotel along the extended Canal. Extending the Canal specifically down Sheridan, which would line it with hotels, the old convention center, the park, and Devon Tower, it's a canal that does a better job of holding a candle to the San Antonio Riverwalk.
  

• Other less key differences: I created a historic preservation area for Film Row (which doesn't deviate from the current plan, but I just felt like it should be included since the area borders the C2S impact zone) and also one for SW 3rd Street which does deviate greatly from the current plan. There are a lot of really awesome historic brick warehouses along SW 3rd that should be saved and converted to mixed-uses somehow. This zone would encourage that to be done. Also the streetcar goes down Walker, cuts across the park south of I-40 (although doing it at I-40 might be a better idea in hindsight), and then goes up the existing BNSF tracks where it will have stops at the new convention center, Bricktown, and northward from there. Along the river, south of Regatta Park (where amazing things are happening) I added a residential district that will have a boardwalk on the south end, and at the heart of the residential riverfrontage is a little monument park which would have statues and fountains and stuff.
  

As an overview of different neighborhoods, I'll start with the area along Ralph Ellison Avenue to the west of the park. This area is envisioned as an incredibly high-traffic area that is the gateway into the center city. A good name for the district might just be "Gateway". There will be a lot of retail, in fact probably the majority of "destination retail" will go in here. You might see major mixed-use development of all different stripes take place in this area, a lot of it will be either mid-rise or high-rise, and probably include tons of retail, perhaps a theater, some hotels, perhaps a few HQ, and condos on the higher floors. This area also has its OWN streetcar loop that runs along West Reno. This is a double-track that feeds off of Walker and turns around at Western.

South of there, there is a historic preservation district along SW 3rd. Brick warehouses that can be converted to lofts, light retail, coffeeshops, and restaurants. On the other side of this historic preservation area is a predominantly residential area that is dense, yet also quiet at the same time. This is actually intended to be a really upscale neighborhood centered around Central Park. Or Center City Park. Or something like that. The idea is that it is an upscale neighborhood built around a park that really reflects heavily on being in the middle of a cosmopolitan city, which is why I felt like naming it Central Park over the main park, which I wanted to have a more unique name that doesn't scream, "We're a midsize metro trying to replicate New York." Closer to the main park (on the east side of this district) is a more mixed-use area. The mixed-use zoning isn't to indicate mass new urbanist development, but more just that the street levels of all of the buildings won't be residential. They'll include stuff like bookstores, cafes, coffee shops, night clubs, maybe small bank branches, dry cleaners, fast food, etc. It will be the area where basic neighborhood retail is concentrated, but this area is still predominantly residential, and upscale, just like the western half of the district. Buildings for the entire area, from Western to park edge, will have a maximum height of 5 stories.

Across the Crosstown Expressway from the area I just described is a more middle class residential neighborhood that isn't nearly as mixed-use as the area fronting the Myriad Commons north of the Crosstown. There might be an occasional street level coffee shop or cafe, but here there's nothing wrong with street-level homes. This area is really dense, but also has a height restriction of 5 stories. The neighborhood is anchored by the community center proposed for the park and by the Little Flower Church. Maybe there could be some other churches, as long as the modern churches could build on a site that mirrors historic urban churches. South of 12th street is just an area (that is still pretty dense) that consists of single family bungalow homes with small yards. Imagine a modern Jefferson Park.

Across the park (on the SE side of the park) is a mixed-bag neighborhood. It's basically a mix between SW and NW parkside. It'll be home to both middle class, lower-middle class, and upscale, and it will mostly be a quiet residential-dominated neighborhood, with the exception that some blocks adapt to special environments. For instance along SW 10th Street where I proposed for the streetcar to cut through the park, is an area of moderate mixed-use development with uses that correlate to the massive new convention center, just up the streetcar line. The area is lined with hotels and mixed-use development, BUT it still tries to keep a subdued, mostly residential feel to the area. The subdued feeling ends at 5th Street where there will be mixed-use development along Ellison, right across from what will become the new front entrance of the Ford Center. I believe that this area should be heavily oriented around the Ford Center. Maybe include an ESPN Gameday, sports bars, and fan shops. The development will be similar to the Power & Light District in Kansas City, which won't be as dense as the development further west along Ellison, but it will still have an active and hectic feel with pedestrians all around and street parking near impossible to find. Maximum height maybe..3 stories tall in this area, but still dense, and no surface parking, which should go without saying. This gamezone area is the least dense area I've planned, but at the same time one of the busiest. The absolute KEY to this area is that Shields Blvd HAS to be redone! It needs to be brought down to the street level.

In the convention center district the idea is that this area is busy, absolutely hectic. I was worried that the convention center might dull down on days without conventions in town, so I put it across Ellison from Lower Bricktown and surrounded it with sort of a "Lower-Lower Bricktown". Hopefully the area is a hit. Ellison, the way I want it, will be very easy to walk across on foot, so the idea is for this area to basically be part of Bricktown. Or Lower Bricktown, at least. A key thing I want to mention about the convention center is that I put it on top of the grain silo for a reason. Everything that isn't colored blue can just be razed, but I would really like it if the City of OKC would preserve those grain silos and include OKC Rocks, grain silo and all, in the convention center site. The result could be a really cool contrast between OKC's roots and OKC's future and a design that is so creative and unique it becomes megalomania in the architecture world.

Across the Crosstown is another park-oriented neighborhood that is nothing special. The idea is that Regatta Park is going to become one of OKC's biggest and most important attracts, so I just wanted it to be very incorporated into the urban fabric, which right now it hardly is. On the east side the density starts up high and then turns into dense bungalows, similarly to on the across corner of C2S. The bungalows will back up to the existing Kerr McGee tower thingy that I forget what it is at the moment (because it is so forgettable). On the other side of Regatta Park is a denser, more middle-class neighborhood that probably is more influenced by being waterfront than parkfront. Along the riverfront is room for a corporate tenant to do something unique and modernist. In fact there are scattered nodes all along the riverfront in various spots, I think 3 or 4, that will be small corporate campuses, except for one big one at the Walker bridge. This is just to have a lot of architectural diversity along the river, considering that corporate campuses usually feature what's "cutting-edge" for the time, which at the present, is anything that looks LEED-certified. You won't get that from residential neighborhoods for the most part. There's a boardwalk where people can set up vending stands and stuff by the 15th Street bridge (which can just be gotten rid of IMO, as I was careful to make sure I didn't include it in my planning) and another pocket park along the river at 11th, which will just be a nice little square with fountains and statues and stuff.

Phwew! That's an exhausting overview of something different that we can do with C2S. Oh and last but not last, I included the Humphreys airpark redeveloment site (which will actually be the first of any of this to break ground), and I had an idea that the West Reno streetcar line might be able to be extended south along Western so that it could service what will be a major development here along the river. It might just be a better idea though to save that, not for the downtown streetcar circulator system, but for when its time to start on city-wide light rail (different from streetcar). The line extending south or whatever could pass it somehow. Just a thought.

Hope you all liked this, or read it at least. Let me know what you think!

Canals Galore

It's funny how every time someone from another city visits the Bricktown Canal, the first thing they usually think of is, "Oh, this is just like a smaller version of San Antonio!" It's ironic how the Bricktown Canal is so easily traced to the success of the San Antonio Riverwalk when in fact there are a LOT of cities that have canals running through their downtowns. In fact, the canal is probably one of the most underrated urban features in the typical American downtown. The thing that makes OKC and San Antonio stand out is that in these cities the canal is overrated rather than underrated.

I believe wholeheartedly that there are two things you can judge a city based on: 1, the goodness of the people (which is subjective); and 2, how well it takes care of public rights-of-way (which isn't subjective). A public ROW isn't just limited to a street..the problem with streets is that there is vehicular traffic in the middle which poses certain dangers to the pedestrians milling about. Some of the best public ROWs in the nation don't even allow vehicular traffic, these can range from pedestrian malls, to canal/riverwalks.

San Antonio, Texas

Of course I didn't mean to insult the San Antonio Riverwalk by saying it's overrated. Perhaps I should just say that it gets the acclaim that it definitely deserves. The Riverwalk is without a doubt one of the most amazing urban environments in the United States. Without a doubt it sets the standard (one that likely will never be met by cities attempting to replicate this), and in some ways, even functions better in providing access than most streets. It functions as one of the most scenic urban pedestrian malls in the entire world.

Chattanooga, Tennessee

Chattanooga is definitely not one of those cities people think of often when looking to dole out praise for urban planning, but I think it deserves some praise for the riverwalk along the scenic Chattahoochie River, which does a great job of providing an attractive setting for relaxing and taking in a beautiful day. The art museum fronting the riverbanks also helps anchor it into the urban fabric. The only downside is that it lacks shops, restaurants, housing, and offices. Without having mixed-use development along the river it falls short of being the kind of thing you can build a neighborhood around, for lack of a better buzzword.

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland rocks, and for those who have been kind enough to put up with my postings for a long time, y'all know that I'm a huge fan of Cleveland. Maybe the fact that it's "that city most people love to hate" just fuels my interest and likening of this Rust Belt jewel. The Cuyahoga River winds its way through the heart of Cleveland and is worked into the urban fabric in many ways. The river is used for recreation, and you often see motorboats splashing around with the skyline in the background, additionally several plazas, including for the Rock & Roll HOF open to the Cuyahoga ROW. There is mixed-use development, and several neighborhoods including the popular Flats area are built around the river so it definitely comes through where Chattanooga falls short. Kudos for the landmark bridges that add a sort of postcard element. The only criticism I can make is that it is still pretty sketchy in some areas, and not continuously gentrified. Turns out you can't take the Cleveland out of Cleveland.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

It's hard to not also love the Milwaukee River riverwalk. I don't know nearly as much about this jewel of an urban space, but I can tell that it is a great asset for downtown Milwaukee. Probably one of the most underrated riverwalks in the nation, the Milwaukee River cuts through the heart of downtown Milwaukee. It's a safe, photogenic, pleasant, and highly-frequented public ROW that draws people to its storefronts and and so on. It proves to commonly-held notion that people are naturally attracted to water, whether it be great fountains, riverwalks, lakefronts, sandy beaches, etc.

Washington, District of Columbia

When I went to DC for the first time and saw the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal and Towpath, I thought what a wasted opportunity for an urban asset. As I got more familiar with it one summer that I lived in Georgetown, I began to fall in love with this bucolic ROW. As a neighborhood asset it provides something that glamorous Georgetown needs if someone has spent an entire day in the nest of designer shops, trendy restaurants, and urbane nightlife--old fashioned R&R (rest and relaxation). The towpath could not be any better at providing tranquility and peacefulness as it cuts through a maze of density, at times, only half a block from the maddening crowds of M Street or Wisconsin Avenue.

Indianapolis, Indiana

The Indy Canal Walk elicits interesting critiques and praises, some that I think could closely mirror the Bricktown Canal. In some places, it is a very well done public space. In some places, it does a great job of tying in civic facilities such as museums and parks to development. In other places however, the development is too branded and heavy facades detract from the environment. It is the same problem posed by Toby's and Residence Inn on the Lower Canal. The branded architecture utilizes heavy facades that overwhelm you with corporate image and impede on civic image. In the grand scheme of things in Downtown Indy, it does not feel like the canal is a major factor when you're on the ground there. It isn't like the San Antonio Riverwalk, but rather it's a secondary asset almost; Downtown Indy is more impacted by other factors, and I think it could be an even better built environment were it more impacted by the Indy Canal Walk. That said, I'd say its pros by far outweigh its cons, and that all of its criticism from the architecture world is sometimes not well-deserved.

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

OKC's Bricktown Canal is interesting for me to write about because I don't think I can do so impartially. From an outsider's perspective, I think it's gotten unanimously raving reviews mostly for the fact that it takes people by such surprise to see a lush, urban oasis in the heart of Oklahoma's state capital city. The main problem with the Bricktown Canal is that it is not finished, despite that it may appear so. There are buildings that are still in need of repair and the are even plenty of abandoned canal-level storefronts. Dirt bags even cover up one building's canal-level real estate, and how pathetic is that, for such a beloved public asset. A problem of the Bricktown Canal is that the walkways beside each embankment are too narrow to create the desired effect. Another problem is that it is too divided between the "Upper Canal" and the "Lower Canal" with the divide being Reno Avenue.

What's so fascinating for me to try and comprehend, and that I want to impress, is that the Upper Canal has definitely lost momentum at the expense of the Lower Canal, which used to be attacked, criticized, and blasphemed in every imaginable way. Ever since Randy Hogan finished leasing up the Centennial on the Canal, adding a vital mixed-use anchor to the Lower Canal, activity picked up immensely on the ROW and where people used to cry "suburban design!" is an indisputably urban (and attractive) built environment. The Bricktown Canal still has a lot of work to be done, and a lot of work that is about to begin at least on the Upper Canal (where it's most needed to restore the balance), and it's important that continuing to grow the environment along the canal remain in the public dialogue, and not forgotten or put on the backburner by some other project that OKC would rather just move on to.

The whole reason I decided to take a look at other cities' canals and comparing them to the Bricktown Canal is to determine if the proposed canal extension is the right thing. The present Canal is a significant environment. The proposed extension in my opinion would be an insignificant environment, and that's not acceptable. There are better ways to create a significant environment along the proposed route of the extension than with a canal, and that's the bottom line. Every other canal I examined--significant environment. Do this, and the Bricktown Canal's stock falls immensely and it no longer holds a candle to some of these, which I would argue it definitely does right now.

Besides I would even doubt that the Bricktown Association's proposed extension is not at all feasible. Have it cross the grand boulevard and run it under the tracks at the same time, run it alongside the boulevard where the levels would likely be all screwed up, then have it cross the grand boulevard again like an L at an intersection, run it through a mixed-use development, and then cross Reno and empty into the Myriad Gardens' lake. The only thing out of all of that that's remotely feasible IMO is probably running it through the mixed-use development, crossing Reno, and emptying into the Myriad Gardens' lake. the first 3/4th of this route is not possible without plunking down major $ on screwing up the levels, which wouldn't be remotely attractive to pedestrians anyway. It wouldn't connect to anything, and it would be bordered on one side by vehicular traffic and a big-block structure (and probably a few blank walls of said structure) on the other side. Idiotic idea.

I have a better idea. Stay tuned for that. Back to other cities' riverwalks. I just want to close with one thing to say: it's an honor for OKC to be included in the likes of DC, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Cleveland, San Antonio, and even Chattanooga (when you consider that you're comparing the attractiveness of ROWs, don't underestimate a city nestled in the heart of the Appalachians!). We're talking about world-class environments here, for the most part, and at the least, we're talking about cities that have done a stellar job with their public spaces, and by no means is it limited to just these cities as there are tons of other cities with great canals/riverwalks. I won't even list them because there are so many.