"C2S North" site chosen

The "Core2Shore North" site was just chosen for the new convention center. That is the former Bob Howard Downtown Ford dealership site that a few months ago was going to be the site of a huge mixed-use development.

So now we will have a convention center in between two parks.

Too weary to go into all of the reasons why this is a horrible site, for OKC that is, I mean it's great for the conventions... well actually, first we're going to have a big vacant lot between the two parks for ten years until we break ground on the CC. Unless they get to move the site up, in which case, we won't get as much mileage of streetcar track because of this decision. Or something else would be impacted.

There might be some interesting solutions that can alleviate the negative convention center impact we're about to add downtown. I'm more interested in pursuing that public debate than attempting to oppose yet another high-profile decision that was already made mostly behind closed doors.

The question NOT asked

It's funny that right now, the convention center subcommittee of the MAPS3 Committee is meeting and they are going to make a very big decision that will impact downtown and Oklahoma City for a long time to come, as they name the location of the new convention center, a Phase 1 investment of $280 Million (Phase 2 I believe will make it approach $400 M). But it's really funny because there's a really important question that was never asked at any point during this process, and is probably not going to be asked today.

What is the best convention center for the REST of OKC, that doesn't revolve around the convention center?? They never considered that a convention center could possibly be less than ideal for any of these sites. We have proper analysis based on what is good for the convention center and for the convention attendees, and tons of studies done on that, tons of debating was done, great questions were asked. But I contend that is 1% of what should have been considered.

The other 99% of the puzzle that they totally ignored or didn't care about was the rest of OKC that won't go into that convention center. They didn't consider what was best for the park. Best for Core2Shore. Best for downtown retail. Best for downtown housing. Best for downtown nightlife. Best for downtown in general. They looked at this solely from the perspective of what is best for conventions, and that's it.

So ladies and gentlemen, here you have it. The #1 priority of MAPS3 and for all of downtown, our entire downtown investment strategy, is based on conventions. For better or for worse, this is the concept that we are using as the basis for the future downtown. Let's just rename it the Convention Center District right now, because that's the most important thing.

If not, we would have considered other things. Hard to argue otherwise. Maybe they would have considered at some point where the convention center would have best fit into an overall downtown masterplan that puts all of these huge investments and projects into one plan. Why can't we do that?!?

So much for that

Skirvin proposal, we hardly knew ye...

For the best. The committee now seems to be heavily leaning toward the former Bob Howard Downtown Ford site. The OG+E substation site has mysteriously risen from the grave.

OKC Streetcar-opoly

I was in the mood to do something interesting. You'll have to click on it to view the larger version, but this illustrates some of the conflicting pressures on the streetcar process right now, just to highlight a small few.

The expedited planning process, which has worked because most of the committee members have really invested a huge amount of time in such a short period to this, has kept this streetcar project ahead and on top of all these pressures. That's the simple truth.

Councilman White resolves his streetcar dispute

I wanted to mention, although late, that Pete White has resolved his dispute over the streetcar and backed off. I think he was just reacting negatively to what he saw from AA and felt better once the subcommittee was able to reassure him it would be a worthwhile endeavor, or so we all hope. He backed off a while ago. Doug also did this really nifty video.

I don't like to toot my own horn, so I didn't mention it back in January when I went before the City Council (namely Pete) and spoke in favor of keeping the streetcar element in MAPS 3. But Doug did this little video and I thought my speech was actually fairly decent this time, although it gets off to a pretty shaky start with some trepidation as I rattle off the usual respectful openings.

I'm not sure how much pressure that social media actually puts on local city leaders. But I'm sure that Doug's videos (he made about 4-5 of them) did help the situation some. I hope Doug will continue to utilize social media outlets and help rally people when he sees that the public MAPS 3 program is taking a detour in any way. Even if Doug felt awkward by using these weapons against a long-time friend of his, Councilman White.

Sorry it took me so long (it's been a crazy few weeks), but good job Doug, and good job to the guys like Jeff and other subcommittee members behind the scenes!

Hiring a consultant..

Oh look, City Council is hiring another consultant. For the convention center, go figure. Maybe this consultant will tell them what they want? Either they must be really really hesitant to make a stance one way or another, or they just don't like what the last..7..consultants have had to say about the convention center.

I think OKC is becoming the consultant capital of the world. Might be a good business to get into, for anyone looking for a job. Does anyone else think this is ridiculous?

Mayor Mick's a Keeper..for now

Very interesting article in the NY Times about the surge of mayoral recalls sweeping across the nation. For evidence of this close to OKC, just look at the never-ending mayor controversies in Stillwater and Tulsa. What we're seeing here in many cases is citizens loosing the ability to be rational, which does not bode well for local elected officials who are closest to the angry, irrational masses. Case in point: Daniel Varela, mayor of Livingston, Cali. was recalled and replaced by a landslide for instigating the town's first water rate increase in decades to pay for updates to water pipes that spew brownish, smelly water. Another case in point: Dayne Walling, mayor of Flint, Mi. was nearly recalled just for balancing his municipal budget amidst a fiscal shortfall much steeper than what we faced here in Oklahoma, obviously.

There has never been this many recalls in the history of the country, either. They're everywhere, other big cities that have faced them in the last months are Akron, Chattanooga, Portlant (Ore), KCMO, Toledo, and many others. More have them coming up.

Here in OKC, things are getting testy as well. We just need to stay calm and rational, which we've been good at for the last few years. Hold the politicians heels to the fire, which we've been doing. Our community, and particularly anyone who could have a recall petition against them, can ill afford shenanigans right now over the convention center site, OG+E, MAPS, and other potentially divisive issues.

Do I think progress would be stalled by a political scandal? No, I hardly doubt that. They have those all over the world, yet somehow people in Stillwater, Tulsa, Portland, Chicago, Dallas..and other cities that have had their share of recent political scandals all seem to make great municipal progress in their own ways. I just think it would be better if we avoided that. What OKC is doing requires stronger public approval than what a lot of these other cities are doing to achieve the same result, to revitalize the central city.

I think Mick Cornett has exhibited pure class about 80% of the time, and that's as good as it gets for any high-profile mayors. Even if we don't always agree with him we can appreciate his principle and appreciate his efforts to better the community. I would just say thank GOD that we don't have one of these "conservative principle" mayors who are irrationally unwilling to budge on political principles..i.e., the MAPS tax was supported by most all political moderates in OKC. I would say that today if there were a recall ballot with Cornett's name on it, I would do what I could to help defeat it. We're better with him leading and representing our city, and he's done a great job, so far.

Talk Transit Today

COTPA is having another LTR forum today. I obviously won't be there but maybe some of you will. There will be a noon time presentation and an evening presentation. http://www.letstalktransit.com/

Can someone tell me why the taskforce study area is bounded by the Oklahoma River, Heritage Hills, the east edge of the medical center... and St. Anthony's? In other words, why are we looking as far east, north, and south as possible.. and not looking very far west?

Obviously if we're including the Oklahoma River and/or NW 13th Street, downtown goes much further west than St. Anthony's. Supposedly (I am learning from others on OKC Talk) that there are improvements planned for Classen Blvd as it goes through downtown as well. We know that OCU Law sadly won't happen anymore, but who's to say Film Row still doesn't deserve a streetcar boost?

It seems like it's already been ruled out.

What happened at City Council?

Nothing, really. The City Council, whether purposefully or accidentally, had an item on the docket not only referencing the park-adjacent convention center location but also committing over $1 million dollars in unused funds from the G.O. Bond to a highway ramp for Robinson. The funds are actually for a "ramp box" which is just a platform for complicated ingress onto the new Crosstown Expressway.

Basically, this whole I-40 project has turned into a disaster. Not only is it experiencing un-Godly cost overruns, but it was supposed to be an entirely depressed freeway like the Connector through Downtown-Midtown Atlanta. Well, surprise, there's a water table. So now it will only be 8 feet depressed, which means that I could stand up against the edge and easily touch the grass up on the ground. There are trucks that are at least 12 feet tall, and my suv is about 8 feet tall--to put into perspective how "depressed" this highway will be. The result is that we basically have an at-grade freeway and not a depressed freeway, which may cause this Core to Shore thing to need some complete rethinking. So much for removing a "barrier."

I also don't understand why the city is now having to pay for highway ramps, either. I thought ODOT was committing everything not covered by the feds. If anything, this is a very telling sign that the city is going to be picking up the entire tab for any kind of replacement boulevard for the present Crosstown. We knew that a while ago just looking at ODOT's 8-year plans, but now there can be no doubt. It would be nice if we could use any "uncommitted funds" from the G.O. Bond towards that, but apparently we're also paying for exit ramps..which I thought were typically included in a controlled-"access" highway. I still think that catapults strategically placed around the city would be far more efficient than what we've got.

I've come to the conclusion that so far this ramp and the $30 million that has been guaranteed to OG+E for the substation land do not preclude the locating of the convention center. There will need to be a Robinson ramp anyway because Robinson is going to be one of the entry points for the new Crosstown. The substation will also need to be gone regardless of where a convention center goes. If you put condos and retail there, those are also incompatible with a power substation next door no matter how fond you are of "grit" (which I am very).

The only thing that precludes the location of the convention center, which we're being told will be a "process," is the city's mindset. When you take the money to buy the OG+E land out of the convention center budget (apparently it was being factored into the $270 million share of MAPS 3), and when you have language on the city council agenda (that is supposedly accidental) referencing where the convention center WILL go, it's pretty evident that there is a "conspiracy," to use Mayor Mick's term for it, if he wants to go there..

3 options (that don't stink)

These are the three streetcar routes that COTPA is going to unveil at the upcoming Let's Talk Transit meeting. I am impressed by the skill, knowledge, and patience displayed by COTPA staff and particularly their consultant, Mike McAnelly..and personally, I say they've come up with some GREAT routes given the length limitations we are going to face. Wish it could have gone further down Sheridan and connected Film Row and OCU Law, but oh well.

Route 1

6.75 miles

Route 2

5.47 miles

Route 3

6.35 miles

My comments will be brief, I am MUCH more interested in what readers think about these routes. I'm not a big fan myself of the green route--I don't think it connects enough existing destinations, unless you think that a potential streetcar system needs to serve the bus station and the memorial. My main preference is probably the red route, although I like the blue route, too.

We Talked Transit..apparently

Sorry I am just now getting around to writing up my recap for the Let's Talk Transit meeting waaaaay back on May 11. I've just been bogged down with work and of course, fighting SandRidge and now anti-preservation moron lawmakers--the topics that have very clearly preoccupied this blog lately.

But YES, there WAS a Let's Talk Transit streetcar public forum meeting on May 11..it was held at the usual time, 6 pm in the Hall of Mirrors, Civic Center 2nd floor.

Several points from other people first, and then I'll just finish with my own thoughts that I feel are relatively important to the subject. The format of this meeting was just open mic and attendants were encouraged to take the mic and voice their concerns for the streetcar system. In order to get us fired up, Mike McAnelly shared several potential streetcar alignments which I'm not even going to mention here because I think (hope) those were just to get us talking, and not something seriously being considered.

Jeff Bezdek: Jeff conveyed several great ideas, as usual, when he took the mic so I am going to start with him. The most important idea that he conveyed, as far as streetcar route alignment goes, is that there is a strong need to find a balance here and pick up people in destination areas in order for the streetcar to serve as an incubator for somewhere else. Put more simply, a streetcar with nobody riding on it does very little to actually invoke infill interest--it's the people that streetcar brings, not the streetcar itself. Jeff also publicly alluded to (for the first time I'm aware of) something that he privately mentioned to me at a previous meeting, so I'm going to assume it's okay to break the news: We may very possibly end up with more than $120 million for streetcar..and I don't think he is just talking about a fed contribution. I'm sure more details on this will be forthcoming when it's appropriate.

Dean Schirf: Dean, one of my co-transit bloggers, was quite possibly one of the foremost experts on rail in the room during the meeting. This, despite that he never officially headed up the campaign for streetcar nor is he the one getting paid by COTPA for consulting on streetcar. So it's with great respect and admiration when I preface this by saying that I actually have a disagreement with Dean when he said that it is important to start small and grow the system based on what we know works. He suggested that the wise thing to do would be to cautiously expand into 6 miles, in order to avoid any risks of going with a bad route. He also spoke up on the issue of the boulevard, which we can ALL agree with: The mythical boulevard still has not yet been funded, not by the city, not by the state, not by ODOT's 8-year plan, and not by the feds--and it is showing absolutely no signs of getting funded any time soon, either. So then why, on earth, is COTPA even suggesting that an E/W alignment share a route with the proposed boulevard? Yeah, it would be cool. Imagine it: A Paris-like street in the middle of OKC, lined with cafes and coffee shops and destination retail such as Nordstrom's, packed with pedestrians, super wide, with a streetcar going down it even. And then snap back to reality....

There was also a dude who showed up to argue for a $5 billion metro-wide light rail plan. He gave me a card, I lost it, forgot his name, forgot the name of his plan--but apparently he is serious about this. Personally I think he mislead a lot of people in the room into thinking that his private citizen initiative is a real deal like this streetcar project IS, but it was interesting nonetheless.

My own opinions: First, as for the "start small" concept, to me it's not a matter of the wisdom in the idea or being impatient to affect change. The bottom line is that if we do not have a system that is comprehensive and gets people everywhere they want to go, it will fail. So to that end, how does it help us to just gradually open a line that takes people up and down Sheridan and just Sheridan? When the ridership lags behind our hopeful wishes do we get to say, "Well, it's only the starter line, doesn't take people anywhere besides along Sheridan.." or is "Told ya so!" more appropriate?

I was speaking and Jennifer Eve, who was moderating, asked me to continue about how I feel about expansion..so I took a deep breath and this is what came out: The reality of this situation is really do or die for Oklahoma City. Here you have an infrastructure improvement that is so long overdue that it's easy to say just build the damn thing, whatever it is is we'll be happy with it. However, then it gets complicated. How much streetcar can $120 million buy us? That in my opinion is the MAIN QUESTION they should be asking, and NOT where can we stick 6 miles of streetcar? Because of the funding mechanism we are using for this project, any talk of expansion at the present is spurious--MAPS 4 will not even be a prospect until 2018 and a streetcar expansion can not be realized until 2025. We are committed to the overall MAPS 3 sales tax for the next 7-almost-8 years, and after that, we know the drill..voter approval, and then revenues must be collected BEFORE improvements begin. So yeah, don't even talk about expansion. What you have to do is design a system with the understanding that your hands are so tied by the funding mechanism that an expansion is not possible until 2025, or basically, a really long time.

Also my concern is with the project conception. Taking it like a scientific question, I think it asks the wrong question and has the control and variables inadvertently misplaced. The way COTPA has approached the question, the cost per mile is a constant and the route is the variable, the question being "How much can $120 million get us?" Instead I think that the route should be constant, the cost per mile should be the variable, and the question should be, "OK this is the route, now how much to spend per mile on it?"

See what I'm saying? There are certain things that make it more or less expensive per mile, and face it, the estimated $12-25 million per mile for modern streetcar systems is a HUGE range. If we come in closer to $12 million per mile, which would make me incredibly happy, then we could get 10 miles out of this system--and sure, we might not have some of the features that the $20 million/mile alternative would come with. But consider this: Which is going to attract more riders, a streetcar with bike racks and leather seats or a streetcar that connects Bricktown and Deep Deuce to the Oklahoma Health Center? We need to spend so much more focus on doing whatever we can to get slightly more than 6 miles. 8 miles would be great, and make a huge difference because in the current 6 mile system models I've seen, it is virtually impossible to do a good job connecting downtown districts and the medical district. I think that connecting the medical district is necessary due to the huge number of high-income jobs over there and the urban development growth that area is currently experiencing. But if you can't put a station in the middle of the medical district, don't even bother--there is no point in stopping at Lincoln and 8th because nobody is going to walk from 12th or 16th (OMRF) to get on the streetcar south of the medical district, basically.

Okay...so that's a LOT of issues, and a lot of debate, and a lot of respectful discourse. TOMORROW (Thursday) will mark the FINAL meeting of the Let's Talk Transit forum and it will basically consist of COTPA recounting back to us what we told them. It's a chance for us to see if they got our order right, basically. 11:30 am (lunchtime) and 6:30 pm, CITY HALL (not Civic Center).

MAPS: 1 month and counting

The MAPS 3 penny sales tax went into effect on April 1st, which means people in OKC have now been paying the MAPS 3 tax for exactly 1 month and 2 days. So now that we have our first month behind us.. I was going to pose the question:

Is everyone still making it alright? Can everyone still afford groceries, clothes for the kids, and electricity?

Just making sure.

A thousand questions

So many questions, so little time. In lieu of a full post (currently working on an exhaustive retail post), I think for this week I'll just post some questions that are burning in my mind. If anyone would venture some answers, feel free.

I am afraid that if it's questionable, in "this current economy" (I disagree with that..) and in the current malaise that is private development in downtown OKC, you have to assume the worst..that each of these possible projects are negligible. I want to be wrong. Or here's a much more optimistic possibility: Maybe everyone is waiting to see what's going to happen with MAPS 3 before they put any more investment into downtown? Too much up in the air right now. There is an amazing amount of change going on, but it's virtually all public sector and instead of invigorating the private sector, the private sector seems to have taken a breather.

So here goes, no particular order:

1 Is OKC still doing anything to attract more retail? Did the ULI panel give the city some ideas? Is the city willing to subsidize a "Core to Shore boulevard" retail development?

2 Has anyone besides myself realized the demolition spree that this city is on? Multiple buildings on 10th Street, the SandRidge proposal, Bricktown Steffen Creamery bldg, and more. Now it looks like the next may be a row of shops at Classen and NW 30th. Oh and the site Bradshaw cleared at Broadway/12th. The more I think, the more examples I come up with.

3 How has first-floor leasing been going? Legacy and Park Harvey were huge successes in that regard. What about the Maywood Lofts? Chuck Ainsworth's Candy Factory project? I'm sure there's some I'm forgetting. I know there is no first-floor retail yet in the Candy Factory "Lofts" or in Maywood Lofts' spaces..

4 I'm curious what Steve Mason's been up to. He's always up to something cool.

5 The Maywood Brownstones have changed hands. So does that free Ron Bradshaw up to do some more projects? Hopefully something more economically feasible. And what does this mean for Maywood Park? Will the brownstones be finished out as originally planned? (dozens more were originally planned)

6 When I was last in Bricktown I saw a ton of site work going on around the Steel Yards project. Is that going forward, or is something else entirely going on?

7 Did the ULI knock some sense into the city, or is Mayor Mick still intent on building the convention center adjacent to the Core to Shore park? It might make or break MAPS 3. Not really, but still--why be intent on making the worst out of the top-dollar ticket item?

8 What is the deal with Chesapeake? I realize we will never find out, but it's worth speculating. So much construction equipment between Classen and the tracks, on top of several blocks that I'm guessing they cleared. They've also been clearing a half dozen apartment buildings off of Grand Blvd between Western and 63rd. There was an apartment building on 63rd in front of Nichols Hills Plaza they also just razed. No announcement from Chesapeake as usual. What is going on? We already know Whole Foods is going in where they tore down the funeral home earlier this year.

9 Ron Bradshaw (I think it was him) bulldozed that site at like.. NW 12th and Broadway. What will come of that? Another site that was bulldozed just to sit for decades? We all thought we'd see development of that site by now, no surprise--no development. Maybe something is still planned, or is he no longer developing?

10 What is going on at Saint Anthony's Hospital? I'm hearing a lot about two possible new mid-rise buildings at the hospital, including a new emergency ward--and in addition to that, I'm hearing about a group of doctors interested in building a new doctor's office building (significant midrise as opposed to lowrise from what I hear).

11 What's the deal with some of these downtown developments that you hear nothing about? Like The Carnegie. The First National Building renovations? The CityPlace Lofts (in the upper floors)? Will Lower Bricktown ever be finished (is Randy Hogan going to be 'let off' or will OCURA ever take the land back)?

12 Our friend Nicholas Preftakes... 'nuff said.

13 Are some property owners actually trying to make sure that the downtown streetcar does not go in front of their property? Words can not describe how misdirected I think such a move would be. Streetcar = good. Usually the argument against it is "I'm too cheap to pay for it," and not.. "It better stay off of my lawn!"

14 Would a downtown grocer even be successful? Crescent Market closed. The deli is still open, thankfully. People really do a lot of talking about what downtown needs and yada yada--when someone comes in are they supporting them? It's a valid question I've heard raised by many. I've asked people what businesses they think are in need of support, nobody wants to specifically name a business that's doing badly, but maybe we really do need a downtown endangered list..if it would help.


Not to be all negative, unexpected answers that have come up..

1 Is Bricktown EVER going to have some decent retail? Apparently, yes--in June. The people behind the Red Dirt Emporium are opening a "public market" type space in June that will feature a collection of local vendors with different kinds of booths. It will also hopefully act as an incubator for new retail in Bricktown, where people who make shirts or food or whatever--can start out with a booth here and then get their own store as they expand. The market will be located on the canal level of the Jackson Building in upper Bricktown--the interior will be very avant garde, very Bricktown. Can't wait to see it.

2 Will SandRidge be opposed? Yes, big-time. An awesome group has formed with the mission to "Keep Downtown Urban." Preservation Oklahoma has filed a public appeal against SandRidge Energy's plans to raze north downtown leaving only SandRidge Tower standing. Today during lunch they held a "Building Hug" ceremony downtown, gathering about 40 participants, as well as spectators and news reporters. They gave out free "Keep Downtown Urban" t-shirts as well.

3 Can development happen during this economy? Yes. Look at Paseo, look at the Plaza District--not only is there significant redevelopment going on, but these are also by far some of the highest-risk (as far as lender's are concerned) development areas of the city. Low risk development: Bricktown, or Memorial Road. High risk: Plaza District (because there aren't active precedent indicators that a project will be successful). Look at the transformation the Plaza has undergone during a bad economy, and look at the local retail tenants that have miraculously popped up. Plaza has a truly awesome retail scene in my opinion. Maybe the low expectations lent themselves to a surprisingly successful district? Maybe the ridiculously high expectations are what's problematic in Bricktown.

Think about it, OKC.

Fun with DIY streetcar routes

The most recent COTPA "Let's Talk Transit" public forum was a lot of fun and I am glad I was in OKC for it. I still think COTPA has some work to do, and they could be a little smoother in how they answer questions and present the streetcar system, but I would give them an all-around A. The meeting flat-out exceeded my expectations, and I came away with a few ideas of my own. Various COTPA and Planning Dept people gave presentations and took questions from the group.

They did a great job of giving a base explanation of the streetcar system and showing the examples such as Portland, but there was one question they never really answered: One older woman who looked well-cultured and like the perfect potential downtown resident stated her frustration with the fixed guideway nature of the streetcar project. Because downtown is still growing developmentally, she didn't understand why we were going with a fixed rail transit system when downtown's growth patterns are still evolving, which she thought that bus made much more sense for. Mike McAnelly told her he'd answer her question later, which he did in a way, but never made the specific connection. I wished he would just directly tell her that streetcar affects and incites development in a way that nothing else can, which makes the still-yet evolving developmental patterns one of the most important reasons behind the need for a fixed guideway transit system. To put it more simply, with streetcar we have an opportunity to shape the development of downtown that we don't get with many other public projects. It's a golden opportunity to take advantage of our blank slate downtown and use streetcar.

The most important realization I came away with is a new appreciation for how hard it sometimes can be to take a group of random people who aren't professional planners and get them to think like a planner, plan like a planner, and at least find a consensus and keep a project on track. Simply put, it isn't possible. My group was comprised of an incredibly diverse group..one was an older guy with strong convictions, a businessman who was really quiet, a guy who looked to be a student maybe 5-6 years younger than me, and lastly a bona fide crazy dude in his 20s with badly thinning hair that was a bizarre cross between Kramer and Einstein. I thought about taking a picture just for demonstration purposes but I decided that would be mean, and besides I shouldn't negatively identify anyone I meet. And then our COTPA liaison was Jeanne Smith, the River Transit Manager for COTPA..who was great.

Kramer/Einstein would not stop talking and yammering on, and made it incredibly difficult for our group to work together. And he kept standing up over my shoulder and pacing, also incredibly annoying, despite the numerous empty chairs around the table. By the time that half of our allotted time had already elapsed we had absolutely nothing to show for it, so I devised a new plan where the entire group would just write down important sites they wanted to be on a route or near one. Kramer/Einstein still would not shut up, and I was near giving up. We were down to our last 5 minutes and still had nothing to show for it.

So getting desperate with the group's bickering and wasting time, I gave up on the public process and just drew the damn route I remembered putting up on the blog earlier that day on a brochure I had in front of me. When I showed it to others, the group instantly settled on what I drew and the older fellow liked it so much he said, "That's it. Build it." I was however disappointed that Mr. Kramer/Einstein didn't allow for us to have a true public process that had the unique input and suggestions from the otherwise great people in my group--but at least we had a good, respectable proposal to show to the rest of the public forum assembled, and in my opinion, it was one of the best ones. There were a few others that stood out to me.

Mainly, proposals from the group that had Jeff Bezdek and the group that had Chuck Wiggins. I tend to agree with the person in the audience who said the group that had Jeff was cheating just by having Jeff. Speaking of Jeff, it was great to finally meet him although I'm afraid he came away with the wrong impression of me personally as I couldn't stop laughing when Doug was circling us, snapping pictures. Doug should really consider a career as a professional photographer. Anyway, here's Jeff's plan--one thing that struck me after he presented was how remarkably similar Jeff's plan was to mine, with the only difference being that he had one arm going N/S west of Broadway going down Hudson. Another similarity that Jeff's had with our route proposal was a Sheridan baseline all the way down to Mickey Mantle and then going up to the Oklahoma Health Center.

One concern that Jeff mentioned was that there would be a cost difference between tracks going up the Mickey Mantle bridge between Bricktown and Deep Deuce versus just crossing underneath the BNSF tracks at NE 4th Street. And despite noticing that people seem to really like Walker for a route alignment, he has a few good reasons for avoiding it and going down Hudson, two of them being that Hudson needs redevelopment more and that the Walker Circle poses engineering challenges, and I think his other concerns will come out when it's appropriate. I still favor Walker personally because you don't really have to extend the line beyond the circle and the traffic circle could very well be a natural end point for a segment, instead of having to do a pinch section in the middle of a street for the streetcar to turn around. I strongly favor Broadway having a streetcar line, and Hudson is only 3 blocks from Broadway. Walker is only 4, but because it never really goes through the CBD, psychologically the difference is better and it incorporates more of the Arts District.

Like I mentioned I also appreciated Chuck Wiggin's proposal, in which the focus was on employers. A practical focus. Once again, it has the similarity with the base line going down Sheridan. I think virtually every single proposal out of the 7 different groups all used Sheridan as a baseline, which was something I remarked on in my presentation. I think Sheridan more than any other corridor in downtown seems ripe for rail. For N/S alignments we all kind of differ, but I feel like a strong consensus is building behind the idea that Sheridan connects it all. In fact in Jeff's proposal and in my proposal, Sheridan is the only E/W route, while there are more than one N/S routes (mine has three, his has two). Chuck's uses 4th Street to get over to the Oklahoma Health Center and has the longest Sheridan alignment I saw, connecting the new OCU Law School to Bass Pro, McDonald's, and the proposed/formerly proposed Candlewood Suites. You know, the coolest area of Bricktown. Instead of a loop system, as proposed by Walter Jenny's group and a few other groups, or a hub-and-spoke system as proposed by me and Jeff, his is an interesting combination of both that I think I'll call loop-and-spoke. The more and more I think about Chuck's proposal the more I like it as much if not more than mine, and just about the only person at the forum that I didn't meet was probably Chuck Wiggin. Shucks.

Overall, I know that some other bloggers such as Doug have been concerned about the level of public involvement in these public forums. I also know COTPA was heavily criticized for only getting 250 survey responses on the website, which everyone agreed was low. However, I think that this meeting more than answered the need for public involvement. COTPA asked us to sign our names on the maps and they seemed to take great care to collect all the maps and I believe they will be using them in the next meeting which I suspect will be over land uses surrounding the streetcar--probably the meeting that really gets the public excited behind the project.

In talking to Kinsey Crocker, who is doing their PR, I believe they are going to put all the routes up on the Let's Talk Transit website, and I can't wait to see those. I also believe a news station was there, and I know KTOK had someone there recording audio..don't know if they were broadcasting live though. Reruns will also probably be on City Channel 20. Overall it was a great process, a good experience, and I think COTPA not only got a lot of useful feedback but will put the feedback to good use. It was also great to meet so many people, a lot of whom read this blog. I look forwarding to attending the future public forums that are planned.

To conclude, I want to come back to the planning process with the average joes and how it didn't really work so well. It's a very difficult leadership challenge and I personally struggled trying to find a way to get the group moving in the right direction and working effectively toward the same goal, and not just yammering on about their favorite and least favorite streets in downtown--although I will admit my sole reason that I insist Broadway has a streetcar route is just that Broadway is by far my favorite street in downtown, and Automobile Alley is my favorite area (one reason I've featured so much of Steve Mason's stuff on here). I think I saw first hand what Mayor Mick experiences and it could be a major reason as to why he has allowed for such little public involvement in MAPS 3.

It's true that the public, for the most part, is really not who you want planning this kind of stuff--despite the high quality of proposals that got presented at the public forum on Tuesday. Those proposals took a high degree of leadership from me, Jeff, and the other people who took charge within their own group to lead everyone in the right direction (although I have no idea if other groups had the same difficulties..I certainly didn't see another Kramer/Einstein). It's something to think about. I can see where Mayor Mick has a vision he wants to achieve, and more importantly, I don't see him willing to take a chance on public involvement..indeed it can be a scary thing. I still think it's a flaw of the dear mayor's because while being a scary thing, it is an absolutely VITAL thing. Vital. And it's not all bad, like I mentioned, the end results were almost all good even if the process seemed scary at times. There are always people within the community who are more than capable of providing input that IS valuable and you have to let those people take the lead on public partnership initiatives, and they can't do that unless there is public involvement. And that's what this is, and that's why I encourage everyone to roll out to the next public forum which will be held April 29th from 6-8 same place..

"Starchitecture" and "Superblock" madness

Why "Starchitecture" is to be feared:

The Russian government has a plan to "restore the prestige" of its cultural capitol, St. Petersburg, by moving natural gas company Gazprom (which controls 18% of worldwide production) from Moscow to St. Petersburg, amongst other "urban renewal" type projects. This right after the famous UNESCO-protected historic city turned 300 years old.

And I just have to question what they're thinking. They want to revitalize their nation's cultural capitol, so they do so how?--by getting a major corporation to move from Moscow? Let's follow the logic. Moscow is Europe's largest city, the only place in Russia where Gazprom would be allowed to build a 1,000 foot tall skyscraper (in fact there are other 1,000 ft tall scrapers going up in Moscow right now) and nobody would complain. People would praise the hideous suave obelisk design of this tower. Moscow is a city built on business and expansion and all of that. St. Petersburg is not, but nobody is denying that it's a "great" world city. So because it is a "great" world city, it's the perfect setting for..starchitecture! It needs some. So here you go:


Hideous, no? The design, by RMJM of London, was selected over much better designs in my opinion (particularly Libeskind's and Rem Koolhaas'), but the point remains that any kind of imposing structure on the UNESCO-protected St. Petersburg skyline (a collection of tall steeples rising over the city) is an assault to everything that this great city stands for, just as urban renewal tearing apart Oklahoma City's built environment destroyed the built remnants of the lives of city pioneers. It also destroyed our city's sense of self worth. There is greatness in preservation, and restoring something from the past, symbols of people and ideas that preceded you. There is not greatness in what replaces it, once you've destroyed something that mattered and obliterated it with cruel, imposing new structures that do not belong where they are put.

It's for this reason that all Russian architects boycotted the Gazprom design contest. The director of The Hermitage in St. Petersburg has advocated against it. The community, made of people who made a choice to live in a culturally-oriented city rather than a business-oriented city, is disgusted with the Gazprom City proposal. They want St. Petersburg City, not Gazprom City. But nonetheless there is nothing they can seem to do to disturb the drum beat of progress that promises to "restore the prestige," whatever that means.

Are there lessons to be learned here? Is there a clear-cut sense of "greatness" and is it possible that a 1,000 ft tall skyscraper is far from greatness after all? And just to be clear, if you're going to apply this to anything "big" being built/planned for OKC, it's not Devon Tower that I'm going after so much as it is the convention center or the idea of creating ANY more new superblocks in downtown. Devon Tower is utilizing an existing superblock that was already obliterated by urban renewal in the 60s.

The convention center project in OKC is our own little way of saying to the world that OKC has not learned its lesson from urban renewal, and you can add us to the list of cities in the year 2010 that either were great or COULD be great (our category) but still think urban renewal is cool. We think it's a great idea to combine superblocks, completely stint intimate city movement, basically fence off entire sections of our city away from typical development. It's almost hard to describe, it's like mixing two combustible liquids in an experiment, one thing that we're mixing is superblock facilities with specific uses and the other thing that we're mixing is development, private projects, buildings, things that people use, anything that makes up a city. Cities do not move around superblocks, they roll up and die in front of them. Superblocks block the free flow because they disrupt the grid system of streets that healthy cities depend on.

In St. Petersburg they tore down a section of their city for Gazprom. In Philadelphia they have torn down a section of their city for their convention center. In OKC we are turning down the opportunity for Core 2 Shore to be successful because of where we are going to put this convention center. There are better sites. There are ways to avoid becoming yet another city that doesn't get it AND add to our city's business amenities at the same time. We don't have to add our own unique example to the list of modern day urban renewal hall of shame. I get it that they want to market the convention center as being in front of the park. But isn't there more value in being able to market OKC for other things as being a genuinely "great" city? Why sell out? Is there even a cost benefit to it?


Out with the old, in with the new!
(By the way it's pretty revolting that a google img search for "St. Petersburg skyline" comes up with a city in Florida)

Planning Dept memo: Stickin' it to Bricktown

Re: Stickin' it to Bricktown
Hey, here's a great idea. Let's put Bricktown out of business. Literally, we need to send a message to anyone considering going against the grain of urban renewal..and Bricktown did certainly develop against the grain of urban renewal. That is not acceptable. We realize that nearly half of Bricktown's business on busier nights is convention-related, so we can simply relocate the convention center from close proximity and completely shut down those businesses.

A message needs to be sent to any potential developers, investors, residents, tenants, business owners, and anyone else that challenges the authority of OCURA in affecting the course of downtown Oklahoma City's growth. This also goes for any people in our circle who might try to stall progress for "urban planning principles." Our stance is that urban planning idealists are misguided and not capable of visionary thinking. They can only criticize proposals, but offering positive suggestions that are viable is not something we expect of them.

It will be clearly understood that the future of downtown Oklahoma City is in the Core2Shore task force lands that the voters approved several large scale capital improvement projects for. The convention center WILL be next to the park, but until so, we'll continue to pretend to evaluate other sites. This is how we will market our city in postcards.

(This isn't anything close to an actual memo, and nobody is going out of their way to shut Bricktown down, but you get the point. Core2Shore has become bad news, plain and simple.)

Convention center search: Fixing the Cox (it can be done!)

I think that even if we get a real home-run convention center before 2020 that no matter what we're still in a position where we have to keep up with the Cox Center as well. Getting rid of the Cox Center after completing a new one is like taking one step forward and two steps backward. We need to analyze the heck out of what a huge mistake the Cox was, and get to a conclusion where we can fix it. And no, demolishing it is not the solution (not that it would hurt in my opinion). There is still hope for making the most out of the Cox.

Remember that the Chamber report on convention center space in OKC recommendation that we're following was adding a certain amount of convention space to the market. That means keeping the Cox, too. And personally I think that this report low-balls the actual need because you'll notice that they just talk about Oklahoma County, which only has 706,617 residents..or comparable to the Omaha or Little Rock MSAs, but I digress. Bottom line on this matter: If we want to get rid of the Cox Center we should be prepared not to invest $280 million in a new center, but more like $500 million, in order to get 300,000 sf of prime exhibition space all brand-new, even when the Cox space is still fresh from a renovation.

Aren't we going to keep the Cox for its arena anyway? Remember that "58 steps" is the only thing keeping the Big 12 Basketball Tournament from being locked up permanently by KC. With the glitz and the glam of the new Sprint Center, their Municipal Auditorium (the site of the women's tourney) is still 13 blocks from the Power & Light District -- not 58 steps (across Reno Ave). Why not just keep up with the exhibition space attached to that arena if we're keeping the arena? Even if you disagree on the value of the Cox's convention space and only see merit to keeping the arena so we can keep getting Big 12 Basketball Tourneys, you must at least see the value in not having a huge facility that's falling apart in the middle of our downtown. We have too much of that right now. Imagine if the Cox suddenly got run-down like the Century Center across the street, what kind of dispersions that would cast on all of downtown. It would be like..gasp..Tulsa.

The problem right off the bat is that the Cox Center should never have been built where it was. Imagine for a second that we never razed the better part of half of our downtown area for the I.M. Pei Plan to Nowhere. What we would have is a Bricktown and MidTown without gaps, and even more urban areas to the south and west of downtown where currently all of the superblocks and blight are. Given that such a cool, urban city needed a convention center, where would you deal with that without disrupting the urban fabric? You could go to the edge of downtown, a strategic site would be between Deep Deuce and the OHC. Or perhaps in the rail yard along East Reno, along the BNSF line, or along the North Canadian River--nothing wrong with riverfront superblocks, because the grid system is going to end anyway. Well we don't have the luxury of talking about those sites. We have to make the best out of the convention center that has lain waste to a former urban neighborhood on the south side of downtown.

I've written in the past about my theory that the Cox/Ford/Myriad cluster of superblocks having done more to kill the C2S task force region than the I-40 Crosstown Expressway ever could have come close to. In fact I think it's highly suspect that a viaduct could be blamed for forming a border in the first place--that's why I-40 was built as a viaduct in the first place, so that the city could continue underneath it. The reality is that we have taken an area where the neighborhood was contiguous with the flow of downtown, and we disrupted that motion. We killed off Broadway. We blocked Harvey. We took life away from Robinson and Hudson. We added another pointless lifeless corridor to the mix, E.K. Gaylord. Today I think E.K. would be rolling the grave at the urban travesty of a street that is named after him, especially when you look at the urban grandeur that was once the young, promising Capitol City of Oklahoma.

To illustrate my point, let's break out the crayons! It's all about "flow" :















We turned ^ that into this..















Consider the First National Bank the epicenter of downtown--consider how the addition of the superblock sites affects flow from the epicenter? From the north, you don't notice it so much. North Downtown's afflictions have nothing to do with I.M. Pei (just Kerr McGee). But from the perspective of the south side of downtown, it's everything. In this sense, yes losing all of that great urban fabric hurt downtown no doubt, BUT what hurt even more was losing the flow from the epicenter to the south end of downtown. We rue the loss of the urban fabric, but I have never heard planners rue the loss of that flow which I believe to be the real culprit of our Core to Shore woes. Flow should be the main thing we are focused on restoring, because we're doing a bang-up job of restoring activity in key nodes of downtown, there just isn't any synergy between these areas. MidTown is bustling, Bricktown is healthy, Automobile Alley is alive, Arts District getting there, we're well on our way to restoring other areas too..we just need to bring it all in and connect it all. Streetcar will go a long ways towards helping us with that, but we still need to reexamine our grid system.

Here's an example of a downtown that still has its grid intact (Downtown Dallas). Looking at the map of DTD, you'll notice that there's adequate connectivity from Downtown into Uptown/Victory/Oak Park and other areas north of the Woodall Rogers Fwy. Yes, Woodall Rogers is still a dividing line but the key thing is that it doesn't disrupt the flow! Look at several of the key streets that cross the underground freeway--Houston, McKinney, Akard, and Pearl. DTD is coming back to life, and Victory, Uptown, and especially the McKinney Avenue streetfront are booming areas. They've had such an incredible amount of urban development that there is actually a glut of residential units on the market there, so essentially, they have the exact opposite problem that we do, and I'd rather be overdeveloped than underdeveloped!

..a downtown that doesn't breathe. The important thing that you'll notice by taking a look at the crayon maps of OKC above is that downtown is dead looong before you reach the Crosstown Expressway. These streets that we killed were once bustling corridors of commerce and city life. Broadway especially, as you can see in the photograph. Just like how a city is made of up neighborhoods, a downtown is made up of corridors like this. When historians wax nostalgic on downtown, they talk about how each echelon of society in OKC had a corridor that was its own: Park Ave was the most well-to-do, reserved for city leaders, lined with ritzy businesses and residences not to mention the offices of city leaders. The streets to the north side of downtown were well-to-do, the further south you got, the grittier it got (the cooler it got). Grand Boulevard was gritty, full of people, crazy, bustling--it was the Times Square of OKC.

We killed downtown when we nullified our north-south running corridors, and let's face it: OKC is a north/south kind of city, you are always going to get to Point B from Point A by going north or south, not east or west. It's funny how the city develops like that over time, but it just does, and you can't fight it. That's why nobody really encounters downtown or any kind of "center city" activity when they cross over into North OKC from South OKC. The break in the system that hurts the most is Broadway, which was the most important street in downtown. Broadway dead-ends in front of the Cox Convention Center, so consider the intersection of Broadway and Sheridan "ground zero" for the urban butcher job.

In my opinion the Cox Center interacts well with the T-intersection of Broadway and Sheridan. It's a decently urban and walkable intersection, and you actually do see a fair share of people walking across the area, interacting with the Renaissance and Sheraton hotels (the Renaissance has a coffee shop, whereas the Sheraton has the better restaurant, so you see some degree of cross-transfer traffic) and the convention center across Sheridan. The entrances to the Cox are positioned with the crosswalks (that we are "supposed" to use LOL). The Sheridan facade is also pretty decent. I am a big fan of imitating historic architecture with contemporary materials, which is what the Cox renovation did. The glass panels and metal slats resemble how you'd see brick, mortar, and stone in a streamline Art Deco building. Overall the Cox gets a B for how it interacts with the Sheridan streetfront, so that's the sole bright spot.

The east and west sides are just huge bare walls, the only thing breaking them up is the entrance to the underground parking on Robinson and some mechanical equipment along E.K. Gaylord. F-. There is however a lot of potential for improving this though: there are some great opportunities for Santa Fe Depot-convention center synergy on the east side, as well as some great opportunities for park-convention synergy on the west side. It's just ridiculous to have an enormous bare expanse fronting those two possible diamonds in the rough.

For future reference, I plan on writing an equally long critical and provocative post in the near future on ripping out E.K. Gaylord. In this post I will talk all about the east side of the Cox, the possibilities for a multi-modal transit hub connecting multiple mass transit interfaces, and what to do about the nightmare that is E.K. Gaylord Boulevard--deadly to cross on foot, depressing to look at, the central artery of a downtown that has been plundered of its soul. So I'm just going to allude to a future post and leave the east side of the Cox alone for now, because that's a whole different can of worms.

If the Cox could be fixed from a planning perspective, imagine the possibilities for more street activity, more businesses, and more density. You could be coming up to OKC from Ft Worth on the Heartland Flyer, and once you walk out of the old Santa Fe Depot the first thing you would see is a real city. You would be surrounded by the hustle and bustle of a real major city, a feeling similar to walking outside the Union Station in cities like Chicago or Philadelphia. The area surrounding Santa Fe Depot will never be as dense and urban as it once was, but we can still make it feel like it is.

I give you the existing floorplan for the Cox Center:


An improved version:


Now keep in mind all of this is coming from someone that knows nothing about convention centers! I don't claim to be an expert on the convention industry. I just know that more has to be done to make the Cox open up to the east and west side. On the west side there appear to be hallways that dead end--take a chunk out of that bare well along Robinson and open those hallways up to the city. There could be an entrance behind meet rooms 9-12 as well as on the SW corner, where you could extend a hallway and open it up to the intersection at Robinson and Reno. Between the two entrances, the remaining blank wall space should be spruced up with art work similar to the Tulsa Convention Center exterior artwork. What I would really like to see is a huge mural depicting the urban fabric that we lost in urban renewal, not as it appears in black and white postcards, but as it would appear in 2010 with vibrant businesses and peppered with modern touches.

There should also be another grand entrance facing the intersection of EKG and Reno. Here is where there is the opportunity for cutting a chunk of the Cox Center out that doesn't look to be vital and using that space for part of an intermodal transit hub. Without getting into the technical details of all that (saving it for a future post), there would be lots of people and lots of different forms of transit. Streetcar. Amtrak. Rubber tire trolleys. Taxis. City buses. Cars. People walking. It could encompass additional structured parking for personal vehicles or utilize the underground parking already beneath the Cox, and from the exterior the hub would be a glass facility that you can see inside and outside of, very open to the outside, and connected to the Santa Fe Depot, as well as perhaps the main entrance of the Ford Center (which is on the NE corner of the Ford along Reno). The key though is that any connections between the depot, the hub, Cox, Ford, and whatever else should be open to the outdoors. It should add to the street life, not be anything separate.

And lastly, on the south side, I believe the best way to add more life to the Reno side would be by extending the Bricktown Canal along Reno. As it is Reno is a 4-lane road, with plenty of additional space between the Ford and the Cox centers--no reason why it couldn't still move traffic east and west if some of the right of way was gobbled up for an urban canal that connected to the Bricktown Canal. This way you're creating a pedestrian mall that connects the restaurants and nightlife of Bricktown to the convention center and area, and you could end it in the Myriad Gardens or at least along the south edge of it. The south side of downtown could be turned into an urban playground by smartly extending the Bricktown Canal..as opposed to taking it through Core to Shore as the Bricktown Association proposed, and using it to double the impact of the existing superblock fiasco. Any canal extension should be bridged between the Cox and Ford, but the key thing is that the linear corridor along Reno should be reinforced. The way to go would be in avoiding creating "pedestrian highways" from the entrance of the Cox to the entrance of the Ford, and instead to make sure that Reno is the dominant "pedestrian highway" through here. That will go towards bringing more inclusion from the rest of the city and breaking up the superblocks to some extent.

Maybe, just maybe, an idea that can be considered is a Broadway tunnel underneath the Cox and Ford centers. It would be expensive though, and I wouldn't call it a priority. It would be advantageous though to have traffic be able to flow smoothly from C2S straight up Broadway into North OKC. When you talk about creating connections between South OKC and North OKC, and how downtown should play a part in that, the idea of bringing Broadway could symbolize the turnaround of OKC. I wouldn't advocate it though because like said, it may be cost prohibitive to do so, esp considering the underground parking underneath the Cox, and it wouldn't be as easy as these other ideas I've thrown out there.

The ultimate idea has to be that the Cox Center is still a valuable facility. With 1.1 facility, it still has a lot to offer OKC. We have nothing to gain by demolishing it, and everything to gain by improving it. I know that we might not want to, I know that a lot of us were excited to think about a massive mixed-use development on the Cox site when we saw MAPS 3 pass. But keep this in mind: MAPS 3 convention center will only be around 500,000 sf, and 850,000 sf after an expansion. The Cox is 1.1 million sf located deep in the heart of downtown. This is Sheridan and Broadway, ground zero for where things began to go wrong with us from urban renewal. We have the opportunity to converge several different priorities and ideas out there and create real, sustainable future vitality. We want to extend the Canal. We want a transit hub for our streetcar system, and our future commuter system. We should want to do something about the Cox.

Convention center search: Incorporating Amtrak

I wanted to revisit Omaha, because I have some new thoughts and stuff I wanted to add. After I did my post I posed a question to the Omaha forum, and after they got over the shock of how dare someone from OKC question their downtown planning, we had a productive discussion on the Qwest Center. The overall feeling about the Qwest in Omaha is positive because of the mistakes they think they avoided.

The originally proposed site of the Qwest Center was in the Old Market portion of DTO, one of the most popular areas of Omaha. The Old Market is afterall, the main destination for anyone in town for a convention. The problem with that would have been the number of historic buildings cleared for such a large project in that area. You definitely don't want to risk breaking up important urban fabric like that. So while Downtown Omaha residents agree that the Qwest could have been incorporated better, they much prefer that over sticking it in the middle of their treasured Old Market area. The site in the picture is the site that was chosen in the end, which Omaha residents believe was a no-brainer in hindsight. They took an old rail yard that was no longer in use and cleared that, putting the convention center there. Before the convention center was developed on the other side of 480, there wasn't really much of anything except Creighton University north of there in the first place.

When I'm being critical of the Qwest Center, keep in mind that I have nothing but praise for Omaha most of the time, and it should just go without saying that the Qwest is a great facility from a convention standpoint. But I'm not a convention planning buff, I'm a city planning buff. It should also go without saying that the $280 million MAPS 3 convention facility OKC is adding to its convention offerings will also be an excellent facility from a standpoint with all of the bells and whistles, and there will be convention specialists out there who are more qualified to make sure of that. Assuming that the Qwest and MAPS 3 CC have one major thing in common -- that both will be state-of-the-art, top notch convention facilities -- let's learn from what few areas they could have improved in and end up with an even better facility. I doubt those areas exist from a convention hosting standpoint, but in the planning realm, there is plenty of room to talk about improvement. So with that said...

The main thing Omaha locals are put off with is the lack of synergy between the Qwest and the Missouri River, but adding connections to a nearby riverfront is much easier to do than replacing lost urban fabric. To them, the elevated portions of 480 aren't a huge barrier (or it's not a psychological barrier to them anyway) and they hope the surface parking can be filled in later. The main thing is that NoDo is not a longstanding urban destination like the Old Market is. The Old Market, unlike anything in OKC, has been a longstanding urban destination.. the difference though is that Omaha has not seen a "simultaneous resurgence" in its downtown neighborhoods. They've seen gradual improvement, but they never saw the neglect and despair we had in the first place.

So to them, the idea that it's possible to completely revitalize a whole district (for quality, not just quantity) from the ground up in about 5-10 years is completely foreign to them. In fact, that's foreign to most other cities, and we don't realize that when we're looking at other cities for inspiration. We just have a very different, more aggressive development philosophy here in OKC..and that's just what we've come to expect because of how far we've had to come with our center city. When other cities look at OKC and like what we've done, that's the main thing they're trying to figure out. It is indeed impressive what you can accomplish when you have extraordinary pent-up demand for downtown and a city that is willing to take the bull by the horns and make some things happen.


Another great example brought to my attention was Lincoln:


Lincoln is currently in the midst of a wave of downtown investment, spearheaded by a high profile public project--the new West Haymarket Arena, which will house Cornhuskers basketball as well as concerts. The Haymarket District, an area adjacent to Downtown Lincoln, is another area that is very similar to the Old Market--an established mixed-use urban neighborhood. Haymarket has a university feel, for being so close to UNL. The $400 million arena project (if I understand correctly), which will have around 15,000 seats, is set to go to voters for approval in May -- to be funded by a 4% hotel tax, 4% car rental tax, and a 2% restaurant tax, as well as other contributions from the state and private sources.

If you're like me, you're wondering how on earth it costs $400 million to build a 15,000 seat college basketball arena in Nebraska when we built the Ford Center downtown to NBA/NHL specs in 2002 at a cost of $89 million (and then threw down another $100 million to justify an NBA team moving from cosmopolitan SEATTLE of all places). According to this article that cites a $350 million cost, that money is for relocating rail lines, buying railroad property, I assume some rehabilitation on the site, moving the Amtrak station, building the arena, rebuilding roads and other infrastructure around it, and building 2 parking garages and 3 surface lots. That seems like a lot of expense to go through just for the purpose of adding an arena to downtown if you ask me, although I suppose it's difficult to criticize when the hidden cost of all of this expansion south of Downtown OKC into C2S is a $700 million Crosstown Expressway relocation project (granted the pricetag was mysteriously under $300 million when ODOT began its Big Dig).

I love the actual site plan though. It's very reminiscent of the Albuquerque plan I talked about earlier, in that it builds WITHIN the existing fabric of the downtown and not by creating its own separate superblock. It's also reminiscent of the Albuquerque plans in how it incorporates an Amtrak facility. I think that's a new trend that we're beginning to see, is a return to putting an emphasis on the neighborhood around the Amtrak station. It's similar to that feeling someone would have when they got off the train in New York or Chicago or Cleveland at the Union Station and walked down those front stops and instantly found themselves in the middle of it all. The beating heart of these cities at that time was Union Station. Maybe it's possible that OKC got off on the wrong foot from the beginning when we put our main freight station (Santa Fe Depot) in the heart of downtown and put the main passenger station (Union Station) further to the south. But I digress, maybe I'm getting to be too good at bitching about planning mistakes when my latest target is the City's forefathers, who did everything right for the most part.

Here is a rendering of how the Haymarket Arena incorporates the Amtrak station:




Adjacent to Lincoln Station would be an outdoor pavilion, under which would go the Amtrak line, surrounded by an open area and mixed-use development. The outdoor pavilion that the line runs under shouldn't be confused with an actual enclosed structure that the line goes through, like the LRT in Denver that goes through their convention center. I've argued against such a station in the convention center but I don't see anything wrong with how Lincoln has incorporated the Amtrak into the neighborhood around the Haymarket Arena. It's outdoors, it's open, it's walkable, it's inviting, and it's urban..those are the things I always like to see.

One last thing about the Lincoln site plan -- notice how the two parking garages are tucked behind the development, right up against the tracks. The Haymarket Arena itself is also right up against a bend in the tracks, too. Instead of putting the superblock structure in the middle of a neighborhood they backed it up to the tracks so that they wouldn't have to worry about incorporating the parking garages, and they would only have to worry about incorporating the arena on two sides. Really they only have to incorporate it on one side because on the right side is actually what appears to be a baseball diamond in other illustrations. A typical sweeping entryway rotunda and some side tenants (similar setup to Coach's and Hideaway Pizza at the Bricktown Ballpark) like with what you see on most new arenas is adequate for the one block of street frontage the Haymarket Arena faces.

So the common theme for the better-planned superblock structures: If you can't come up with a creative, adaptive way to mask the superblock (like Columbus), and incorporate it into the neighborhood, back it up against the tracks. That's what Albuquerque has done, that's what Omaha has done, and that's what Lincoln has done. While I would argue that there is certainly a better way, and it is possible for the superblock to be a positive influence, if you can't do that, then at least put it where the superblock will have no negative impact whatsoever. If it's not doing any harm, then that's at least a start. No harm, no foul.

Convention center search: Regional cities

Just to show how OKC is indeed falling behind in the convention center arms race, this post will be dedicated to the convention centers located in regional towns that we generally expect to be bigger and better than. This will be your cities like Tulsa and Omaha. Actually the full list of cities is: Tulsa, Wichita, Little Rock, Omaha, Albuquerque, Des Moines, and Shreveport. All of these cities have convention facilities that are better than what OKC can offer with the Cox Convention Center.

When you're looking at this from the standpoint of competition and you're wondering how we can let ourselves fall out of the top 100 US cities for convention business, this is the kind of thing you have to directly look at: How does OKC compare within the region? If not very well, there are problems. The bright side of competing in an evolving region is that competition brings more spotlight. People are getting past the "Don't they still ride horses everywhere in Oklahoma?" stage, but it helps that in the eyes of the convention industry the region is seen as a more competitive area, with emerging convention hubs like Omaha especially, and Little Rock, Wichita, and Tulsa to some extent you could even include NW Arkansas and Springfield.

Rogers, AR. City pop -- 38,829. Metro pop -- 420,876.
Yes, NW Arkansas. And Yes, this is a convention center, not a Target. See this is why I tend to dismiss NW Arkansas as a potential serious contender. I think it obviously has a ton of potential, but the leaders of all the different communities tend to be pretty set on keeping it the way it is -- a ton of different small cities. There is a lot of potential for NW Arkansas to emerge as a rapidly growing, economically prosperous metropolitan region -- but the lack of a clear, dominant city sort of takes the metropolitan out of the metro. Their convention center is no different. Its stats aren't bad though, and that's what OKC has to compete with.

Located in Rogers (which is at the heart of the Fayetteville-Bentonville-Springdale-Rogers-Buena Vista metro area), the John Q. Hammons Center features 125,000 sf, including a 42,000 sf ballroom (largest in Arkansas), and 41 breakout rooms. That gives it an edge over the Cox with the ballroom and in having more breakout rooms. The center has two different attached convention hotels (552 total rooms), another advantage over the Cox.

Obviously the overwhelmingly suburban nature of Rogers is going to hold it back from being a serious competitor with OKC. There is no major airport, no Amtrak access, and it's pretty out of the way unless someone is directly targeting Wal-Mart, headquartered in nearby Bentonville. The good news for Rogers is that a lot of companies ARE directly targeting Wal-Mart. Plus the U of Ark in nearby Fayetteville is also a huge draw. Even Rogers is getting its act together, building a new urbanist center (Pinnacle Hills Promenade) across the street from the Hammons Center. But it still isn't a real metropolitan area.

There is an identical convention center, also named John Q. Hammons Center, located in Springfield.

Wichita, KS. City pop - 344,284. Metro pop - 596,452.
That ugly round, cyan-colored thing is actually their convention center. Instead of calling it the circus, it's dubbed the Century II Center, with a total of 721,000 sf. That includes 198,000 sf of exhibit space and including 27 breakout rooms. It also recently turned 40 years old, making it comparable in that aspect to the Cox Center.

Wichita's convention center, however ugly and outdated, makes up with its new convention hotel -- the attached 303-room Hyatt. Rather amazing is that they actually have a section on the CVB website for "Wichita skeptics" where they try and convert Wichita haters by giving them a shopping trip or something..to Wichita. Kind of hard to believe they would go that far to acknowledge that Wichita kinda sucks, but you'd be surprised I guess.

Little Rock, AR. City pop -- 189,515. Metro pop -- 850,561.
The Statehouse Convention Center in downtown Little Rock is by all means, a smaller facility, though fairly immaculate. Very little information on it actually exists online. The Statehouse has 220,000 sf total, with about 84,000 sf in the contiguous "Governor's Halls." It includes an 18,000 sf ballroom. The ballroom was added in a 1999 renovation project that cost $15.4 million that added a total 120,000 sf. Its attached convention hotel is the Little Rock Peabody (an older hotel), with 418 rooms.

Honestly, Little Rock is a great city. Hard to beat what they've managed to do with horrible demographics. Their downtown has done well, largely a success built on taking a chance with streetcar, which has a stop at the Statehouse Convention Center. The site is surrounded by other hotels within walking distance as well as the well-known River Market neighborhood of Little Rock. Tough to comment on the overall urban planning of the convention center because it's pretty much the most boring convention center I've come across, nothing spectacularly good or bad. I do have a complaint about how the Peabody Hotel doesn't actually face any street, where they have it behind the convention center, along the Arkansas River.

Omaha, NE. City pop -- 436,648. Metro pop -- 837,925.
Omaha's convention center is a home-run in many regards. For $290 million ($216 million from the City), Omaha broke ground on a major convention center in 2001 and finished in 2005, and the 2nd phase was finished in 2006. The Qwest in Omaha has resembled a mixed-bag of successes and failures. Overall the convention center is shiny and new, has had a steady stream of business brought to "the O" as they call it there, and it is regarded as a great facility. It is a success from a convention standpoint, but it is a failure from a planning standpoint, as Downtown Omaha is completely separated from the facility which doesn't really connect to any urban fabric.

Think of the Qwest Center as a new version of the Cox Center. It is virtually the same size, 1.1 million sf -- doesn't feature as much space for meeting rooms, but has double the exhibit space and features a slightly larger basketball arena. Exhibition space amounts to 194,000 sf, meeting space 62,000 sf, and the arena holds 17,560 for a basketball game. The Qwest Arena is the home of Creighton University's venerable basketball program. Similarly to the Big 12 Basketball Tourney, the arena has hosted U.S. Summer Olympics trials in 2008 and will again in 2012--as well as NCAA beginning rounds. The #2 increase in convention industry after OKC is Omaha, so the convention center portion has been well received too. It also has a 450-room Hilton attached. The convention hotel is a bit small, and it looks even smaller (the rooms are tiny from what I've heard), so I'm not sure if they landed the best hotel amenities with their premium convention center. But they still spent $213 million ($290 million including private contributions) and got a 1.1 million sf facility.. considering that construction prices are back to about where they were 5 years ago, why can't we spend $280 million and get a similarly sized facility (that is all exhibition space)? We're talking about 500-600,000 sf for $280 million for MAPS 3, but I digress.

The biggest problem with the Qwest Center is how it interacts with the surrounding downtown area. It doesn't. I-480 separates it from the rest of downtown, and it isn't even connected to any of NoDo (a downtown neighborhood north of 480) due to the huge expanses of surface parking in front of it. The convention center doesn't really take advantage of the Missouri River frontage in the back either, divided by railroad tracks. The riverfront is a very underutilized park with a pavilion, some trails, and a huge parking lot. It is very poorly used space, from a planning perspective, lots of dead space, very little interaction with DT Omaha, or NoDo, or the Mighty Mo. Lots of squandered opportunity to spur infill between NoDo and the riverfront. In OKC, I think we expect to see an infill effect anytime we spend millions on downtown projects. What Omaha has done was design a major project in a way that they could have never expected an infill effect, which just seems like a waste of public resources. Yes, you need a convention facility, but you can also use it to spur development, and Omaha has not killed two birds with one stone in the way that most cities have. This convention center could have just as well gone out by Dodge Rd and I-680 and nobody in downtown would have known the difference.

Tulsa, OK. City pop -- 385,635. Metro pop -- 966,531.
Tulsa doesn't try to do too much with their convention center. Currently receiving a $50 million facelift from Vision 2025, it's a much smaller facility than the Cox Center, but it still has more exhibition space as well as the largest ballroom in the state, at 30,000 sf. The exhibition floor totals 102,600 sf, and when you add the 23 meeting rooms and the 8,900 seat arena, the facility has a total 227,000 sf -- 1/5th the size of the Cox Center -- but the key is that its footprint STILL has more exhibition space.

I mentioned that they've kept it very simple, and that's a good thing. The center really doesn't have a flashy design, it's not LEED-certified, and it doesn't have many of the special features that I can't even think of that some other centers have. They've also kept it simple from a site plan, and really the only special touches on the facade will be some public art (a good, simple idea to spruce up the front facade) and a sweeping glass wall. The Tulsa Convention Center's website actually prominently features pictures of the stunning nearby BOK Center, not the convention center. The TCC is surrounded by mostly large government superblocks on the east west side of downtown in front of the west leg of the IDL (DT Tulsa's loop system). City Hall has been moved to the other side of downtown and the city plans on having developers redevelop the old City Hall site, which will get infill going between the BOK and TCC. Across the street to the west and south there's more opportunities for infill. Connected on the south side is the Doubletree Hotel, at 18 stories and 417 rooms.. a good size convention hotel for a smaller convention center.

The TCC is probably not even the main convention center in Tulsa. The 448,400 sf QuikTrip Center at Expo Square (in Midtown Tulsa) features 354,400 sf of contiguous exhibition space, although it's more of an "expo center" facility than a "convention center" facility. The QT Center is best-known for the historic 8-story tall Golden Driller statue in front of it. The historic Expo Square Pavilion can seat 4,500 for a rodeo, and the brand-new Central Park Hall has about 50,000 sf of convention-suitable exhibition space.

Shreveport, LA. City pop -- 200,145. Metro pop -- 562,910.
Shreveport is another one of those smaller towns with surprisingly competitive convention centers, although it shouldn't be surprising noting that Shreveport and Bossier City are big gambling destinations. Finished in 2006 for a price of $140 million ($100 million if you don't include debt servicing on the bonds used to pay for it), this facility features over 350,000 total sf -- including a 95,000 sf exhibition hall, an 18,000 sf ballroom, and 10 meeting rooms with 1,600 sf each. The attached Shreveport Hilton has 313 rooms, which is a decent convention hotel for a convention-savvy city of 200,000. The site plan is also fairly simple, with no extra special obtrusive plazas or anything, as the center just comes right up to the street. The area around it isn't too obstructed with superblocks, downtown Shreveport is all within unimpeded walking distance and the riverboat casinos are a mere 2 blocks away.

Des Moines, IA. City pop -- 198,682. Metro pop -- 556,230.
The Iowa Events Center is sort of an interesting, all-inclusive public works project. It includes several different arenas, several different convention centers, as well as the primary Wells Fargo Arena with 16,110 seats for a basketball configuration. It includes two convention centers, one with 60,000 sf of exhibition space and 27 meeting rooms on two floors, another with 150,000 contiguous exhibition space and 14 meeting rooms, a 100,000 sf/7,200 seat smaller arena, and 23,700 sf of pre-convention facilities (like lobby space that can be used for stuff, etc). Overall the facility is probably about the size of the Cox Center, though I can't find an official overall size -- and cost $217 million, making it the largest public project in Iowa history. The big arena and the big convention center are divided by 3rd street, and the smaller convention center is one city block to the south.

Judging the site plan and how well it integrates urban is difficult because there are so many different corners, each divided facility on the compound meets the street differently. Overall, it's decent. The only thing there is to complain about is a lot of wasted space for an open-grass area between the Wells Fargo Arena and the Des Moines River. It would be nice to see the surface parking around the Iowa Events Center develop, but it's not nearly as big a deal as with the Qwest Center. The IEC opens right up to Downtown Des Moines and surface parking is hardly a unique phenomenon around downtown Des Moines. There is no convention center hotel, but downtown does feature many hotels, including a Renaissance and an Embassy Suites.

Albuquerque, NM. City pop -- 521,999. Metro pop -- 845,913.
The Albuquerque Convention Center, finished in 1991, is 600,000 sf total, with 167,000 total exhibition sf, 106,000 of which is contiguous. So add it to the list of centers that have more exhibition space than the Cox, too. Also features a 31,000 sf ballroom and a 2,300 seat auditorium. The ACC also features a 395-room Hyatt Regency Hotel on the site, and is currently making plans to add another 450-room hotel as well.

The renovations are a part of an overall downtown revitalization scheme that will add an 11,000 seat arena across the LRT line (yes, Albuquerque has LRT to Santa Fe), that will create sort of an events center complex that spans several blocks around the LRT station, similarly to the Iowa Events Center. It's basically the same as if the Ford and Cox were combined as a facility and just called the "Oklahoma Events Center." I really like the plans that Albuquerque has come up with for doing this, so far. They've broken up the superblock structures with having potpouri infill development on the site and a very pedestrian-friendly site plan. There is literally ZERO wasted space in this plan. By putting the convention center along the LRT line, they've minimized the wasted space because the LRT right-of-way would be wasted space anyway. LRT frontage isn't something that can usually be utilized regardless, it's the same as any railroad line (our streetcar lines will be different and more accessible).
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All of these cities have convention centers better-suited to host conventions than we do, and all of them have more convention space than us except Rogers, which even Rogers is giving us a run for our money now. When you don't even rank in the top 100 for convention centers, despite being a Top 30 Major U.S. City, something is wrong. Look directly at the root of the problem -- OKC is being one-upped by all of the smaller regional cities, a majority of them have less than half the metro population that we do (1.3 million). That needs to change.

From case examples that have been provided, I think the three most notable are Tulsa, Albuwhatever (I hate spelling that city's name out), and Omaha. Omaha teaches us to be wary of the bells and whistles and not to overlook simple site plan and access to the key activity areas of downtown. Tulsa teaches us that it's ok to be simple. Albuquerque is the best example of a top-notch convention center that balances great features with practicality and pedestrian access. While adding on to their convention center, they've figured out a way to break up the superblock, by sticking urban infill in different corners. The complex will bridge both sides of their LRT line, so it would be the equivalent of putting our center along the BNSF line, with the BNSF cutting through the heart of it. It's an idea. We've got three proposed sites, between the BNSF and the Central Park, the mill site across from Bricktown, and NE 9th and Oklahoma -- who said we couldn't reach a compromise by giving it great access to both the Central Park and Bricktown by having it cross over the BNSF tracks? Just a thought, inspired by one of our peer case examples.