Vote for OMRF

OMRF's new Research Tower under construction in the Oklahoma Health Center northeast of downtown is up for the 2009 Excellence in Renewable Energy Award, a major environmental design award. I don't know how the voting is going to be done or what kind of committee is behind it, but maybe it would make a difference to get some online voter participation. You can vote online here.

Medical District update

Wow, the Oklahoma Health Center is really booming! Check it out. If you're interested in more reading, after much digging I found the previous updates I've done on the medical district. Here's the first, and here's the second.


This is an overview "skyline" shot from NE 6th Street and Laird. This field between Laird and Philips I was standing at had ground work being done on it, which I believe is for the 8-story Embassy Suites hotel planned along NE 8th behind the Oklahoma Health Center.






OU Cancer Research Institute on NE 10th going up.



New offices for the Oklahoma Blood Institute, Lincoln and NE 8th.



Still 3 buildings left at the PHF Research Park.





OMRF Research Tower under way behind NE 13th Street.






Dean McGee Eye Institute expansion, Lincoln and NE 10th.






OU Children's Hospital, NE 13th and Philips.



Ambulance Service facility on NE 8th.




OU College of Allied Health





OU Physician's Building, NE 8th and Philips..my favorite project in the OHC.



I think this is the OU School of Dentistry? Might be wrong on that. NE 8th and Laird.


And now some random shots from around the district..




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Just some thoughts on this part of OKC.. these projects are great. What they do for our economy is incredible..not to mention the "stimulus" impact from the construction, which if you total just 5 of these projects alone (Dean McGee Eye Institute, OBI, OMRF, and OU's Children's Hospital and Cancer Institute), it amounts to $534 million being invested just across I-235 from downtown.

And from a design perspective, these projects look really cool at first glance, too. I'm glad that OU and other medical research entities and hospitals are investing so much in this part of town, and I hope it continues. I look forward especially to seeing more mixed-uses develop along the boundary between the Oklahoma Health Center and Downtown OKC. I hope it gets streetcar, too. But if it does get streetcar, many of these facilities are going to have to completely redo the streetscape.

These facilities, although grand, have no interaction with the street level whatsoever. Even the new cancer facility has blank walls that face 8th coming from the east. The OU Children's Hospital has a massive setback behind a parking facility and a jumbled collection of lanes that I assume is for outpatient pickup and ambulance access. Worse yet, the new OMRF Tower, a brilliant environmental concept (and a LEED project), doesn't really have ANY street access, tucked behind OMRF's main building on NE 13th. The only way I could get close to it for taking pictures is through parking lots that connect to each other.

So I'm not even going to go into a more detailed urban planning critique, because it's bad. But I will just say that the OHC is adding a lot of good jobs, good projects otherwise, and it's giving Oklahoma something it needs, cutting-edge medical facilities. The closest level 1 cancer center currently is M.D. Anderson in Houston, but the new OU Cancer Institute will finally give Oklahoma a premier cancer institute. You can't estimate the value of the lives that will be saved by the medical advances coming out of this area of OKC, let alone the impact that has on the downtown area from an economic standpoint.

Medical District progress

I was driving around with my camera taking pictures of mixed-use developments under progress across the metro, which is a dauntingly huge task that I can only hope to have finished by the time I leave to go back up to Calgary, but as I was coming the metro, I came across the Medical District and realized that these major developments in this inner city district deserve some attention. Tonight I will be posting these, hot off my phone camera, because it is so much easier to take pictures of development in a small district, than to track major mixed-use development in a metro as sprawled as OKC. I haven't even gotten a fifth of those pics yet, but in the meantime, feast your eyes on these.

I think it suffices well enough to say that the Medical District is coming along very well. I wish I could have taken a few pictures of the towers and hospital complexes already in this area, including some really amazing contemporary architecture I just kept driving past simply because it's already been completed for at least 5 years (the OU Physician's Bldg, namely). And starting closest to I-235:

Oklahoma Blood Institute HQ on NE 8th Street, between Lincoln and I-235, 3 story frame is going up. No renderings online, but I believe it will just be a plain white 3-story office bldg.

This is something on NE 10th, across Phillips from the OU Cancer Institute..and I have no idea what it is, but the rendering shows a fairly low-rise structure.

OU College of Allied Health on Stonewall Avenue, nearly complete. I think it turned out beautifully.

The OU Cancer Research Institute on NE 10th Street, the structure went up really fast, but the annex is still yet to go, and then comes the tedious stuff.

Dean McGee Eye Institute on Lincoln Blvd, pretty close to completion.

OU Children's Hospital on NE 13th Street, as you can see nearly finished, but the lobby and parking lot are still to be finished.

OMRF Research Tower on NE 15th, broken ground, sign in the ground on NE 13th.

I think it's really impressive all of the construction going on here in the Medical District, when you consider how it mostly goes unnoticed and without any praise. We're all far too busy bickering and making accusations over MAPS 3 and Core to Shore to take notice of what's going on northeast of the core. I think that's detrimental to our city's direction, though. We're really lucky to have this burgeoning medical district located so close to downtown, instead of miles away like most cities that have similar medical districts, or bigger (like Houston). The truth is that not very many cities have entire medical districts complete with some of the most advanced hospitals in the world, and considering that this is what is being built without anyone taking notice here in OKC, is just truly incredible to me.

Oh and I just realized I left out the Medical District Embassy Suites (an 8-story full-service hotel) being built at Phillips and 8th. I didn't notice much work being done on it from 10th or it would have caught my eye, but I do recall last year that the site was surrounded by a construction fence.