BUDC votes in favor of aspiring parking overlord Chris Johnson

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

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

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

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

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

Tomorrow night!

Just a reminder that Dr. Shadid's sprawl townhall will be TOMORROW night! All director-level department heads will be on hand to discuss how sprawl hampers their department's operations and the community meeting will seek to discuss honestly the cost of this sprawl and solutions to mitigate those costs. If you believe in urbanism and sustainability and you're not doing anything tomorrow night, you need to be there. I wish I could be.

6:30 - 8:30 PM
OKC Marriott Grand Ballroom
3233 NW Expressway

Bob Stoops don't need no stinkin development

Bob Stoops is a big deal, everybody knows that. For those who don't know, Bob Stoops has coached in 4 national championship games of the last decade, numerous other BCS bowls, and despite an abysmal record, no other coach is as consistently at the top echelon of college football. And also for those who didn't know, Bob Stoops is selling his home in NW Norman's ultra-posh Ashton Grove addition at NW 48th and building a new estate on 20 acres he owns off of NW 36th between Franklin Rd and Indian Hill Rd in Norman. That's called development.

But what he opposes is additional development of the stretch of NW 36th between Norman and Moore. He filed a legal protest with the Norman City Council against the development of 350 acres adjacent to the home he is developing in a rapidly-growing corridor between the built-up areas of Cleveland County's two largest cities. The 350 acre development, proposed by JJ Properties, will include a huge number of tract housing, as well as an assisted-living center, townhomes, and an elementary school. The elementary school, not yet funded, would be in the Moore Public School district (which is everything in Cleveland County north of Franklin Rd).

So I think this interesting story poses a wide array of questions. The first obviously shows us the undesirable nature of sprawl, but what's most notable is that each party involved is guilty of sprawl. Bob Stoops is guilty of sprawl in the first place because he's the one who CHOSE to purchase land in a rapidly growing area, develop a $3.3 million home (that's called development), and then squawk when other development occurs nearby. Does Stoops honestly have the right to be surprised that development is going to happen on land adjacent to his new home along NW 36th? He can't be serious. That's like going being seated at a restaurant and then storming out mad because the waiter tried to get you to buy an appetizer and a drink. Then the developer is obviously guilty of sprawl, and yeah I don't blame Stoops, I wouldn't want to build a $3.3 million estate and then have it surrounded by tract housing. Then the Norman City Council is guilty of sprawl because they have done nothing but encourage the sprawl of NW Norman, even with Cindy Rosenthal as mayor. Here, sprawl has led to conflicts between all three entities, and it will be up to the City Council and Rosenthal to resolve it. That will likely be a very contentious Council meeting.

Then I think it poses other questions. Is Stoops saying that only people who can afford a $3.3 million mansion have the right to build a home near him? Obviously that isn't right. Look at it this way, I consider everyone to be on equal footing before the law. So therefor everyone should have an equal right to participate in the sprawl of places like Norman and especially Edmond. But I won't even go into the socioeconomic limitations of sprawl in Edmond because that's opening a whole different can of worms. But suppose that if we're going to have sprawl and we're going to have major development, do we discriminate between $3.3 million mansions and tract homes that sell for $120,000? I think so. The only way out of this debate were if sprawl were verboten, but it's not. That way you could make the argument that the only thing that's being protested here is a high-density development, not the starting price of tract houses. And for all I'm concerned, the development sounds interesting..I'd like to hear more about these "townhomes" being proposed.

But when Stoops knowingly builds in a high-growth area and when the Norman City Council has already opened the floodgates for sprawl, that argument goes out the window. This now becomes socioeconomic, strictly. For Stoops this is about protecting the value of a $3.3 million investment. You have to wonder, why endanger such a huge investment like that in the first place? Why even build a $3.3 million investment in an area where the expectation HAS to be that tract housing will surround you within a matter of a few years. In fact if the development is at all, in anyway, above average, then you have already exceeded what I think the expectation has to be..where the bar is set, which is pretty low.

So in short, this is one way that sprawl can be ugly. And this isn't even looking 30 years down the road, this is looking at the short-term. It's incredible that if sprawl can even be ugly in the short-term in some instances, how we're still all gung-ho and excited to fill in those pastures!

New lifestyle center at County Line / Memorial Rd?

Sheesh.. way out at County Line Rd off of Memorial is what looks to be a proposed lifestyle center, in the SE bend in the Kilpatrick Turnpike, between the turnpike and County Line Rd (in Canadian County). According to the text of the official application, which was approved by the Planning Commission back in October, it will feature office, retail, AND residential.

The application was filed by a "Rippage Investments LLC" but from what I've heard, Caliber might be behind it. For those who aren't familiar with development around Deer Creek, Caliber has been a very aggressive development firm with several large projects in the Deer Creek area--and I think they might be based in Delaware, though I haven't been able to find anything for them online.

Not sure what to think of these projects. I like lifestyle centers because, as a realist, I understand that sprawl is going to happen regardless and there is nothing we can do to curtail that. But my problem with lifestyle centers is with the type of tenants that they attract, typically the same tenants we're trying to lure to our downtown area--if Edmond or Memorial Road projects lure the retailers we've been after, like Whole Foods, Urban Outfitters, Crate and Barrel, etc..they won't come downtown. That will be it. And from a location perspective, I seriously doubt that Memorial and County Line is a good idea. I don't think I'm alone in considering anything along Memorial and west of Portland way out there, and that includes Mercy Medical Center and Gailardia..




Just to cast a light on the abhorrent growth of sprawl outside of the Kilpatrick Turnpike:

Now you see me..


Now you don't..


You could do this for basically any square mile in the Piedmont, Deer Creek, or Edmond school districts (assuming that every blade of grass in the Putnam City school district has already been developed on). Every ounce of Deer Creek and Edmond will be filled up, and I know you can head west up the NW Expressway all the way out to Piedmont and you will see development underway on tons of sprawl that doesn't yet appear on any street maps.

When we toot our own horn, congratulating ourselves for ending the white flight, thinking that we're making proactive steps to get a handle on our sprawl, nothing could in fact be further from the truth. Our sprawl is getting closer to reaching a critical level with each and every Planning Commission meeting that passes..

Perspective on OKC's sprawl

http://recenter.tamu.edu/data/popm00/pcbsa36420.html

This is a ranking of US cities that added the most sprawl inbetween 1970 and 1990. I'll copy the top cities and how many square miles of sprawl that they added during said period.

1. Atlanta, GA 701.7
2. Houston, TX 638.7
3. New York City-N.E. New Jersey 541.3
4. Washington, DC-MD-VA 450.1
5. Philadelphia, PA 412.4
6. Los Angeles, CA 393.8
7. Dallas-Fort Worth, TX 372.4
8. Tampa-St.Petersburg-Clearwater, FL 358.7
9. Phoenix, AZ 353.6
10. Minneapolis-Saint Paul, MN 341.6
11. San Diego, CA 309.5
12. Oklahoma City, OK 307.7
13. Chicago, IL - N.W. Indiana 307.3
14. Baltimore, MD 282.9
15. Kansas City, MO-KS 268.6
16. Saint Louis, MO-IL 267.6
17. Orlando, FL 262.9
18. Detroit, MI 247.4
19. Boston, MA 226.8
20. Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News, VA 221.4
21. San Antonio, TX 215.1
22. San Francisco-Oakland, CA 193.1
23. Austin, TX 187.4
24. Pittsburgh, PA 181.7
25. Cincinnati, OH-KY 176.6


While I'm not shocked at all that OKC is in the Top 15, I am shocked that Philly added as much sprawl as DC and LA, which both have very sprawly metros. What's strange however is that OKC added less than 300,000 people in those 20 years according to statistics. By the way, Tulsa comes in at #41 with about 125 new square miles of sprawl.

As if explanation is necessary, I think OKC is somewhat unique in that the city isn't one that developed around a core or even into one area. There are essentially several different autonomous parts of OKC. For instance, the northside and southside have pretty separate identities and don't interact that much. Plus they've very separated by the blight all along I-40 with the clear exception of booming downtown.

OKC's development more or less reflects where the jobs are. You have a chunk of old city around downtown, a big chunk of suburbia up by the Northwest Expressway, Edmond, a chunk of the metro down by Tinker and WRWA, and then Norman. Whereas you have Tulsa, which is a much more contiguously developed metro area, similar size, and much much further down the list (or I should say, more reasonably located).

P.S. This isn't for bragging rights. This is a clear problem. If OKC, population 1.3 million is about as sprawled as Dallas-Fort Worth, population 7 million.. then Houston, we have a problem. And if you don't believe OKC has a sprawl problem, drive from South Norman up to North Edmond, or from Yukon to Choctaw, and rethink that assumption.