I hope the new skyscraper is all glass.

I hope the new skyscraper is all glass.

You will probably get your wish.

Does anyone remember the proposed building that was presented here about 5 or 6 years ago? The drawing was spotted at an OSU function and posted here. At the time it was rumored to be the Devon Tower - which we now know it wasn't. If I remember correctly it was 40 storeis.

Barcelona?

The water works building at that......

Glad we are getting a new skyscraper, but its going to take a whole lot of money, and one hell of architect to top Devon Tower!

No one said they were trying to top Devon Tower, this isn't a grade school contest.

I wouldn't mind if it was to be all glass or not, but I would rather it be NOT glass.
Something like One Atlantic Center in Atlanta comes to mind:
http://www.officespaceatlanta.com/bldgphotos/oneatlantaiccenter.jpg

I wouldn't mind if it was to be all glass or not, but I would rather it be NOT glass.
Something like One Atlantic Center in Atlanta comes to mind:
http://www.officespaceatlanta.com/bldgphotos/oneatlantaiccenter.jpg

Yawn! We already have a better version of that First National knock off. I think modern and unique! Something to put us on the map like Devon Tower has done, but different.

One other thing about MidFirst...

They have a built in buyer for their properties in Chesapeake. As has been well documented, CHK has been buying every office building within a 5 mile radius of their campus and the two MidFirst buildings are actually surrounded by their holdings. MF also owns a good chunk of acreage adjacent to one of their buildings.

The way CHK splashes around money, you can bet they would pay about $100 million for those properties -- maybe more. That combined with a possible sweetheart deal on the Pretakes properties and downtown TIF money would go a long way towards a brand new 40-story building.


American Fidelity has lots of money too but would not be able to readily liquidate their properties on Classen. That wouldn't necessarily stop them because they don't have a ton of money sunk in there, but they wouldn't be able to move with the nice chunk MidFirst would be getting.


If it is in fact a local company, this scenario seems to me to be the most logical by far.

Caltrava's Turning Torso. We need one.

My vote is for something that incorporates some sort of stone or marble. The Comerica or Chase buildings in Dallas are good examples of what I am talking about.

As far as a tennet/builder goes - I've got my money on MidFirst for the same reasons stated above. It's only a mater of time before they move downtown.

http://www.creconsole.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Comerica-Bank-Tower.JPG

or

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/eb/JPMorganChaseTower.png/250px-JPMorganChaseTower.png

My vote is for something that incorporates some sort of stone or marble. The Comerica or Chase buildings in Dallas are good examples of what I am talking about.

As far as a tennet/builder goes - I've got my money on MidFirst for the same reasons stated above. It's only a mater of time before they move downtown.

http://www.creconsole.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Comerica-Bank-Tower.JPG

or

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/eb/JPMorganChaseTower.png/250px-JPMorganChaseTower.png

the last skyscraper is my fav in Dallas...

Me too G Walker. I have loved it since I was a kid. They also have it lit in blue lights at night...looks pretty slick.

It sees all the newer skyscrapers are almost 100% glass and steel.

If you look at Pickard Chilton's site, I didn't see one building with any other building material.

It sees all the newer skyscrapers are almost 100% glass and steel.

If you look at Pickard Chilton's site, I didn't see one building with any other building material.

That is why I said glass has become the new EIFS - it's cost less and is easier to install.

I also think glass is the easiest material to maintain.

And it's become as energy efficient as anything else.

So, are we looking at 3 possible towers. Stories and possible construction start dates?

Mystery Tower..... lets just call it Midfirst Bank Tower 35 stories (2012)
Convention Hotel Tower..... lets just call it Four Season Tower 30 stories (2013)
Sandridge Tower....AKA Sandridge Tower 30 stories (2012)

Could there possibly be more???

Highrise Residential Tower? 30 stories (2013)
American Fidelity Tower? 40 stories (2013)
Continental Resources Tower? 55 stores (2014)

Am I dillusional or is there a lot of concrete, glass, and steal that could be upon us?

I would also add that a speculative tower and a tower by a new-to-OKC business are not outside the realm of possibility.

Why not something like this?
http://www.kentuckyville.us/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2006/04/bilde.jpg

Gross!

Why not something like this?
New to OKC rather than new to earth. :)

Why not something like this?
http://www.kentuckyville.us/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2006/04/bilde.jpg

That is what is wrong with architecture today. That building only makes sense if it is sitting by itself so it can be viewed all at once in its totality. I am hoping for something that looks good viewed from 10 feet away - (ie - the sidewalk).

Why not something like this?
http://www.kentuckyville.us/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2006/04/bilde.jpg

This looks like something out of the movie "Inception"

Give me even money on MidFirst, 3-1 each on Continental and American Fidelity, 5-1 on the local field, and 10-1 on the national relocation field.

I will take the 3-1 on American Fidelity.

Give me even money on MidFirst, 3-1 each on Continental and American Fidelity, 5-1 on the local field, and 10-1 on the national relocation field.

King183, who seems to know something, said it will 'shock you' when the anouncement is made, that the 1,000 Boeing jobs would be small time. He could be talking about something besides MidFirst....could be 2 towers here.

That is what is wrong with architecture today. That building only makes sense if it is sitting by itself so it can be viewed all at once in its totality. I am hoping for something that looks good viewed from 10 feet away - (ie - the sidewalk).

So, something like the Beekman Tower in NYC would be perfect?

ART DECO!! that's all I have to say...what ever it is, I would love to see beautiful details. Also, in my opinion, downtown would look much better with a 720-780 ft tower. After that...let the giants be built!!

Cemex

Cemex

What do you mean?

I assume he is speculating that Cemex will be making some sort of corporate move to OKC.

I assume he is speculating that Cemex will be making some sort of corporate move to OKC.

I recall not to long ago that a few people on here were speculating that a cement company from Mexico was going to relocate here.

I assume he is speculating that Cemex will be making some sort of corporate move to OKC.

see post #586, rumors about Cemex started a year ago:

http://www.okctalk.com/showthread.php?t=23526&page=24

Well if it is Cemex, at least we know they can build skyscraper very cheap, since they are one of the largest building material suppliers in the world, lol.

I recall not to long ago that a few people on here were speculating that a cement company from Mexico was going to relocate here.

If CEMEX were to consolidate their operations and announce it would be Oklahoma City, that would be nothing short of a stunner. CEMEX is huge - as in 46,000+ employees worldwide huge.

Interesting: "This is a world-class company; there certainly aren't many based in Latin America," says Stanford Business School professor John Roberts, who has studied Cemex.

The third largest building materials company in the world.

I'm curious as to why CEMEX was thrown out in this thread. Has it ever been discussed here? Where's the connection? That would be incredible.

see post #586, rumors about Cemex started a year ago:

http://www.okctalk.com/showthread.php?t=23526&page=24

Well if it is Cemex, at least we know they can build skyscraper very cheap, since they are one of the largest building material suppliers in the world, lol.

Thanks, G. Walker...here's the post on March 25, 2011:


Please take this with a grain of salt, but a few weeks ago I was talking with a co-worker about how downtown was on the up and up. Her husband works for Devon and she was talking about Continental Resources moving downtown (this was before it was officially announced the other day) and she mentioned CEMEX was moving to OKC. This is an international company based out of Mexico. She may honestly have had no idea what she was talking about, but she was right about Continental (which most already assumed) and I just found it odd that she mentioned this specific international company....

Here's the website for the international headquarters of CEMEX. (http://www.cemex.com/)

Xz2GN4aMx0g

So, something like the Beekman Tower in NYC would be perfect?

That is a Thunder Moneyball

http://media.expedia.com/hotels/1000000/10000/5700/5628/5628_42_b.jpg

This thread has exploded today in less than 12 hours since created. Look at the number of views and replies!

Shows you how much interest there is in downtown.

Lots more people on the site the last several days as well.

So, are we looking at 3 possible towers. Stories and possible construction start dates?

Mystery Tower..... lets just call it Midfirst Bank Tower 35 stories (2012)
Convention Hotel Tower..... lets just call it Four Season Tower 30 stories (2013)
Sandridge Tower....AKA Sandridge Tower 30 stories (2012)

Could there possibly be more???

Highrise Residential Tower? 30 stories (2013)
American Fidelity Tower? 40 stories (2013)
Continental Resources Tower? 55 stores (2014)

Am I dillusional or is there a lot of concrete, glass, and steal that could be upon us?

Dilusional. I still don't see why people think Amercan Fidelity can build a monster tower. They do t have that many employees on Classen, maybe 500 tops. They don't even occupy most of the third building they do have, if you were to stack all 3 on top of each other, you'd only have a 15 story building, and not much girth at that, as far as mid rises are concerned.

I honestly see them building a Sonic type of HQ only slightly larger, in the C2S area.

I'm not saying this new tower is for them but American Fidelity currently occupies four buildings: 1 10-story, 2 seven-story, and 1 2-story.

The three biggest buildings all have full basements as well, so that's a total of 29 levels.

Pete, ok, I could be wrong on my levels on the Classen buildings, but I'm pretty sure they don't occupy much if any of the 3rd building, as they have a for lease sign out front and have for some time. So subtract the northern most building on Classen.

The way CHK splashes around money, you can bet they would pay about $100 million for those properties -- maybe more. That combined with a possible sweetheart deal on the Pretakes properties and downtown TIF money would go a long way towards a brand new 40-story building.

Exactly what I was thinking.

Just FYI, the Chamber updated it's numbers in October '11 and lists Devon with 2,600 employees, MidFirst with 1,150 and American Fidelity with 1,000.

Devon is building 1.8 million square feet (don't forget the massive Garden Wing), which equates to almost 700 per employee.

If you take 700 and multiply by 1,000 employees that is 700,000 square feet. Assuming about 20,000 square feet per floor (Devon is more like 26,000 but is unusually thick), that's a about 35 floors.

Another comparison is that Oklahoma Tower is 31 floors and 610,000 square feet. It's floor plates are just under 20,000 square feet each.

I live in rural SW Oklahoma, but used to have ambitions of being an architect. That didn't pan out for me, but I drew pictures of and built cardboard models of a couple of buildings. One of them had a slanted roof and looked much like the Citibank building in New York. The other was much like the Chase Building in OKC, but was square and had a rotating dome on top, which was a restaurant. I wish I still had the drawings, they're well over 25 years old by now, so the designs are well outdated by now, but I thought they would really stand out in the current OKC skyline.

I'm still fascinated by construction and high-rise buildings, so I've been following the Devon Tower thread and related topics. I've enjoyed reading everyone's input and I'm excited to see what future construction is done in OKC.

Just FYI, the Chamber updated it's numbers in October '11 and lists Devon with 2,600 employees, MidFirst with 1,150 and American Fidelity with 1,000.

Devon is building 1.8 million square feet (don't forget the massive Garden Wing), which equates to almost 700 per employee.

If you take 700 and multiply by 1,000 employees that is 700,000 square feet. Assuming about 20,000 square feet per floor (Devon is more like 26,000 but is unusually thick), that's a about 35 floors.

But I believe Devon built to accommodate a lot of fast-paced future growth. Does American Fidelity expect to grow by any significant amount?

I don't know how fast AF or MidFirst are growing, but I'm sure they plan to expand as they always have.


And also keep in mind that Devon placed a huge data center and storage facility over by the airport (another 150,000 square feet), which is why they ended up reducing the size of their entire complex.

Something like this would be awesome. Biased cause it's my favorite building out there.

Westend Strasse 1 (208 M) in Frankfurt, Germany

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3040/2909344211_13e409b802_z.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/23835393@N04/2909344211/)

I've been investigating this CEMEX thing ever since my last post. It's interesting in that some business observers are surprised they're still in Mexico due to various import/export laws. But it looks like they have a pretty nice corporate office, they also have a CEMEXUSA subsidiary in Houston and various offices all over the world. They're a Fortune Global 500 company. Here's some pix of their current world headquarters in Monterey...

http://www.espazio101.com/img/galFoto/1227056255_cemex1b.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qz3uobv09rs/Twb8P9rXEhI/AAAAAAAAMUI/HdIwcG_3New/s400/edificio%2Bcemex%2Bplaza%2Bconsulado.jpg

http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/4833/edificiocemex1iv2.jpg

Okay, that's all. Hope this rumor turns out to be true.

Something like this would be awesome. Biased cause it's my favorite building out there.


What about this - Mellon Bank Center in Philadelphia.

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/30642705.jpg

Hopefully Steve will break the story in the next few months, this will be exciting. Never thought OKC would get two major skyscrapers back to back, many researchers stated OKC wouldn't see another significant skyscraper for at least another 10-15 years, guess we proved them wrong.

Hopefully Steve will break the story in the next few months, this will be exciting. Never thought OKC would get two major skyscrapers back to back, many researchers stated OKC wouldn't see another significant skyscraper for at least another 10-15 years, guess we proved them wrong.

Haven't skyscrapers in OKC almost always come in spurts?

The Frost Bank Tower in Austin is in my top 5, but I don't think something like this would fit in architecturally in the OKC skyline:

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6001/6011169493_6ac4e759cb_z.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/paul_lowry/6011169493/)
The Frost Bank Tower (http://www.flickr.com/photos/paul_lowry/6011169493/) by Paul Lowry (http://www.flickr.com/people/paul_lowry/), on Flickr

lasomeday,
Reminds me of the London building commonly referred to as the "Gherkin" (as in the pickle).
C. T.

http://www.skyscraperpicture.com/ta03.JPG

Something like this will be a great change!

That is a Thunder Moneyball

http://media.expedia.com/hotels/1000000/10000/5700/5628/5628_42_b.jpg

Ugh, That is the Beekman Hotel not Beekman Tower. This is the Beekman Tower. They built a skyscraper ontop existing 4 story buildings and utilized the bottom floors for a school and retail.


http://wikiarquitectura.com/es/images/7/7f/The_Beekman_Tower.jpg

http://www.glasssteelandstone.com/Images/US/TN/Nashville/200801/SignatureTower-a00.jpg

If only we could have the cancelled Signature Tower that was proposed for Nashville.

Frost Bank Tower @ night:


http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3144/3284033188_7970ec7f44_z.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattpippen/3284033188/)
Frost Bank Tower at Night (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattpippen/3284033188/) by Matt Pippen (http://www.flickr.com/people/mattpippen/), on Flickr

Dilusional. I still don't see why people think Amercan Fidelity can build a monster tower. They do t have that many employees on Classen, maybe 500 tops. They don't even occupy most of the third building they do have, if you were to stack all 3 on top of each other, you'd only have a 15 story building, and not much girth at that, as far as mid rises are concerned.

I honestly see them building a Sonic type of HQ only slightly larger, in the C2S area.

I thought the AMF buildings were 8 floors each ? 3 X 8 = 24...?

The Barcelona building also reminds me of the London "Gherkin." I like the London building a bit better because of its wacky spiral pattern on its glass:

http://cdn.homedit.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/london-gherkin-building_2.jpg

Someone mentioned that maybe the new HQ would be a Fortune 100 company, so here is a list of Fortune 100 companies to review and speculate over:

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2011/full_list/

Do you think Wal-Mart could ever be in play - #1 on th list?

How about RiteAid - #100 on the list?

Do you think Wal-Mart could ever be in play?

Wal-Mart is always in play in Oklahoma.

Don't make them like they used to. A shame.

http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/18586/826713.jpg

(hundred years old next year...)