Urban Renewal Exposed

[Patrick]

I'm a little late in posting this, but I wanted to make sure it got the proper exposure.

--------------

From downtownguy's blog.....www.downtownguy.blogspot.com

Urban Renewal Exposed

Malibu Sooner has succeeded in getting meeting minutes from Urban Renewal, and possibly for the first time ever, you can read the proceedings of this often misunderstood city trust for yourself. Since Malibu Sooner took the effort to get the minutes, I will include his commentary on what he read below. First, some information about the agency.

Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority is actually one of three agencies that oversee development of public land in the downtown area. Lesser known is the Oklahoma City Redevelopment Authority, which of late has usually only met to issue bonds for tax increment finance projects like the Cytovance Biopharmaceutical plant and the Skirvin Hotel. There is also an agency called Second Century Inc that was started 20 years ago or so as a policy making body for the urban renewal agencies, but has met only a few times in the last ten years.

Urban Renewal is officed at 204 N Robinson, Ste. 2400 (City Place building)
Their future meeting dates:
August 17
September 21
October 19
November 16
December 21
January 18

Call the authority at 235-3771 before attending. The meetings are often rescheduled.

Now, for comments by Malibu Sooner:

"I finally received minutes from OCURA and have scanned and posted those from 4-21-05, the meeting where they selected William Canfield's group over that of Anthony McDermid's for The Hill project.

I have a couple others that I will scan as well but I thought I'd start with this one, as it was the most controversial.

A few of points:

1. It's clear Canfield's group had at least one meeting with directors before this meeting.
2. Canfield completely changed his financial package after the last meeting and just before this one.
3. The group admitted this was not fair to McDermid's group but allowed it anyway.
4. Stanton Young, the chairman that cast the deciding vote for Canfield, had met with the head of the OUHSC and provided feedback that they wanted larger, more up-scale units for their research scientists. If you weren't aware, Young and his family are major benefactors to the OUHSC and the main boulevard bares his name.
5. William Canfield is the founder of a large biotech firm located in the HSC.
6. After declaring the two proposals equal in terms of finance (once Canfiled had the chance to see McDermid's proposal in the last meeting then change his financing to match), Young then claims an important difference is the size of the proposed units, again referring to local HSC employees desiring larger, more luxurious homes. He seemed to strongly imply that Canfield's project had an advantage in this regard, although the size range proposed by McDermid was actually very similar to what Canfield has said he will build.
7. The group deadlocked and Young cast the deciding vote without explanation.


I may be editorializing, but that was my strong impression in reading the minutes. Please read for yourself and provide your own perspective:

http://mysite.verizon.net/res17zef/ocura42105.htm"



Notice how Sooner Malibu attacked the actions and words, and didn't use any name calling or personal attacks? Please follow his lead (for some reason, it's always this topic that gets the inappropriate flame wars going).

Should there be a permanent site that allows the public to view these minutes, and even photos and maps of related properties, maybe even images of proposed projects? Heck yeah. Maybe Sooner Malibu and I can make that happen. For now, I've got his temporary site in my links column.

[Patrick]

Here are some comments from reader's of downtownguy's blog:

"PapaJack said...
Kudos indeed to Malibu Sooner for getting OCURA’s minutes. I hope he/she has started some wheels turning in City Hall that will spark increased awareness of the requirements of the Open Meetings Law.

My spin on the Oklahoma Open Meetings law: Public entities (the OK legislature excluded as has been previously noted) must make their agendas and minutes easily accessible to the public they serve. Apparently posting on the Internet either does not meet this definition, or the Internet has not been accepted into law as “easily accessible.” I consider myself to be “computer literate.” Consequently I may be too impatient with the latent inertia of public entities in becoming computer literate. Especially when I don’t agree with the decisions of those entities.

My spin on the OCURA “Hill” decision: The differences between the two proposals appear negligible, from the wording of the minutes.
OKC will benefit from either proposal, and hopefully the “loser” will still have the backing and capital to go forward with other developments.
It could be a no harm, no foul situation, at least to the casual bystander. Was the OCURA decision unethical? I just can’t tell.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005 8:28:46 AM

---------------------------
The Old Downtown Guy said...
First, Many thanks to Sooner Malibu for following through on this undertaking. You are performing a genuine service to this blog and the wider community as well.

Second, I must admit that I was rooting for McDermid's team to win the day, so it is difficult for me to be totally unbiased when reading the OKCURA minutes. But even with that in mind, here are the thoughts that came to my feeble mind.

1. What’s with the eleventh hour modification to the money portion of the Canfield proposal? It was like, oh **** . . . we had better get the financing in line or we are down the tubes. Definite black mark to Canfield (and OKCURA) for bad form.

2. I don't believe that the whole project is going to be bought up by new hires in Health Sciences Center or Research Park, so where is the third party research that says the houses need to be such and such size and have these and those amenities? Was that information in the OKCURA RFP? Time and time again, the OKCURA Board members stated that the projects were very similar in terms of unit size. But this seemed to be the one thing that Stanton Young kept coming back to. Draw.

3. Development Experience. McDermid, Balenger, Trammel Crow group . . . Tons of Experience. Canfield Group . . . Zip. Point to the McDermid group.

4. In general, I value Jim Tolbert's opinion over any other member of that board, so his vote should count double.

The score: Canfield group -1, McDermid group +1, the vote tally: Canfield 3, McDermid 2. When factoring in the scoring and my observation in bullet point 4, the total outcome should have been McDermid 4, Canfield 2. The clear winner is the McDermid group.

All of this chatter aside; considering the importance and the high profile nature of this project, shouldn't the OKCURA board worked until they achieved consensus? What does this 3 to 2 vote really demonstrate? Division? A lack of leadership? A lack of vision?

Perhaps, the flack surrounding this apparent display of cronyism will be the generator of some positive change on the OKCURA Board. One can only hope.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005 9:03:15 AM

----------------------------
MalibuSooner said...
As a public entity, OCURA is bound by standard parliamentary procedure which clearly states the Chair (Mr. Young) shall NOT participate in the debate over a motion unless he removes himself as the Chair first.

This was clearly not done in this instance and he drove the entire discussion, which was highly inappropriate.

I agree that both proposals were good ones but a fundamental issue of fairness was violated by allowing Canfield to revise his proposal at the very last minute after his group had the benefit of seeing the proposal of the other group and realizing they didn't measure up. In fact, it is clear from the minutes they would not have been chosen if not for late meetings and revisions, while McDermid's group was not given the same opportunity.

Since the proposals were so even (eventually) why did Young chose Canfield's group? The only possible hint was some nonsensical comment about unit size that wasn't even true.

Why was there absolutely zero consideration or discussion about the fact McDermid’s proposal contained retail and the other did not? This was a key point of differentiation that seemed to strongly favor McDermid but instead Young goes on and on about two research scientists.

And if they were so equal, why give the nod to the group that clearly bent the rules instead of the one that did everything right?



When you consider all this and the fact that Canfield and Young have a clear association through the Health Science Center (and that Young seemed more interested in their interests than anything else), this whole process smacks of favoritism.


It’s not the end of the world unless you are Anthony McDermid or his partners, who are working very hard to better downtown through their efforts and substantial investments. And certainly by comparing the nature of the two projects, I think the greater good of OKC was short-changed as well.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005 9:24:49 AM"