All,
Those of you who have spent way too much time on this site might remember me as the OKC ex-pat living in St. Louis.

I read with interest today that Peabody Energy, one of St. Louis' Fortune 500 HQ will be staying put downtown after receiving $10 million in incentives from the city.

Www.stlouis.bizjournals.com

This happens a lot here in "the Lou" as companies' leases come up and they play municipalities in the region off one another. This is a big example, but small firms engage in this practice as well. My questions related to OKC are these:

1. Does downtown OKC still see an exodus of firms to suburban parts of the metro area? Obviously the biggies are committed to downtown, but what about smaller firms?

2. Are there firms in suburban parts of OKC that may be lured downtown with these kinds of incentives?

3. Is this even a game OKC wants to play? Is a high vacancy rate downtown a price we're willing to pay so that the precedent isn't set that all firms begin demanding these incentives?

I just have been thinking these thoughts lately because this is such a part of life in STL and not sure if OKC wants to go down this path, or if it might be a way to help solve downtown's vacancy problem-still over 25% even before Devon Tower is finished.

1. Is there still an exodus