Quote Originally Posted by Spartan View Post
However, I'd encourage people to look at downtown in 2012, and to stop looking at downtown in 2000 (C2S) and especially throw out plans based on the 1990 outlook (ODOT's basis here). That 2012 reality, that so few people have keyed in on, is that I really think the best development opportunity is the west side of downtown - it has traffic counts that don't exist anywhere else (bumper-to-bumper traffic on Western), and it has cheap real estate fronting Western - classic rent gap situation. I'm not saying to abandon C2S, I'm just saying that C2S needs to evolve to reflect the changes that have occurred in the last 10 years in order to be as successful as we all want.

Then the bottom line, for me, becomes this - if you're wanting to put downtown's west side to the highest possible use to take advantage of this golden opportunity, you gotta do this traffic circle. It's such a natural way to build the world-class environment we're looking for.
In reality there are always more than two options, but the Market Circle (Octagon? Tetradecagon?) idea is a lot like OKC's past of doubling down on the bet (stealing from Steve Lackmeyer). Go big or go home ... and do nothing.

Certainly returning to the grid and doing nothing is lots better than doing nothing and letting ODOT run OKC.