Quote Originally Posted by Teo9969 View Post
OKC is seeing growth and a substantial amount of quality products put on the market in terms of mixed-use development. This signals some amount of demand for quality development.

Full occupancy of Class-A office space is demonstrable demand. The growth of companies in downtown is demonstrable demand. But no amount of demand on paper makes loaning nine digits a sure-fire, conservative investment by a lender. There are, I imagine, several factors in play as to why these major developments are not occurring in OKC:

1. The Sandridge situation is unclear, and that's a lot of market space. On top of that, they will finish another building soon enough that will be almost entirely office space, so more recent and relevant data is about to come online for lenders to make these decisions…it's better to wait in these circumstances.

2. The state of national economy is still unclear, no matter what either side of the aisle is saying about it. Again, it's a lot easier to loan out $50M for a run of the mill mixed-use residential facility than it is $250M for a tower that is supposed to house businesses that are going to operate in an economy that is still viewed skeptically.

3. OKC has not had much (if any) in the way of large-scale ($100M+) development over the last, what, 2 to 3 decades? I say again, no amount of demand on paper makes it easy for a bank (particularly local ones) to invest a massive sum of their capital into one single project, especially if they are going to be the pioneer investor in a particular market. Devon is the only project I can think of, and it simply doesn't factor into the mindset of a lender. That also means that there are no large-scale developers in this city with a track-record. Most certainly a guy like Rainey Williams or even Preftakes do not have the track-record to get investment from other source, and neither are likely sitting on $250M to just plop into a development. Gary Brooks is about the only person that I think could pull it off at this point (he's the only one I can think of with over $100M in development downtown)

…OKC just needs a bit more time, and if people would step back and realize that in reality the difference between $10,000,000 and $100,000,000 is substantially more than 10x, they'd have more reasonable expectations of major downtown development.

It would be nice, however, if Preftakes would at least get the ball rolling on the two high-rise properties on his block. There's no reason for those two buildings to be demolished under any foreseeable circumstances, and the life on that corner would help the rest of the block be palatable.
OKC is seeing growth and needs more class A office space downtown. However, does it need enough to make a 30-40 story tower economically feasible? I definitely think OKC needs more time. It could be one of the huge boomtown stories of the 2020s, as long as the national economy doesn't tank again. People say I am very negative on a lot of things and will admit that I am somewhat of a pessimist, but I am also a realist. I would love to see a 30-40 story tower on the Preftakes block, the Stage Center site, and the also Bank of America site, but I see the rate of growth that is actually happening in OKC right now and come to the conclusion that it just isn't happening, right now at least. Someone with vision could try to build a 40 story tower and I think it would be a success, but it would still be too much of a risk for banks to lend the money it would take. In 15 years it may be a different story. Charlotte built the Bank of America tower in the early 1990s, but didn't see their skyline explode until the 2000s.