University Town Center

[onthestrip]

well, seeing as how none of them were ever mentioned as coming before the initial announcement of said arena and entertainment district i think that still stands...

Are you stating that Main Event, Sephora and Five Below actually factored in a new arena campaign as a reason they are putting stores here? I guarantee you their real estate team never paid more than 3 seconds of attention to this, if at al, and it played 0% in their decisions.

[jedicurt]

Are you stating that Main Event, Sephora and Five Below actually factored in a new arena campaign as a reason they are putting stores here? I guarantee you their real estate team never paid more than 3 seconds of attention to this, if at al, and it played 0% in their decisions.

arena no... but possible new developments coming to the area, absolutely they probably took that into consideration.

[mattjank]

Norman Transcript had a headline that of a poll of voters the arena TIF is wildly unpopular, to the tune of 2/3 against.

Does Riverwind get the next try?

[BG918]

Norman Transcript had a headline that of a poll of voters the arena TIF is wildly unpopular, to the tune of 2/3 against.

Does Riverwind get the next try?

I've long wondered if the Chickasaw's may decide in the future to abandon Riverwind and build a new casino/hotel complex next to I-35 on the Canadian River. Something more like River Spirit in Tulsa but with better visibility and access for OKC metro visitors. Look no further than 270 miles south of Norman where Baylor has built its new arena on the Brazos next to I-35. A tribal-OU partnership would definitely be intriguing.

[David]

Norman Transcript: Survey shows proposed entertainment district unsupported

[Jersey Boss]

Norman Transcript: Survey shows proposed entertainment district unsupported

Numbers are not surprising. Pretty much tracks with those who signed petitions I was working.

[jn1780]

I've long wondered if the Chickasaw's may decide in the future to abandon Riverwind and build a new casino/hotel complex next to I-35 on the Canadian River. Something more like River Spirit in Tulsa but with better visibility and access for OKC metro visitors. Look no further than 270 miles south of Norman where Baylor has built its new arena on the Brazos next to I-35. A tribal-OU partnership would definitely be intriguing.

Access to their current location will be pretty good once the interchange improvements are completed. They could do a lot of expansion at Riverwind if they wanted to. Their not going to get any closer to the city unless their is change to the laws.

[TornadoKegan]

Numbers are not surprising. Pretty much tracks with those who signed petitions I was working.

Doesn't sound like it shows a fair poll that you can only access the Norman Transcript Survey if you pay for it every month. The Norman Transcript only has 22,000 Subscribers on Facebook. the people that actually subscribe is most likely 2/3rds of those people at best. with the population of Norman being 130,000 with about 106,000 of those people being over the age of 18. i would think if you got every citizen over the age of 18 to give a opinion on the arena you would have a very different answer. if it doesn't pass they will likely try to apply for grants or still build it being at a much smaller scale. if all else fails. they would likely try to go to Goldsby or Moore

[BG918]

Access to their current location will be pretty good once the interchange improvements are completed. They could do a lot of expansion at Riverwind if they wanted to. Their not going to get any closer to the city unless their is change to the laws.

The Canadian River is the tribal border

[David]

Doesn't sound like it shows a fair poll that you can only access the Norman Transcript Survey if you pay for it every month. The Norman Transcript only has 22,000 Subscribers on Facebook. the people that actually subscribe is most likely 2/3rds of those people at best. with the population of Norman being 130,000 with about 106,000 of those people being over the age of 18. i would think if you got every citizen over the age of 18 to give a opinion on the arena you would have a very different answer. if it doesn't pass they will likely try to apply for grants or still build it being at a much smaller scale. if all else fails. they would likely try to go to Goldsby or Moore

You could try reading the article which addresses the central argument of your issue with the poll.

[TornadoKegan]

The fact that the developer said the center will draw people from Kansas City and Dallas should have been a red flag. Like Dallas and KC folks need to come to Norman to shop, even if upscale retailers did locate in UNP.

You could try reading the article which addresses the central argument of your issue with the poll.

All I'm saying is a poll with a answer from everyone in the city would likely look a lot different also apparently slightly over 500 people took part in the poll

[jonblatho]

All I'm saying is a poll with a answer from everyone in the city would likely look a lot different also apparently slightly over 500 people took part in the poll

So, I was about to launch into a rant about how this isn't how public opinion polling works, but it turns out this isn't a random sample which turns a lot of this discussion on its head. Trying to find complete data from the survey — which the Transcript didn't link to and I still haven't found — I stumbled upon this Reddit post asking people to take part in the survey.

The final results might happen to wind up close to these numbers, but this is little more than a fun final project for the students involved, and the data is likely meaningless. It's shameful that the Transcript article didn't mention this at all, best I can tell, because a seemingly minor detail like this is crucial for understanding the data and why the real results might wind up looking quite a bit different from the survey. Another red flag: "The survey showed that more than 80 percent of the respondents are either somewhat or very familiar with the TIF proposal." It takes only one look at typical municipal election turnout to grasp that 80 percent is probably at least a bit high versus reality at this time.

However, ~500 people is plenty for a representative survey of Norman adults if the sample is random; that comes out to a respectable margin of error of about ±4%. You'll notice most national opinion polls don't survey more than a couple thousand people, because polling people (correctly) is expensive, and you start getting into diminishing returns on that investment pretty quickly with sample sizes north of 1,000, even for populations in the millions.

[Dob Hooligan]

I've long wondered if the Chickasaw's may decide in the future to abandon Riverwind and build a new casino/hotel complex next to I-35 on the Canadian River. Something more like River Spirit in Tulsa but with better visibility and access for OKC metro visitors. Look no further than 270 miles south of Norman where Baylor has built its new arena on the Brazos next to I-35. A tribal-OU partnership would definitely be intriguing.

My understanding is that Riverwind is as far north as the Chickasaw can go on I-35, Newcastle Gaming is as far north as they can go on I-44, and WinStar is as far south as they can go on I-35.

[jn1780]

The Canadian River is the tribal border

That's only 1 mile closer.

[jonblatho]

Managed to find the actual data from the survey: Google Sheets presentation with a bunch of pie charts and the spreadsheet of individual responses.

The survey was a Google Form which appears to have collected no personally identifiable information. That's probably for the best — many comments on the Reddit post were folks concerned that this information would be used by OU to market the TIF proposal to them — but it also means that there's no way to verify that respondents are Norman residents or registered voters. In fact, there's really no protection against someone responding multiple times. Google offers a Google Forms feature to require a user to log in with their Google account to submit their response, but someone can have any number of Google accounts. I have (or have access to) several!

Like I mentioned, this was a fun little final project for journalism students and it's cool to see, but...understand the red flags before taking these results seriously at all.

[Jersey Boss]

I have heard from a knowledgable source that if the proposal for UNP is rejected OU will not pursue another location for the forseeable future. Also the administration of OU was surprised at the level of opposition.

[bison34]

Good. I don't blame them. Why help Norman in any way? Norman hasn't had a mainstream concert since like, 2009, aside from a couple one-off charity events. Why give them another chance at getting a quality concert venue?

[David]

All I'm saying is a poll with a answer from everyone in the city would likely look a lot different also apparently slightly over 500 people took part in the poll

That wasn't remotely what you were saying, you were making up nonsense about how the poll was conducted that didn't remotely match the reality of it.

[TornadoKegan]

That wasn't remotely what you were saying, you were making up nonsense about how the poll was conducted that didn't remotely match the reality of it.

All I will say is even though I hope it passes it's probably not going to. Norman citizens probably do not deserve anything of the sorts anyway given how they continue to get rid of anything that would benefit the city when they get the chance. Like what's going to be there next Target the commuter rail?

[BoulderSooner]

I have heard from a knowledgable source that if the proposal for UNP is rejected OU will not pursue another location for the forseeable future. Also the administration of OU was surprised at the level of opposition.

if the UNP arena is voted down (if it even goes to a vote which is very much in doubt) .. OU will look outside the city limits .. count on it ..

[bamarsha]

Just for the record, OU men's basketball just had another game at McCasland Field House on Saturday (12/7/24).

[jedicurt]

Just for the record, OU men's basketball just had another game at McCasland Field House on Saturday (12/7/24).

yes, against Alcorn state.

[LRSooner]

yes, against Alcorn state.

And it was horribly attended. Looked like there was about 1500. Outside of football and softball, it's embarrassing how bad the majority of our sports are attended. In that regard, we're not SEC ready. Having an off campus arena will also be laughed at by the SEC. OU has a long ways to go.

[jedicurt]

And it was horribly attended. Looked like there was about 1500. Outside of football and softball, it's embarrassing how bad the majority of our sports are attended. In that regard, we're not SEC ready. Having an off campus arena will also be laughed at by the SEC. OU has a long ways to go.

i mean OU women's Gymnastics averaged 8400 in attendance last season, and adjusted their setup as they hope for around 10,000 a meet this year. And you claim having the off campus arena will make it worse, when i can tell you clearly that most of my friends from college who used to be the crazy ones in the student section say they would attend way more games at UNP because it would be almost 20 minutes closer each way to their homes in Edmond... i am on the side that games will be more attended when we stop thinking it's students who go and realize that it's alum who mostly don't live in norman.

[bison34]

And it was horribly attended. Looked like there was about 1500. Outside of football and softball, it's embarrassing how bad the majority of our sports are attended. In that regard, we're not SEC ready. Having an off campus arena will also be laughed at by the SEC. OU has a long ways to go.

OU has terrible fans. I think it comes from the fact Norman hates OU. I don't get why, but Norman seems to loathe and despise the only thing keeping them relevant. Without OU, Norman would be less than Ada.