Tulsa, Not OKC, Is Getting a Hard Rock

[Midtowner]

The one here in Austin closed in early 2006, it was pretty much deserted every night on Sixth Street while all the other bars were open. The thing that killed them here was it was supposed to be a rock club but never had any live music.

The few times I've been to one, it has just been so-so casual dining with some so-so memorabilia on the walls.

It's a washed up brand. It's found new life in trashy Indian casinos. Good for it, I guess.

[Patrick]

I agree. Hard Rock Cafes are so 1990's. They're not in any favor anymore. And like Steve said, OKC never actively sought one. The only major chain restaurants I can think of that were ever mentioned were Dick Clark's American Bandstand Grill, by Randy Hogan. Moshe Tal suggested bringing Hard Rock and ESPN Zone to Bricktown, but this was nothing ever more than just a thought, and no attempts were ever made to attract these tenants to Bricktown. I personally don't see Hard Rock any more special than Toby Keith's, and I'm not really a fan of Toby Keith's.

[fuzzytoad]

More clarification is needed here: a state compact that allowed Remington Park to create a Racino and the tribes to do Class II casinos is what prohibits any other casinos from opening shop in Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City was part of the unassigned lands. And that's why a tribe can't set up a casino here - they can only do so on tribal land.

ahh, thanks!

[mugofbeer]

Whatever happened to the rumors I had heard a year ago about a Hard Rock Casino being built out like at Hefner or Brittan and I-35?

[kevinpate]

same thing that happened to the rumor I would some day again be thin and finally become handsome ... someone got it very, very wrong
8^)

[mugofbeer]

Hey, I heard that same rumor about me! It also included whispers about great wealth.

[Patrick]

Whatever happened to the rumors I had heard a year ago about a Hard Rock Casino being built out like at Hefner or Brittan and I-35?

You're referring to the Shawnee tribe's planned $400 million casino.

[mugofbeer]

It may have been. I thought I had heard the Hard Rock name associated with it. I just hadn't heard it again and the thread reminded me.

[Patrick]

By the way, this NEW Hard Rock casino in Tulsa is not really new. It's just a renaming of Cherokee Casino and Resort. I don't see the big deal. Cherokee Casino has been there on the eastern side of Tulsa for some time now. Sure, they're expanding again, but a tribal casino is a tribal casino.

[In_Tulsa]

You can dog it all you want but with only 7 in the world www.hardrockhotels.com is coming to Tulsa its going to be HUGE just watch this will be fun. They will also be doing national TV advertising. It will be bigger than you think.



www.hardrockcasinotulsa.com

[andimthomas]

You can dog it all you want but with only 7 in the world Hard Rock Hotels is coming to Tulsa its going to be HUGE just watch this will be fun. They will also be doing national TV advertising. It will be bigger than you think.



Pages - default

Because the entire nation will travel to Oklahoma instead of Vegas, Orlando, San Diego, or Chicago for a Hard Rock :|

[DM1031]

I am in Tulsa, so let me chime in on the Hard Rock issue, I hate it.
I was a fan of the old HRC, when they were cool to go to, each one unique, now they are washed up.
The one here is just a Hard Rock sign on the old Cherokee casino, still owned and managed by the Cherokee casino, just a sign and some crappy t-shirts.
There will not even be a Hard Rock Cafe, that is the foundation of the whole brand, isnt it?
Toby Keith had a deal in place for a bar & grill inside of the Cherokee, it opens in a week or so, that is why there will be no HRC.
A Toby Keith restaurant inside the Hard Rock? not very hard rock is it?
and they will still have the section of the casino devoted to country music, again, not very hard rock.
Not to mention its not even in Tulsa, its in Catoosa.

I would much rather see an ESPN Zone, and Bricktown would be the perfect place, Tulsa would not be a good fit, seeing that all we have in sports is a minor league baseball team, an arena football team, and it looks as if we will have a WNBA team, big deal.


OK, done venting, back to you Bob

[dismayed]

Dismayed, I don't want to come off as arogant and a know-it-all here and I hope people don't think that after reading this. I've been the guy covering this beat now more than a dozen years, and your comments about the city/Bricktown pursuing a Hard Rock Cafe simply is not true. There were never (to my knowledge) any public pronouncements about trying to become home to a Hard Rock Cafe. I challenge you to produce a legitimate newspaper story (Oklahoman, JR, Gazette) that says otherwise.
I'm not accusing of lying. But I do think you've fallen into the trap of buying into an urban legend.
For what it's worth, I'm betting the addition of the Academy of Contemporary Music to Bricktown - something you won't find in any other urban entertainment district in America - will have far more impact than a Hard Rock Cafe.

You know, it is interesting. I've gone through some old Oklahoman articles, lots of Journal Record archives, well known Oklahoma blog posts, and even dug deep through the Internet archives at archive.org.

It looks to me like the Hard Rock idea started being thrown around when developers Moshe Tal and David Cordish hit the scene. Lots of talk about their past development in Baltimore that included a Hard Rock and a Barnes and Noble, and lots and lots of speculation about similar developments here, if their plan moved forward. Journal Record is a good source for that. I do consider them Bricktown developers, just like I do so many others who have proposed ideas for housing and other things downtown but, like Tal, have eventually failed and moved on.

Perhaps that idea "officially" did die with them leaving Bricktown. But the interesting thing is how many times "Hard Rock" is mentioned by folks around OKC. It seems that everyone constantly compares any development in Bricktown to the Hard Rock Cafe. I found loads of posts by random people comparing Toby Keith's to a country Hard Rock Cafe when it first opened. I even found a jab at Hard Rock on your own blog when comparing it to the School of Rock opening downtown. References are everywhere. I can even clearly remember a TV news anchor, shortly after major development started in Bricktown, closing a news segment about future developments with something like "...perhaps even a Hard Rock Cafe."

Perhaps it is an urban legend, I guess no one would know unless someone were to call up Moshe and ask for a clarification on what he was wanting to do 10 years ago, but certainly both the general populace and the professional media alike have played into it.

If no one in Bricktown ownership ever wanted or tried to get a Hard Rock, okay fine, no big deal then glad to know it wasn't that Tulsa had a better deal or something like that. I guess in that scenario the only thing that surprises me is, with a clearly wide base of support for such an idea, why no one ever seriously considered it....

[mugofbeer]

I dont know. I just don't see what is so hot about getting a Hard Rock Cafe or hotel, getting Dave & Busters, getting this or getting that. I would far prefer to see some locally owned and operated facility than putting more money in nameless faceless corporations that really don't add anything. Look at what they are doing to the San Antonio riverwalk. Its all chains. Its lost much of its character because the chains have made it unaffordable for the local people to operate there

[Mr. T in OKC]

This Hard Rock Cafe, is this the one that was in the movie, Honey I Blew Up the Kid?

Someone watched "Honey I Blew Up the Kid"?

[dalelakin]

More clarification is needed here: a state compact that allowed Remington Park to create a Racino and the tribes to do Class II casinos is what prohibits any other casinos from opening shop in Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City was part of the unassigned lands. And that's why a tribe can't set up a casino here - they can only do so on tribal land.

Can't unassigned land be reassigned as tribal land though?

[Steve]

Dalelakin, that's what the Shawnees were trying to do. Not likely, but who's to say for sure.
Dismayed, I'll leave it to others to discuss the Moshe Tal's credibility, etc.

[kevinpate]

wouldn't a more accurate thread title be something like ....

Tulsa 'burb, not OKC 'burb, is getting the Hard Rock brand slapped on an existing casino/hotel

[evh5150]

ive always thought Tulsa to be a more commercially marketable city than Oklahoma City, simply because the name of their town only has two syllables, whereas ours has six.

most major cities have few syllables in them:

Dallas
Houston
Miami
Seattle
Denver
Phoenix

..even Los Angeles and New York City, have just four syllables

six syllables is a hard push for commercial growth

not really sure why that seems to be, but i have noticed it.

[dismayed]

I dont know. I just don't see what is so hot about getting a Hard Rock Cafe or hotel, getting Dave & Busters, getting this or getting that. I would far prefer to see some locally owned and operated facility than putting more money in nameless faceless corporations that really don't add anything. Look at what they are doing to the San Antonio riverwalk. Its all chains. Its lost much of its character because the chains have made it unaffordable for the local people to operate there

I don't disagree.

[Tom Elmore]

I don't pretend to know a thing about HARD ROCK Cafes. I've honestly never been in one that I recall. I can say, however, that the HARD ROCK Cafe that was in the vanguard of a surge in commercial development along McKinney Avenue in Dallas back in the 1980s is often said to have been drawn there by the McKinney Avenue Transit operation, vintage trolleys that first operated on 1887 rail line uncovered on that street.

Those trolleys and the access they offer is widely credited with creating over $100 million in new commercial development in the area they serve in their first nine years of operation. The system was funded on a shoestring, and, as far as I know, continues to be operated now as then mostly by well-trained volunteers.

When McKinney Avenue Transit Authority CEO John Landrum came here at my organization's request in 1999 to make a presentation about its success to a Citizens League transit forum at Metro Tech, an OKC Chamber operative who functioned as the forum's moderator apparently appointed the League, would not allow him to make that presentation.

How much of the original Oklahoma Railway trolley lines still lies under the asphalt in OKC's streets? Less now than then, you can be certain. What would the cost be of putting these back into operation with real, vintage trolleys? Would the appeal of such a system be superior to the "modern streetcars" some are suggesting -- or could a vintage system be run very inexpensively in parallel with the modern streetcars to give wider initial coverage?

Perhaps we should ask John Landrum and some of his associates to come back here to OKC to talk to the citizenry and leadership about it -- with the assurance that The Chamber and its operatives would not be allowed to interfere.

[Platemaker]

Would the appeal of such a system be superior to the "modern streetcars"

Definitely not. There is a "coolness" factor to modern streetcars that the vintage cars don't have. I think modern riders (and upcoming generations - Ages 30 and younger) prefer the modern streetcars.

or could a vintage system be run very inexpensively in parallel with the modern streetcars to give wider initial coverage?

In OKC's case... maybe on the centennial project from Bricktown to the Adventure District.

.... but this thread is about HRC.

[bluedogok]

I was a fan of the old HRC, when they were cool to go to, each one unique, now they are washed up.

It was run into the ground by a corporate mindset after the founders sold out in 1990, they have expanded to 140 locations, that has devalued the brand more than anything, the Seminole Nation bought it in 2006. In 1992 Isaac Tigrett founded the House of Blues in Chicago, it took over as the "in" place back then after the new HRC owners showed the willingness to open one up almost anywhere. I don't doubt that if Tal would have been successful over Hogan that a HRC location would have been in Bricktown because for awhile that all you had to have was to meet the investment criteria. Tigrett sold HOB to LiveNation in 2006 which I am sure will bring a decline to the chain although most still have live music in them and since LiveNation is one of the large concert promoters it may not go down as quickly.

The HRC "brand" is a shell of what it used to be, over exposure killed whatever cache it used to have. I will say that the Tulsa area getting the hotel/casino under their ownership is probably a very good thing as the Seminole Nation has proven to be a pretty stable ownership group in their many different ventures.

[Matt]

When I saw some dude walking around in a "Hard Rock Cafe: Wichita Falls" t-shirt, that was the day I knew the Hard Rock Cafe franchise had officially jumped the shark.

[oneforone]

Hard Rock is not anything special in my opinion. I have dined at several over the years. It's just like eating at Chili's, Fridays or any other theme restaurant. The only real difference is they have a gift shop with overpriced junk.

The worst theme restaurant I have ever ate at was Planet Hollywood. The food was bland and extremely over priced.