University North Park

[BG918]

Interesting new development in the works for the undeveloped land west of the Norman airport along I-35 between Robinson and Tecumseh. According to the developers it is going to be a large mixed-use district anchored by Super Target and will include retail, offices, restaurants, and residential with 24th Street becoming a tree-lined blvd. through the development. From the Norman City Council minutes...

Mr. Carl Edwards, Managing Partner of Price, Edwards, and Company-Commercial Real Estate Services, provided a conceptual land use plan; an illustrative master plan; an aerial view of the retail district; a street level of the primary street; conceptual retail and office space around the Town Square; and proposed residential development to complement the retail center.

The article...

University North Park plat OK’d

By Carol Cole
The Norman Transcript

The first phase of the University North Park final plat was approved Tuesday on a split vote of 6-1 by the Norman City Council, despite last minute concerns that a 173,900-square-foot Super Target store would be built on top of a plugged oil well.

The 470,000-square-foot first phase will be on 69 acres north of Robinson Street, east of Interstate 35 and west of 24th Avenue NW, on land currently owned by the University of Oklahoma Foundation.

It is the first phase of the 585-acre Planned Unit Development that is projected to be one of the top five single retail developments in the country if built out to its master plan.

Ryan Zick is Target representative for environmental services for property assessment and remediation from the corporation’s Minneapolis office.

Zick said Target would vent the well outside the structure and the corporation had hired the Kleinfelder corporation to remediate the well, which was plugged in 2002.

Councilmembers expressed concerns about the safety of building a store on the site. Council recently passed an ordinance becoming the first Oklahoma city to prohibit building habitable structures on top of wells.

But the “habitable” term was the phrase that left a loophole for commercial structures.

Bill Huey of Kleinfelder of Albuquerque, N.M., told councilmembers the firm had found no evidence of methane gas from the well and the firm was in the process of assessing any threat.

Huey said the oil field has never produced a significant amount of gas. At the time it was plugged, it was producing 85 barrels of oil and five gallons of water daily. The last record from the Oklahoma Corporation Commission showed oil, but no gas.

“It’s not likely that it would ever start producing gas,” he said. “It’s forward thinking and responsible for Target to think about venting the well.”

Ward 7 councilmember Doug Cubberley offered an amendment of venting where the well is plugged as part of the final plat. It was approved 6-1 with Stanley voting “no.”

“I’m not happy at all to approve a commercial building situated on a well,” Cubberley said. “I think our teeth obviously have been filed. … But I’m very pleased that Super Target is coming.”

A traffic analysis of the site included improvements that would be necessary to accommodate the more than 18,000 visits the development would generate.

Those would include improvements at intersections on Robinson Street, 24th Avenue NW, Interstate Drive East, North Park Drive and Tecumseh Road.

Attorney Harold Heiple said some of the improvements might have to be done twice if the proposed $15 million tax increment financing district for traffic improvements was not approved. The double turn lanes at Robinson Street would not be required in the initial phase.

“It’s better to put them in at the same time,” said Tom McCaleb of Spears and McCaleb, engineer for the project.

[metro]

I was very excited when I saw this announcement last week. Supposively they are wanting to build an upscale shopping mall at this site as well.

[John]

The mountain is gone.

I know SuperTarget is coming, which is awesome, but as I was driving into Norman coming home from Nebraska, our old friend has been leveled in the name of progress.

I knew it was coming, but it's strange to drive down I-35 and not see the mountain anymore.

[Faith]

Really! I didn't know it was leveled... I grew up in Norman but I haven't drove that way in a few months. : ( But yes that is awesome that we will have a Super Target close to the southside.

[metro]

That mountain. You mean that dirtpile. I know it did have some memories but wasn't what it once was. It used to be a WWII shooting range. They are going to have a historic museum and plaques and such to honor that former site though

[John]

Yeah, it was the backstop for the shooting range on North Base. It stretched across what is now I-35.

The tower at Bob Moore Cadillac/Nissan, formerly Mark Heitz, was the lookout tower to see how well the pilots shot was.

I know they'll have mementos of our beloved dirt hill in some capacity, its just odd not to see it any longer.

[dirtrider73068]

Update on that dirt hill its still there they just started breaking ground adn got going on it, was by there last week it was still there on friday. If not mistaken its still there now or could have been started to come down. There is so much dirt there its goin gto take a long time to have it removed if they don't use it there on the building sites. Last I have read in the paper was they are going to sift through some of the dirt and try to find some of remmants of the bullets to put in a museum and the devopers have to errect a plaque with history on the dirt hill.

[Pete]

Anybody have a link to a site plan or renderings?

I'm having a hard time visualizing this project.

[dirtrider73068]

You might check cityofnorman.com and see if they have anything on the city website about the proposed project.

[Pete]

$20 million Super Target planned for Norman
by Brandice J. Armstrong
The Journal Record
12/30/2005

NORMAN - Construction for Norman's Super Target isn't set to begin until February but preparation work for the site can be seen from Interstate 35.

At a cost of more than $20 million, the Super Target will be just east of I-35 at Robinson Street and is scheduled for an October completion date. It is the first part of a two-phase project that will result in an upscale shopping center.

Situated on a 585-acre tract, Super Target will occupy nearly 174,000 square feet.

The second phase will cost between $35 million and $40 million.

For the second phase, 300,000 square feet will be set aside for additional shopping center retailers and restaurants, said Brad Goodwin, developing partner for Sooner Investment Companies, which is developing the property.

One restaurant will be Ted's Café Escondido, said Don Wood, director of the Norman Economic Development Coalition. There are two Ted's cafés in Oklahoma City and one in Edmond.

"The development should have a diverse tenant mix," said Eric Fleske, co-owner of Equity Realty and a Norman resident. "People want a very aesthetically pleasing development and (want to) draw people from outside of Norman."

Upon completion of the Super Target, the existing 111,000 square foot store at 2417 W. Main St. will close.

"(Target) needed a new, bigger store," Wood said. "We hope (the Main Street store) will be occupied by another large box retailer. The current location is (one of) the highest traffic corners in Norman."

Wood did not specify which retailers would be the most likely candidates to take over the space.

W. Main Street between 36th Street West and 48th Street West has an average daily traffic count of 19,500 vehicles. The Robinson Street exit off I-35 has a daily traffic count of about 24,000 vehicles. In addition, about 67,000 vehicles pass the Robinson Street exit from I-35 each day, according to Norman's Department of Public Works average daily traffic count map for 2005.

Aimee Sands, a Target spokeswoman, said it was premature to comment about the project.

[Nuclear_2525]

Am I the only one that laughs when they talk about anchoring an "upscale" retail development with a Super Target?

[Pete]

This is an older article, but it provides more detail about the master plan:



August 11, 2005 12:30 am

Bigger and better?

University North Park
Carol Cole
The Norman Transcript
Norman, Okla. —

Size matters.

And if the 290-acre University North Park shopping center is built out as specified in the master plan presented last week, it would rank in the top five shopping centers in square footage nationally — third largest in the nation with 2,666,000 square feet — according to 2004 numbers from the International Council of Shopping Centers.

The master plan proposed by architects from Carter-Burgess and Little Diversified Architects included 1,976,000 square feet in retail, grocery and restaurants, 550,000 square feet in hospitality/hotels and 240,000 square feet in entertainment.

As a single project, it would be outranked only by South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, Calif., with 2.8 million square feet; Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., with 2,779,242 square feet; and slightly ahead of the Plaza & Court at King of Prussia in King of Prussia, Pa., with 2,620,470 square feet.

It would rank ahead of any single project in Texas, with the Galleria in Houston coming in fifth at 2,402,902 square feet.



But there are lots of “ifs”:

• If the Norman City Council approves a $21 million tax increment financing district primarily for infrastructure improvements at Interstate 35 interchanges at Robinson and Tecumseh roads and a frontage road along the interstate. The development is planned for the undeveloped south half of 585 acres east of I-35, between Robinson Street and Tecumseh Road and west of Max Westheimer Airport, currently owned by the University of Oklahoma Foundation.

• If the retail stores build close to the specifications in the master plan. Plans are necessarily fluid, with stores asking for smaller or larger sites as the project develops.

• If the area is built totally out to 2,666,000 square feet.



“The total number has changed and will continue to change,” said Randy Stone of Carter-Burgess in Dallas. The original number Stone presented with the master plan at a Citizens TIF Ad Hoc Advisory Committee meeting Aug. 3 was 2,426,000 square feet.

The numbers for single projects are misleading, however, said Bob Stearns of Sooner Investment Company, which has been chosen by the OU Foundation to develop the area.

“The reason those numbers are skewed for us in our favor is because we are able to call this one project,” Stearns said, noting that some other areas of the state have high densities of retail in an area, such as the Memorial Road corridor in northwest Oklahoma City and the 71st Street area in Tulsa. “But they are not going to call it one project, they are going to call it five projects [in Oklahoma City].

“But what is the real retail dynamic behind the Quail Springs Mall area? It’s probably closer to 3 to 4 million square feet. On one corner you have Target. On another corner you have Sam’s and Wal-Mart and on another you have Lowe’s and all those metal boxes lined up with them.”



Creating a large single project does have its advantages.

“What we’re able to do is control architecture and control how the ingress works and actually plan this and control the growth. … It really will turn out to be a much nicer environment. Because these cities really have limited control over what they can do if people meet the guidelines,” he said.

“You rarely have the opportunity to control one piece of property that’s large enough to do something like what we’re talking about in modern times.”

It’s no accident that many of the larger single projects in the nation are in suburbs of major cities, such as Norman.

“That’s where the land is. That’s where the growth is,” Stearns said.

Developments may be unified such as University North Park or segmented such as the Quail Springs area, but some things remain the same.

“(Retailers) all want to cluster together at the same location. As you go across the country, you will notice that the retailers have all selected the same areas. That’s not by accident. They are following the anchors,” he said. “The big anchors provide the foot traffic. They provide the advertising for the area. They just have a lot larger budgets to deal with all that. What you have in Norman is a unique ability to get them all in one location instead of scattered all on one street.”

At the Super Target at Penn and Memorial, P.F. Chang’s China Bistro built on a nearby outparcel. TGI Friday’s, On the Border, Applewood’s and

Olive Garden built on outparcels at Quail Springs Mall. Across Kilpatrick Turnpike, Texas Roadhouse and Starbucks have gone in near Old Navy,

Michael’s and Lowe’s. Just west on Memorial are Johnny Carino’s, Fox and Hound and Abuelo’s Gourmet Mexican restaurants.

But with the boom in the area have come complex problems, being addressed by the City of Oklahoma City.

The unrelated developments along the Memorial corridor have created numerous traffic issues, with intense traffic snarls along Penn Avenue on either side of Kilpatrick Turnpike and Memorial Road and along the north side of Memorial Road, making it difficult to exit the turnpike at Penn.

TIF districts apparently are being used around the state to increase sales tax base, not just to address blighted areas. The use of TIF districts as development tools began when the Oklahoma Legislature passed the Local Development Act in 1992, amended by voters in 2004 to allow cities to dedicate future TIF revenues for retirement of bond issues to finance improvements.

Tulsa Mayor Bill LaFortune recently announced his support of a TIF district that would help prepare a site for a 695,000-square-foot center at 71st Street and U.S. 75, according to a recent Associated Press story. The property also would be developed by Sooner Investments and Collett and Associates of Charlotte, N.C.

“They’ve offered it up and said please make this happen. Because they realize they are going to lose all these retailers to the outskirts of town which makes it in some other municipality than Tulsa,” Stearns said.

The area needs about 2 million cubic yards of earthwork for it to be developable.

“That’s a huge number. That’s probably a $10 million number in itself. These kind of developments can’t pay for that, so it just wouldn’t occur on that land. It would occur somewhere else. But the city wants it to occur on that land,” he said.

[Pete]

By the way, the land for this project is owned by the OU Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the university that manages donations and handles investments for the endowment, which is now over $600 million.

I'm sure this development will through off a huge amount of income which will be a fantastic long-term revenue stream for the university.


That Boren is one amazing guy.

[BG918]

I'm still waiting to see a master plan and renderings of the completed project. It "sounds" like they are wanting something upscale and even New Urbanist in design but you never know. I just hope they go for a more "Utica Square" type development (singular stores/restaurants with storefront parking and plenty of trees around it) instead of a "Moore strip mall" type (large, ugly facades of stores with a gigantic sea of parking). The fact that they have said it is a mixed-use development with adjacent offices and residential is promising.

[Pete]

I've only seen a fuzzy rendering, and I've search the sites of the two architecture firms.

However, the fact OU is involved and Boren has been quoted as wanting an upscale development are good signs.

Everything OU has built under Boren has been pretty nice.

[Pete]

Here's another good article:

Boren pitches University Park TIF

Boren shared his ideas for an intimate yet dynamic retail space in the image of Tulsa’s Utica Square.

By Carol Cole
CNHI News Service

NORMAN, Okla. — A vision of an upscale destination retail center at the 585-acre University North Park was painted Tuesday by University of Oklahoma President David Boren as he made his pitch to the Norman City Council and a standing room-only crowd.

Boren shared his ideas for an intimate yet dynamic retail space in the image of Tulsa’s Utica Square, urging councilmembers to form a review committee to study implementing a tax increment financing or TIF District to provide about $20 million in infrastructure in the 585 acres of land north of Robinson Street and east of Interstate 35.

“At this point, this is interesting enough and exciting enough that I think we ought to work at it hard, kick the tires, look under the hood. I do think enough effort has gone into it at this spot that it’s worth proceeding to at least look at this. And not prejudging it,” Boren said. “I think not to go forward would be a mistake.”

The TIF public improvements would include about $13.5 million in off-site costs to address traffic problems, plus $7 million in off-site drainage.

The area has never generated tax revenues. The TIF is proposed to split future tax revenues to finance the improvements.

The first phase would be a 280-acre Planned Unit Development or PUD, with the center portion in a Main Street/University Commons type style. A clock tower would anchor the center, with fountains, statues and lush landscaping creating pedestrian-friendly spaces around small boutique-type stores.

A serpentine drive would wind through the middle of the development.

“We’re looking at the clock tower for a vertical element,” said Randy Stone, group manager for Carter-Burgess Architecture, saying it would be the destination point in the development and be visible from the interstate.

Gateway arches similar to those at OU and other university-like elements would welcome visitors to the area, Boren said.

“Something that has a beauty to it,” he said, saying that improving the area helps the university as well.

Upscale hotels would be located near the interstate, with an entertainment center with movie theaters and other venues would be at the back of the development.

Boren said the TIF District would not kick in until the city’s sales tax base had grown another 4 percent.

If an existing store moved to the area, it would have to contribute at least as many taxes before the TIF would kick in, to protect the city against cannibalization of its tax base.

The land is owned by the University of Oklahoma Foundation, which is contemplating a sale to Sooner Investments.

Covenants would be developed for the design of the area, and an architectural design committee would oversee the area.

He would help oversee the project.

“I would rather you know you are dealing with a pretty unreasonable person,” Boren said he told potential investors.

“I will be watching this like all the rest of you — like a hawk. To count trees and things like that,” he said to councilmembers.

Boren said he believes it is inevitable that a quality retail center will spring up in the area, whether it be in Moore, Norman or another spot in central Oklahoma.

He believes it will produce about $100 million in taxes in the 25 years after the TIF District has done its work.

Councilmembers expressed concern at the end of the presentation because of the time that would be required for the development, it would continue to be overseen in the same way after Boren’s tenure was up.

“I think another thing for the community is the protection of the covenants,” said City Manager Brad Gambill.

[BFizzy]

I keep hearing and reading more about this project, but I still have not seen any renderings for it. Boren says that it will be upscale like Utica Square, but that seems a little off since it is anchored by SupterTarget. I am excited about this project but am having a hard time visualizing this and would love to see a rendering.

Does anyone know where I might be able to come across one?

[BricktownGuy]

With all the media hype that UNP has created, I hope it delivers.

Since it is being developed by the University of Oklahoma Foundation, R.T. Oliver Investments and Sooner Investment Co. it should be able to support all the hype.

Since this development is suppose to include retail, offices, restaurants, and residential, will this area attract more attention than Bricktown once its all completed??? (just a thought that came to mind)

[ETL]

So, do we still not know what it is going to look like.

[soonerliberal]

The plans have not been developed yet... just the "vision"...

[Patrick]

From what I was told last week, look to see something like you see at Memorial and Penn.

[Popsy]

Patrick

Reading your posts over the last several months I have developed the impression that you are the most negative poster here. Is that required in the job description of moderator or is there just very little that pleases you?

[brianinok]

.....in the image of Tulsa’s Utica Square, urging councilmembers to form a review committee to study implementing a tax increment financing or TIF District to provide about $20 million in infrastructure in the 585 acres of land north of Robinson Street and east of Interstate 35.

“At this point, this is interesting enough and exciting enough that I think we ought to work at it hard, kick the tires, look under the hood. I do think enough effort has gone into it at this spot that it’s worth proceeding to at least look at this. And not prejudging it,” Boren said. “I think not to go forward would be a mistake.”

The TIF public improvements would include about $13.5 million in off-site costs to address traffic problems, plus $7 million in off-site drainage.

The area has never generated tax revenues. The TIF is proposed to split future tax revenues to finance the improvements.

The first phase would be a 280-acre Planned Unit Development or PUD, with the center portion in a Main Street/University Commons type style. A clock tower would anchor the center, with fountains, statues and lush landscaping creating pedestrian-friendly spaces around small boutique-type stores.

A serpentine drive would wind through the middle of the development.

“We’re looking at the clock tower for a vertical element,” said Randy Stone, group manager for Carter-Burgess Architecture, saying it would be the destination point in the development and be visible from the interstate.

Gateway arches similar to those at OU and other university-like elements would welcome visitors to the area, Boren said.

“Something that has a beauty to it,” he said, saying that improving the area helps the university as well.

Upscale hotels would be located near the interstate, with an entertainment center with movie theaters and other venues would be at the back of the development.....

Patrick, this sounds nothing like Penn & Memorial to me.

[venture]

David Boren isn't going to permit another strip style shopping center. Lifestyle centers are anything but that. However, I wonder if personal feelings are getting in the way of actual fact reporting. Popsy - you aren't the only one.

[ETL]

David Boren isn't going to permit another strip style shopping center. Lifestyle centers are anything but that. However, I wonder if personal feelings are getting in the way of actual fact reporting. Popsy - you aren't the only one.

What do you mean "feelins"? The feelings of who?