BC Clark expanding downtown location
Jeweler to expand downtown location
By Steve Lackmeyer
The Oklahoman
If the fortunes of B.C. Clark Jewelers is any indicator, downtown Oklahoma City’s retail drought may be nearing an end.
The family-owned business didn’t abandon downtown 30 years ago, as did many of its competitors, and the jewelers report their 31st year at 101 Park Avenue was the best yet for the downtown location. Now the family is expanding their downtown store so that the storefront also will front Broadway.
“We’ve always felt we have a commitment to downtown,” said Coleman Clark, vice president. “We like being downtown. It was our great-grandfather who started the business and moved it downtown from Purcell in 1929. We’ve always felt strong ties to downtown and, as other jewelers left, we expanded and sustained a good business here.”
Jim Clark, president, recalls a time when B.C. Clark Jewelers competed against more than 15 other downtown jewelers. All left when the heart of the downtown retail district, Main Street, was gutted by the Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority for a shopping mall that was never built.
“I can’t remember a more exciting time downtown than right now,” said Jim Clark, who has worked with the downtown store for 40 years. “When I first arrived in the 1960s, downtown was already on a downward path ... but I don’t think there has ever been a single time when we entertained the notion of leaving.”
Jim Clark said his sons, Coleman and Mitchell, were interested in expanding the downtown store - and jumped on the opportunity to lease up the east half of the first floor of the 101 Park Avenue Building when the space became available.
The expansion, which began this week, will add 30 percent more display space. Once complete, the current store space on the west side of the building’s first floor will be converted into B.C. Clark’s corporate offices, which are in the building’s Conncourse level.
The Conncourse space will then be used for storage.
“Our new downtown store will be state of the art with a totally new layout and design,” Jim Clark said. “We’ll have outside light from windows on the north, east and south sides of the new store, and a wonderful view of Kerr Park and all the new and exciting changes taking place across Broadway at the Skirvin Hilton.”
B.C. Clark Jr., chairman emeritus, expects the expansion will draw visitors from the Skirvin Hilton, which will reopen next February after being closed for 18 years.
“Back when the Skirvin was real active, and we had all the conventions with bankers and lawyers, the people would come in a lot - especially the women,” B.C. Clark said.
B.C. Clark Jr., 93, said he’s happy his son and grandsons share his enthusiasm for downtown. Staying, he said, wasn’t always so easy. He said people underestimated the downtown store’s ties to nearby businesses and to out-of-towners who prefer to shop in the heart of the city.
“This last year was my 75th working at the downtown store,” B.C. Clark Jr. said. “I’ve seen a lot of things - the Depression, the dust bowl days, the oil boom and bust, the stock market up and down. The thing that has kept us in business has always been our wonderful friends, customers and employees.”
B.C. Clark Jr. said he’s happy with downtown’s renaissance - but it still doesn’t compare to downtown in the late 1920s when his dad B.C. Clark first opened for business in Oklahoma City near Robinson and Harvey.
“That was the busiest corner in town,” B.C. Clark Jr. said. “As a kid, that’s where I started working. I ran a lot errands, and the foot traffic was so heavy in that area, we’d go down alleys to get where we were going.”
Both Chuck Wiggin, who manages the 101 Park Avenue Building, and Dave Lopez, president of Downtown Oklahoma City Inc., think the jewelers’ expansion will spur more downtown retail. Wiggin said with the expansion, B.C. Clark will occupy 12,600 square feet.
“That’s quite a commitment and shows just how much B.C. Clark believes in the future of downtown,” Wiggin said.
Lopez said the expansion coincides with new owners of the First National Center considering how to expand retail activity in their first floor arcade. That strip along the south side of Park Avenue, is already home to a Hallmark store, coffee shop and an office supply store.
Lopez also thinks proximity of Park Avenue to the Skirvin Hilton, Colcord Hotel, Renaissance Hotel and Sheraton Hotel will provide an opportunity for retailers hoping to lure in out-of-town visitors.
“The expansion of B.C. Clark to a location across from the Skirvin will give us more visibility for retail - and we have a company here with a century of history that is increasing their investment downtown,” Lopez said. “That should say a lot to other retailers.”
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