Dowell Center

[Just the facts]

Except we overlook things like that all the time..

That was the point - we need to stop over-looking it. A proverbial New Sheriff is in town. Downtown is no longer just the wider communities backyard (as Steve likes to say), it has become its own neighborhood with its own locals.

[bombermwc]

I agree with JTF on the timeline. Excuse after excuse to delay. That's the age old story with developers..."well this thing came up and now it's going to take longer". Sometimes i feel like there should be a city-imposed window on construction. If they don't meet it, then fine them. That long-term construction impacts people all around the site on a daily basis and it's been far too long now....much like Sandridge.

I can understand some delays....any construction project has them. So don't construe it as a short window, but now this many YEARS later...come on. If city money is involved here, then either the loan needs to have been paid back already, or there needs to be a consquence. And we shouldn't be stuck with an incomplete building because of it either. At least the outside should HAVE to be finished. Even if that means the developer has to take out other loans to do it.

[Pete]

I sent an email to the local Brownfields coordinator to inquire about the terms of that City loan.

You would have to believe there were stipulations, such as having the work done by a certain date, having the building open, etc.

I'll post what I find out.

[Spartan]

That was the point - we need to stop over-looking it. A proverbial New Sheriff is in town. Downtown is no longer just the wider communities backyard (as Steve likes to say), it has become its own neighborhood with its own locals.

Except there is not a new sheriff in town lol...

[Pete]

Just received this excellent and thorough reply from Chris Vargas, the Brownfields Coordinator for OKC.

In a follow-up email, Chris explained that the first three years of the loans are interest-only, with payments made annually after the money is loaned. In the fourth year, the loan converts to fully-amortized principal & interest and is repaid in four years.

Dowell is already making P&I payments on the first loan but is still in the interest-only phase of the second.



********************

The asbestos abatement at the Dowell building located at 134 Robert S. Kerr started in July 2007 and was completed in January 2011, with a total cost of $2,263,856.93. The funding came from three sources:

· The first was a Brownfields Loan executed on February 27th, 2007 in the amount of $955,976. The loan amount was increased to $1,000,000 in February 2008, then to $1,308,667 in October 2008. In March 2013 the loan agreement was amended to extend the payment terms to March 2017.

· A second Brownfields loan in the amount of $429,440 was executed in July 2010 with payment terms through July 2017.

· Mr. Dowell provided a funding match in the amount of $525,750 paid between 2007 and 2011.


Mr. Dowell’s loans are current and being repaid as agreed. The information submitted by Mr. Dowell during the loan process indicates an intention to fully lease the building by 2020.

Brownfield loans are typically at 2% interest with a 3-year interest-only period to allow for cleanup and redevelopment before the principle payments become due. The loan money can only be used for environmental abatement. A schedule of abatement is included in the loan application and may be referenced in the loan documents, although delays are not uncommon. Although a goal of the program is to support redevelopment, there are no mandated timelines for building occupancy due to due to complexities of redevelopment that extend beyond environmental cleanup.

[Just the facts]

Thanks Pete. So he has until 2020 to lease it out.

[Pete]

Thanks Pete. So he has until 2020 to lease it out.

No, that's just what he said in his application.

There is nothing in the loan agreements that require the building even be open for business, ever. Just has to repay the borrowed money.

[Just the facts]

You're right again. He said he only intends to lease it out by then. So really we might have given him a low interst loan for nothing. Any idea how many of the types of loans we have been handing out?

[Pete]

Well, it wasn't for nothing. The asbestos did get removed.

My point all the way along is Dowell now needs to get this building open for business.

It actually makes me feel better to know he has $1.5 million in loans he has to repay over the next several years, because that will be a good motivator to actually start leasing some of it out. Or sell it for a profit.

[bombermwc]

Very true. That's part of the "fun" of re-habbing a building, so you have to know you're going to have to do these things going in. It's unfortunate that it's taking this long to get moving, so the danger here is that he wont have it ready for tenants before he runs out of money. He files bankrupcty and we're left with an incomplete project. The bank sells to some cheap buyer (like the FNC) and we get strung along for another 10 years before anything is done.

[soonerguru]

How is it that the property taxes on a 19 story office building is only 2X as much as the property taxes on my house (even if we are on the same size lot)?

Because you live in Florida, where property taxes suck?

[soonerguru]

WOW what a great photo... but LMAO at how prominent Legacy is there...

Legacy is such a total abortion.

[bluedogok]

Because you live in Florida, where property taxes suck?

About the same way in Taxes.....I mean Texas.

[dankrutka]

Legacy is such a total abortion.

Legacy is pretty crappy, but if someone could at least do the retail better (start with the awnings) it would help. Considering where urban expectations were when it was built, it could have been worse. Maybe I'm wrong, but it probably would have been easy to plop a surburban style complex down there. At least it has an urban design, even if the materials and execution were lacking. Are there any other improvements that could be made to make Legacy salvageable?

[Just the facts]

Because you live in Florida, where property taxes suck?

About the same way in Taxes.....I mean Texas.

You know, here is the thing, it is cheaper for OKC property owners to sit on abandoned property and let simple inflation raise the value of their property than it is for them to put that property to work. Between my neighbor's single family home and mine, we pay more property taxes than a 19 story 184,426 square foot office building in downtown Oklahoma city. If people in OKC want to solve this problem guess what - property taxes are going to have to go up. It should simply be to expensive to do NOTHING with urban property. In this case Dowell should be going deeper in the red everyday someone isn't renting space from him. Open it, or sell it to someone who will.

Also, the city needs to start putting some stipulations in these loans that require the building to be open by a certain date. If Dowell can take out the loans and afford to not open the building until after the loans are repaid he didn't need the loans to begin with.

[kevinpate]

(fauxnews9 ) Tonight at 10 pm, here how OKCTalker JTF advocates significant property tax increases for Oklahoma businessmen. Then stayed Tune as David Payne tells us how an unexpected cold front is bringing a surprise blizzard to Hell

[Just the facts]

LOL Kevin. However, if anyone else has any ideas how to get these underperforming properties going again I am all ears.

[kevinpate]

I imagine a dangling carrot incentive approach would be more effective than a whack with a stick on the wallet approach. Carrot needs to be big enough to spur forward motion by a reluctant critter.

[Rover]

In nature, when equilibrium exists and there is no motion, a slight increase in pressure on one side, accompanied with a slight decrease in pressure on the other is enough to create movement. Large tax increases won't pass. Large incentives won't pass. But small changes to both at the same time, along with a greasing of the channel (more efficient processes, shorter action deadlines, etc.) should be enough to gain momentum. Small changes to each should be much easier to pass.

[Urbanized]

...Are there any other improvements that could be made to make Legacy salvageable?

I think that doing away with the awnings and using a paint scheme that breaks up and de-emphasizes the large expanses of EIFS would immediately make Legacy fairly palatable, overall. As has been discussed, I actually believe it is far from the worst layout. It is pretty urban in nature, and the biggest legitimate complaints you can make against it relate to materials and finish.

You can't do much about the roof, but I was looking at the skyline photo above the other day, and simply envisioning the building with a paint color closer to the brick (more of a putty rather than stark off-white) made it far more decent to look at, at least in my mind's eye. Breaking it up even further with a slightly decorative paint scheme would be even better.

[Spartan]

I think that doing away with the awnings and using a paint scheme that breaks up and de-emphasizes the large expanses of EIFS would immediately make Legacy fairly palatable, overall. As has been discussed, I actually believe it is far from the worst layout. It is pretty urban in nature, and the biggest legitimate complaints you can make against it relate to materials and finish.

You can't do much about the roof, but I was looking at the skyline photo above the other day, and simply envisioning the building with a paint color closer to the brick (more of a putty rather than stark off-white) made it far more decent to look at, at least in my mind's eye. Breaking it up even further with a slightly decorative paint scheme would be even better.

I agree on a reddish-brown paint job, but I think breaking it up would either look garish or over-emphasize the pre-fab facade.

[Urbanized]

To quote my friend Ron Frantz: "don't faint, it's only paint."

[bluedogok]

You know, here is the thing, it is cheaper for OKC property owners to sit on abandoned property and let simple inflation raise the value of their property than it is for them to put that property to work. Between my neighbor's single family home and mine, we pay more property taxes than a 19 story 184,426 square foot office building in downtown Oklahoma city. If people in OKC want to solve this problem guess what - property taxes are going to have to go up. It should simply be to expensive to do NOTHING with urban property. In this case Dowell should be going deeper in the red everyday someone isn't renting space from him. Open it, or sell it to someone who will.

Also, the city needs to start putting some stipulations in these loans that require the building to be open by a certain date. If Dowell can take out the loans and afford to not open the building until after the loans are repaid he didn't need the loans to begin with.

In Texas the difference between property taxes on "improved property" and "unimproved property" warrants demolition of many buildings that are ripe for renovation. If that was the case in OKC there would have been very few buildings left in Bricktown, Automobile Alley, Film Row, etc. to be redone, just parking lots. There was a Texas Architect magazine article back when I was working at an architecture firm in Downtown Dallas (91-93) and it stated that something like 55% of the property at that time in the Dallas CBD was parking lots, not parking structures but surface parking lots. The article alluded to the fact that it was cheaper to take it down and pave it than pay the property tax on an abandoned building. I could look out of our 27th floor window in the Arts District and see a veritable sea of surface parking. The lot across the street still had flooring from the 2-3 story buildings that used to be on that property. The revenue from parking couldn't pay for demolition and new paving but it could from the property tax abatement from an "improved property" to an "unimproved property" rather quickly given the property tax rates in the cities in Texas. Now in the twenty years since the downtown market has rebounded many of those lots have been developed but it took twenty years for those properties to rebound from the oil and real estate busts that happened in the 80's in Dallas.

[Just the facts]

In Texas the difference between property taxes on "improved property" and "unimproved property" warrants demolition of many buildings that are ripe for renovation. If that was the case in OKC there would have been very few buildings left in Bricktown, Automobile Alley, Film Row, etc. to be redone, just parking lots.

That is easy to fix - just invert the tax structure. Unimproved lot pays the highest tax. Parking lots pay the next highest tax. In fact, maybe we could tax by use/density with mixed use getting a multiplier less than 1 to encourage more of it. Of course, this kind of tax structure would have to be restricted to certain districts because I would just as soon land at the suburban fringe stay undeveloped.

[soonerguru]

That is easy to fix - just invert the tax structure. Unimproved lot pays the highest tax. Parking lots pay the next highest tax. In fact, maybe we could tax by use/density with mixed use getting a multiplier less than 1 to encourage more of it. Of course, this kind of tax structure would have to be restricted to certain districts because I would just as soon land at the suburban fringe stay undeveloped.

Without considering all of the ramifications (and after a few beers), this seems like a good idea on the surface.