Urban Renewal in OKC vs other cities

[Pete]

But the big difference in Oklahoma City, is that we have relatively been one of the most demo happy cities over the years and still have not replaced a significant portion of what we've torn down.

I know everyone has grown to accept this perspective as fact, and I did too for a long time -- but no longer.

I think OKC was typical of what other U.S. cities did at the same time for the same reasons. The forces acting on central cities were universal in America: The emergence of the car, cheap gas, government built roads and freeways, affordable mortgages, car companies buying and scrapping the streetcars, incentives to build housing tracts, forced integration, billions in federal urban renewal dollars, etc., etc.

I've researched lots of American cities and they all have the same sort of experiences in the 50's, 60's and 70's. People like to forget that even New York was in terrible shape for a long period of time. I can personally attest to hundreds of urban renewal atrocities in Los Angeles and Milwaukee, the two cities I know best apart from Oklahoma City.

I could give examples but the point is that Stage Center being demolished -- in my very humble opinion -- has absolutely nothing to with OKC's past or even a lack of appreciation of art and architecture.

It was a very unique structure, with unique problems in a very, very desirable location in the middle of a downtown that is suddenly booming.

I get that we are all very gun-shy about any demolition but there will continue to be times when it is the right course of action, and the past (which I believe is often misunderstood) shouldn't unnecessarily cloud those decisions.

[BDP]

I know everyone has grown to accept this perspective as fact, and I did too for a long time -- but no longer.

I think OKC was typical of what other U.S. cities did at the same time for the same reasons. The forces acting on central cities were universal in America: The emergence of the car, cheap gas, government built roads and freeways, affordable mortgages, car companies buying and scrapping the streetcars, incentives to build housing tracts, forced integration, billions in federal urban renewal dollars, etc., etc.

I've researched lots of American cities and they all have the same sort of experiences in the 50's, 60's and 70's. People like to forget that even New York was in terrible shape for a long period of time. I can personally attest to hundreds of urban renewal atrocities in Los Angeles and Milwaukee, the two cities I know best apart from Oklahoma City.

I could give examples but the point is that Stage Center being demolished -- in my very humble opinion -- has absolutely nothing to with OKC's past or even a lack of appreciation of art and architecture.

It was a very unique structure, with unique problems in a very, very desirable location in the middle of a downtown that is suddenly booming.

I get that we are all very gun-shy about any demolition but there will continue to be times when it is the right course of action, and the past (which I believe is often misunderstood) shouldn't unnecessarily cloud those decisions.

LA for sure and they still do it too. But a lot of those cities have recovered from their urban renewal mistakes. LA has even done a lot to reverse it. I can bring up examples as well of bizarre trades its made in development, but it is essentially contiguous development from downtown to Santa Monica with very few blank spots. If they want anything new, they pretty much HAVE to tear something down or I guess figure out a way to put a super target on a very steep hill. Williams could do this within a couple of blocks without tearing anything down. He could probably do it 10 times without tearing anything down.

And I have to disagree that it has nothing to do with what OKC does and does not appreciate as a whole. If this was a super isolated event taking place in a moment in time in a city center already packed with development, I'd have to agree. But this is simply typical for development in Oklahoma City, which has a lot of still undeveloped land in the center of its core. It is part of a broader approach to development that does in fact reflect the culture's level of appreciation of art and, even more so, architecture and its relationship to a community's history. The recent arguments made for demolition requests combined with our decades long love affair with demolition despite the existence of so much under developed land directly support that.

I could buy it if it hadn't been repeated so many times before this. Between this and the India Temple, it really just shows that nothing has changed and there's really no reason to think it won't happen again. The reason these things don't get saved is because they aren't worth saving in Oklahoma City. That is a statement on what the market values here, which is in turn a reflection of the culture. Is this the "last time" until there is an actual shortage of under developed land? I doubt it. There certainly isn't any reason to believe that at this point.

I'm enjoying the boom for sure, but there have been a lot of deja vu moments along the way that make you at least have to consider the possibility that we're repeating some mistakes.

[betts]

Agree BDP.

[Pete]

I worked in downtown LA from the early 90's until 2002 and it was not recovered. Almost no housing, lots of retail had failed (including a mall), other failed redevelopment projects, and tons of office vacancy, the Staples Center area was nothing but surface parking lots. And this in the second largest MSA in the entire U.S.

You could connect multiple demolitions in any city -- they still happen everywhere, not just OKC -- and call it a pattern, typical and repeated.


And really the motivation to clear things out in the past (government removing blight with vague hopes for future development) is the absolute opposite of why this happens now on a very limited scale: Developers buying properties in the free market to invest in them.

I really don't see the correlation.

[Pete]

I believe this was shared a while back, and it graphically illustrates my point about most other American still having huge holes in their urban cores.

It was a bracket competition to see which U.S. city has the worst parking crater. 16 cities were nominated (OKC wasn't one of them) and Tulsa was the runaway winner, "beating" Milwaukee in the finals.

Parking Madness | Streetsblog Capitol Hill


This is a section of Cleveland:

[Spartan]

Yeah, the Warehouse District is pretty bad... the tough dynamic at work in that photo is it's a district very similar to Bricktown, so the extremely heavy bar and entertainment crowds at night have put additional parking stresses on the district. There is a big development that died in 2008 that is coming back that might take all that parking away, though, hopefully.



The one surface lot left at the bottom of the vantage point, between the WHD and Public Square, was a site that AmeriTrust tragically cleared for a new downtown skyscraper right before they went bankrupt in the 2000 recession. I'm afraid that similarly, an OG+E Tower may not get built for whatever reason, least of which that Rainey Williams does NOT inspire a great deal of confidence in his development capacity.

[adaniel]

I can only speak for the larger cities I've lived in (Dallas, Atlanta), but demo happy urban renewal programs are not unique to OKC.

Dallas itself is an interesting story because it saw its economy crash about the same time ours did in the mid 80s. And there are still several major holes in their CBD, and at least one major office building that has been completely mothballed. As you are zooming by DT Dallas on I-35 it looks quite compact but if you drive in there, there is really only density along Commerce Ave. I would argue tit for tat OKC's CBD feels far more dense. Uptown Dallas has been developing nicely since the 90's, but the only large structures built in the actual CBD were the Hunt Oil HQ and Museum Tower, both completed only in the past 6 years or so.

I also tend to think its a sunbelt thing. A lot of cities already had impressive skylines before OKC was even conceived. We are simply too new to have a huge stock of older buildings to begin with, so when one or two goes down its a much bigger deal here.

[bchris02]

I also tend to think its a sunbelt thing. A lot of cities already had impressive skylines before OKC was even conceived. We are simply too new to have a huge stock of older buildings to begin with, so when one or two goes down its a much bigger deal here.

OKC destroyed many of its treasures but compared to a lot of Sunbelt cities, there is still quite a bit of historical building stock left. I think comparison with Tulsa is one of the bigger things that make OKC look bad in this area. Tulsa retained most of their architectural trasures and it is paying off for them today. Compared to other cities in other states though, what happened in OKC was hardly the worst. I think the travesty in OKC is WHAT was destroyed (Baum building, Criterion, Biltmore Hotel) rather than how much was destroyed.

[Pete]

Tulsa cleared as least as much as OKC and has done a slower/poorer job of refilling the holes.

Just take a look at an aerial of downtown Tulsa. They demolished 9 full blocks through urban renewal:

http://www.tulsagal.net/2010/03/urba...t-we-lost.html


Seriously, this whole way of thinking is so myopic. We all just care more about OKC, know much more about it than anywhere else, and thus not aware that there are groups in every city that wring their hands over the great buildings they have lost, all the while wondering, "Won't we EVER learn??"

[TAlan CB]

Seriously, this whole way of thinking is so myopic. We all just care more about OKC, know much more about it than anywhere else, and thus not aware that there are groups in every city that wring their hands over the great buildings they have lost, all the while wondering, "Won't we EVER learn??"[/QUOTE]

Perhaps this is true, I can't be certain that it is not. But, when I was working on my master thesis urban design project centered in downtown OKC, I did significant research on what was done (and planned) and the result. Talking to urban renewal authorities and planners, OKC was repeatedly cited as a "worst case scenario" as to how much was removed - and never replaced. Basically, a perfect storm of increasingly larger projects - and the collapse of federal funding for 'rebuilding'.

Even the Myriad Gardens was part of this, the reconstruction of the grounds as a gardens was paid for more than 75% by federal funds. These funds never included maintenance - which were to be provided by a multi-venue project with adjacent shopping - never built. There was even a plan for a 10-15 story hotel on the grounds next to the Cox center (northeast corner) with a slope design that took it to the base of the lower pond. The model of this project use to hang in the maintenance room in the lower section of Crystal Bridge - actually the rooms under the patio. This is why the eastern side of the Myriad Gardens was last to be finished - they were waiting for the hotel. The parking garage located where the Devon tower stands, was built with heavy duty pillars to bear the weight of the mall that was to be built atop the garage. There was a tunnel that led to this garage from the Crystal Bridge and a large concourse tunnel junction under the road with a side tunnel leading to the hotel never built. This tunnel had only a entrance since the hotel was never built. Old construction models grew mold in this large space for projects never finished. There was a pair of escalators built to the glass building that use to sit on the garage from this underground room. A heavy rain flooded down the escalators and flooded the room - soaking and ruining the already laid wall-to-wall carpets in this large empty concourse junction. It was a disquieting place of unfulfilled promises.

[soonerguru]

Tulsa cleared as least as much as OKC and has done a slower/poorer job of refilling the holes.

Just take a look at an aerial of downtown Tulsa. They demolished 9 full blocks through urban renewal:

Tulsa Gal: Urban Renewal - What We Lost


Seriously, this whole way of thinking is so myopic. We all just care more about OKC, know much more about it than anywhere else, and thus not aware that there are groups in every city that wring their hands over the great buildings they have lost, all the while wondering, "Won't we EVER learn??"

OKC's downtown at one time stretched as far west as Pennsylvania Ave. I understand what you're saying, but OKC destroyed approximately 1000 buildings, leaving vacant wreckage in its path. No need to minimize the catastrophic damage Urban Renewal afflicted upon this city.

[Pete]

OKC's downtown at one time stretched as far west as Pennsylvania Ave. I understand what you're saying, but OKC destroyed approximately 1000 buildings, leaving vacant wreckage in its path. No need to minimize the catastrophic damage Urban Renewal afflicted upon this city.

No one is minimizing, just trying to provide much needed perspective.

[Pete]

I moved this discussion from Stage Center Tower to it's own thread, as it's an interesting topic.

[tomokc]

Not all buildings were treasures worth fighting for, nor even some entire blocks. These areas were targeted by OCURA because of their blight, low occupancy, low owner investment and maintenance, attractiveness to criminals and vagrants, and they were unable to attract investment by others.

Yes, OCURA and others were overly-aggressive in some cases, but without the clearing the path for RENEWAL, it never would have happened. You wouldn't have Midtown because of the blighted band separating it from the CBD, and the same to the west at SOSA. Deep Deuce would still have residents sitting on the front stoops of decrepit houses. John Rex Elementary is being built on what was Skid Row. In the 1980s the only thing happening downtown was panhandling, day and night (on weekends I'd walk up from the Galleria parking garage into its glass stairwell enclosures, and have to step through groups of passed out homeless people). Businesses were fleeing downtown.

It's a crazy hypothetical question but perhaps one worth asking: If you could go back and either prevent or allow what OCURA did, what would you do? I'd allow it. Imperfect as it was, it allowed us to have the city we have so much pride in today.

[Pete]

Also remember that a huge amount of the clearing had nothing to do with a formal, government-backed renewal program.

I posted the following thread to show the dense and active nature of Midtown and the west downtown area as late as 1969, then contrasted to a current aerial:

http://www.okctalk.com/general-real-...vs-2013-a.html


What you see is that in the 70's those areas were largely abandoned and then subsequently -- one by one -- most the homes and small structures were cleared.

And they were cleared by individual owners because they had become dilapidated to the point of being unsafe.


Thus, the massive holes that are just now being filled in Midtown and most other areas outside the core central business district were not due to the Pei Plan, City leadership or anything other than the fact people just left.

[Pete]

Here is a list of the first round of projects completed by the OKC Urban Renewal Authority prior to 1999.

Almost all were finished by the 70's and early 80's.

Really, the only large project that went unrealized was the Galleria mall, but even in that case the developer did build Oklahoma and Corporate Towers and lots of structured parking was added as well.

Chase Building
BOK Building
Sycamore Square
Century Center
Myriad Gardens
Stage Center
Leadership Square
First Oklahoma Tower
Corporate Tower
Myriad Convention Center
Center for Healthy Living
Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics
Oklahoma Blood Institute
Twin-Deck Galleria Parking Garage

[mkjeeves]

Another city, another story:

( Noteworthy in the story is the buildings demolished in Lower Manhattan were considered "architecturally insignificant" unlike Stage Center)

The Destruction of Lower Manhattan

The Destruction of Lower Manhattan / Blog: paper + people / Cunningham Center / Collections / Smith College Museum of Art - Smith College Museum of Art

More of the photos:

Magnum Photos

[Spartan]

The point isn't that we had urban renewal worse so we're more prone to demolish buildings. The point is that every city did urban renewal and everyone but us seems to regret it and has moved beyond the demolition craze. We are demolishing buildings and structures so fast, all across downtown, that one has to wonder if it is 2014 or 1970 all over again.

Context is important and every city is important. Here in Cleveland we are doing the best we can to preserve a city that is drastically overbuilt, down from a peak population of 1 million to a new low of 400,000 in the central city. Exacerbating this issue is the fact that the suburbs (Cleveland-Akron metro has 3.5 million, and 0% growth for the last 40-50 years, so at least it's stable) have been over-building and poaching resources, assets, and attractions away from the central city.

OKC doesn't have that. OKC is the central city and it's captured most of the population growth at the same time. Even the inner city population is growing fast, not shrinking. So we shouldn't be "rightsizing." Furthermore, newcomers and visitors say OKC is bland, sterile, and devoid of interest (we all disagree with that, but the perception is what it is). So we certainly don't have an over-abundance of architecturally interesting structures.

So it seems that what we do have an abundance of are developers circling around new opportunities for land speculation and quick-and-easy land assembly to enhance the ease of doing lame, unimaginative development. What we have a shortage of are people willing to speak up against demolition. Gigi Faulkner, looking at you.

[Pete]

The point isn't that we had urban renewal worse so we're more prone to demolish buildings. The point is that every city did urban renewal and everyone but us seems to regret it and has moved beyond the demolition craze. We are demolishing buildings and structures so fast, all across downtown, that one has to wonder if it is 2014 or 1970 all over again.

Again, I challenge this assumption... And point out while you are saying history has nothing to do with it, you then immediately make a comparison to 1970.


It seems impossible to consider any demolition in this town without people channeling the ghost of I.M Pei.

I know it *feels* like we are demolishing a lot of buildings but I can also Google Tulsa or virtually any other city and find they have recently demolished their fair share, too. It happens in L.A. all the bloody time.


I have come to believe that we all have bought into our own rhetoric, which continues to be presented as proven fact: "We did much more damage to our core than other cities! We still have much bigger urban holes! We continue to demolish at a faster rate! As a community, time and time again we have proven we don't value history or architecture!"

I'm not trying to be argumentative I am merely putting forth the idea that what OKC did and continues to do was/is pretty typical of other cities. And I've come to this conclusion by objective study and comparison over the last five years or so because I found myself advancing these same ideas and realized I was just repeating what I had been told by others, and it really didn't match what I was learning when looking at the history of other communities.

Just as someone can cite anecdotal examples of other cities embracing their historical buildings, I could quickly list 30 in OKC that have recently been remodeled to very high standards.


This is my challenge: Objectively PROVE that OKC cleared more blocks than most other U.S. cities, that we have taken longer to fill holes, and that we continue to demolish buildings at an abnormal rate.

Otherwise, perhaps we should stop beating this drum, because it comes up every single time a building is considered for demolition and I'm not convinced the points being made are even correct, let alone relevant.


And BTW, I am very much a preservationist at heart. However, there will always be times when demolition is the correct course of action, and when that decision has to be made, we always want to punish people for the perceived sins of the past.


I say all of this with the utmost respect for those who have a contrary opinion and for all the wonderful buildings we have lost. I am merely trying to make people think about what has been repeated on this subject ad nauseum, and largely with any objective support or context.

[BG918]

The Urban Renewal period in Tulsa was bad but at least it was mostly infilled with newer buildings i.e the PAC and Williams/BOK Tower. What TCC and other property owners in the south part of downtown did in the 80's and early 90's is really egregious, and on the same scale as the Urban Renewal period in OKC a couple decades earlier. Aerial of the area before they tore down all of the older buildings around TCC, most of which are still parking lots:

[Pete]

OKC pretty quickly saw the construction of Liberty (Chase) Tower, the Kerr McGee (SandRidge) building, Fidelity (BOK) Plaza, the Century Center & Sheraton, The Myriad (Cox Center) and the Myriad Gardens. Then not long after, One & Two Galleria (Oklahoma and Corporate Tower) and Leadership Square. There was a lot of work done towards the Galleria Mall, too, and it's almost certainly a good thing it never was built.

Things were moving along pretty well until the oil bust of the early 80's and it took a long time -- and MAPS -- for the momentum to pick up again.

[Spartan]

Again, I challenge this assumption... And point out while you are saying history has nothing to do with it, you then immediately make a comparison to 1970.


It seems impossible to consider any demolition in this town without people channeling the ghost of I.M Pei.

I know it *feels* like we are demolishing a lot of buildings but I can also Google Tulsa or virtually any other city and find they have recently demolished their fair share, too. It happens in L.A. all the bloody time.


I have come to believe that we all have bought into our own rhetoric, which continues to be presented as proven fact: "We did much more damage to our core than other cities! We still have much bigger urban holes! We continue to demolish at a faster rate! As a community, time and time again we have proven we don't value history or architecture!"

I'm not trying to be argumentative I am merely putting forth the idea that what OKC did and continues to do was/is pretty typical of other cities. And I've come to this conclusion by objective study and comparison over the last five years or so because I found myself advancing these same ideas and realized I was just repeating what I had been told by others, and it really didn't match what I was learning when looking at the history of other communities.

Just as someone can cite anecdotal examples of other cities embracing their historical buildings, I could quickly list 30 in OKC that have recently been remodeled to very high standards.


This is my challenge: Objectively PROVE that OKC cleared more blocks than most other U.S. cities, that we have taken longer to fill holes, and that we continue to demolish buildings at an abnormal rate.

Otherwise, perhaps we should stop beating this drum, because it comes up every single time a building is considered for demolition and I'm not convinced the points being made are even correct, let alone relevant.


And BTW, I am very much a preservationist at heart. However, there will always be times when demolition is the correct course of action, and when that decision has to be made, we always want to punish people for the perceived sins of the past.


I say all of this with the utmost respect for those who have a contrary opinion and for all the wonderful buildings we have lost. I am merely trying to make people think about what has been repeated on this subject ad nauseum, and largely with any objective support or context.

Pete, you missed my point. OKC is demolishing buildings at a rate that is comparable to the 1970s and that is a point completely independent of other cities. I made the case that I agree with you that other cities really did do urban renewal just the same. It was this way because HUD was investing massive amounts of money into urban renewal done a certain way.

I agree with you that all of these impassioned arguments sold as fact predicated on soft evidence is getting to be too much. However HUD's involvement is a fact, just as how they ended it, hence why other cities have stopped with concerted demolition initiatives called urban renewal. OKC is doing it just the same because we are unimaginative and fear change.

Our city council is continuing (to the fullest extent possible that they can perpetrate on their younger constituencies) the exact same development trends that were indicative of the 1970s because of the incentives of the 1970s. Except they're doing it without those lucrative incentives because they are literally just dumber than dirt and fear major change.

As for the rest of your argument, there really are differences with downtown OKC. Just as there really is a lot more development in OKC than is typical for cities in our tier, there really was very little development before 2007. We were so far behind in 1993 it was sad.

[bchris02]

First, I don't think OKC's urban renewal was much worse than what was done in many other cities, especially in the Southern United States. Charlotte in particular was bad, destroying most of their building stock and replacing it with surface parking or just grass lots. However, a few things went wrong in OKC that didn't in other cities that created the perception of urban renewal being catastrophic to this city.

First, OKC's greatest treasures were destroyed. The Criterion Theatre, the Baum building, and the Biltmore Hotel among others. If the urban renewal had occurred on the other side of the tracks - where Bricktown is now, there would probably be far less that would be missed. Second, the 1980s and 90s were an era of economic depression in OKC. That same era saw a booming economic for the broader United States. That economic boom, which OKC for the most part missed out on, allowed other cities to recover from urban renewal at a much faster rate than OKC was able to. Charlotte for instance was where OKC is today by the mid-90s due to their booming economy. Lastly, I think comparisons to Tulsa has historically (and still does) sometimes make OKC look worse than it really is simply because they are significantly smaller yet still seem to outdo us in many areas. Yes, they may have also had significant urban renewal and demolition, but a simple look at the skyline will immediately tell you that even at the surface, they preserved more of their history than OKC did. Even if OKC compares well against its true peers in other states, if it compares unfavorably to Tulsa that isn't good for our perception.

The point isn't that we had urban renewal worse so we're more prone to demolish buildings. The point is that every city did urban renewal and everyone but us seems to regret it and has moved beyond the demolition craze. We are demolishing buildings and structures so fast, all across downtown, that one has to wonder if it is 2014 or 1970 all over again.

Not so. Little Rock is still demolishing structures in the manner OKC did in the 1970s. Other than the Stage Center, what has OKC demolished or considered demolishing recently that could be compared with the Criterion Theatre, Baum Building, etc?

[Spartan]

KerMac, India Temple (former state capital obscured beneath a false facade), Hale Photo Bldg (an iconic south beach Art Deco that just take a fake development pitch to clear), Bricktown bldgs cleared overnight by the Brewers w no permit, the Film Exchange Building because Hargreaves told us to, and so on.

[Spartan]

And by the way Pete, why are you getting so defensive lately about our lack of standards? If you thought P180 was bad you should look at Hargreaves' plan for the Central Park or what's going on in the Planning Dept.

Things are getting bad and we're sweeping everything under the rug because the price of oil is high so there is development moving forward, which makes everyone feel good. When energy tanks again this development will stop and we will wonder why we didn't make as much progress as we could've.