The 1980s and 1990s in OKC

[bchris02]

The decade leading up to the passage of MAPS were not good times for the metro. The economic hardships of that time period turned OKC into a city that a lot of people didn't want to live in and one that was far behind its peers by virtually every quality of life metric. There are numerous things that must enter the conversation such as the Pei Plan, suburban flight, the oil crash, Penn Square Bank, brain drain, or a combination of all of it. Interestingly enough though, the city never saw a sustained period of population decline like many rust belt cities did. The city posted a few years of a decline but even the decade of the 1980s saw population growth. Unemployment throughout the 1990s was very low especially considering the perception that those weren't great days for this city.

So my question is, what caused the situation in OKC to become so dire by 1990? Was the entire thing economic or did the failed urban renewal aspiration play a significant part? Most of the focus on OKCTalk is centered around downtown which was obviously dead in 1990 but how was suburban life in OKC during that period? Lets remember that 1990 was exactly a shining time in history for many of America's urban areas.

As for brain drain, was it primarily because there were no jobs here or was it because college graduates wanted to live elsewhere if possible?

Is this perfect storm something that could happen again? If so, what can/should OKC do to prevent history from repeating itself?

[Plutonic Panda]

I drove through Memphis and couldn't believe how much the Fed Ex impact made. If we would have landed that here, that would have been huge

[Pete]

Right, the late 80's and early 90's were kind of the in between times for most American urban areas; stuck between largely failed urban renewal and the yet-to-happen New Urbanism. I don't think OKC was in any way unique in that respect, apart from the cities where the urban core had always been strong or particularly dire.

I really think the most tragic part of OKC's urban core at this time was Midtown. The Pei Plan had nothing to do with this area yet there were dozens and dozens of demolitions and clearings because of abandonment. Remember, even Plaza Court was shuttered for a long time. Absolutely nothing happening in that area at all; it's shocking to think about.

As far as the CBD, there was quite a bit happening in terms of new things: Oklahoma Tower, Corporate Tower and Leadership Square were all opened. And the Myriad Gardens was finally completed.

I actually left OKC in 1989 after graduating college in '82. In between, I worked in OKC in commercial real estate and my office was downtown that entire time.

After the oil bust of the early 80's, there was just no driving force in town. The banks were drying up... Just no catalysts of any sort. But I think this was largely true of the country as a whole; really, the computer age just started to ramp up in the 80's and after that things started to get much more interesting in the U.S. economy and in business in general.

By the time I left in '89, the economy was fine, just not dynamic in any way.

[Pete]

The questions asked in the original post are really good ones, though.

I would add to my previous comments that the fall of the oil industry then the embarrassment of Penn Square Bank certainly did a number on OKC's self esteem.

We had a bit of mojo for a while but it didn't last long. That boom cycle was really only a few years -- nothing like we've been experiencing of late.

I remember that even when I graduated in '82 I had a job offer in commercial real estate (different than the one I ended up taking) jerked because of concerns about the economy and the job market was certainly starting to soften.

As a side note, some of biggest employers of OU business grads in the 70's were First National Bank and Liberty Bank. Both had big management training programs and when I interviewed with both, I recognized pretty much all the younger people they employed. But by '82 both had started to cut their programs and I'm not sure if anyone ever got offers from either that year.

Of course, just a few years later ('85) First National was completely out of business and LIberty didn't last much longer, at least in any meaningful way. But for quite a while, both were monsters in terms of job creation and spreading capital out into the business community. That all went away very fast.

[bchris02]

I lived in OKC for a short time in the 90s on the southside but I never spent much time downtown because there really wasn't a reason to. There were areas downtown that at the time my family didn't feel safe even driving through that today I walk at night by myself thanks to the transformation. There are certain suburban areas I remember that were pretty nice at that time that really aren't so much today, most notably the I-240 corridor and the whole of the Putnam City school district. Crossroads Mall was still completely occupied and very popular. The Northwest Expressway corridor felt very "big city" by 1980s and early 90s standards, at least to me as a suburban child. Of course "big city" means something different in 2014 than it did in the 80s.

That is interesting about Midtown. I didn't realize all the demolitions there were NOT Pei's work. I am really glad to see all the investment happening there to restore it to its former glory. I am guessing that is where the city really fell behind compared to its peers? What about Heritage Hills/Mesta Park? What about Deep Deuce? That is very interesting that there were additions to the CBD even in that bleak period.

The situation in OKC was obviously particularly bad given the reason United Airlines gave for choosing Indianapolis over OKC and hence the need for MAPS. There had to be a reason that educated people wanted to move to DFW or somewhere else as soon as they were able to rather than stay here. It's awesome today to see that trend reversed. There is no way it can be proven but I have seen many people post on OKCTalk that if it wasn't for MAPS, OKC would have never dug itself out of the hole it was in. I guess to repair the damage that was done through Pei and the Midtown demolitions, there had to be a catalyst which there was not pre-MAPS, even if the economy wasn't exactly terrible.

[Jim Kyle]

That is interesting about Midtown. I didn't realize all the demolitions there were NOT Pei's work. I am really glad to see all the investment happening there to restore it to its former glory. I am guessing that is where the city really fell behind compared to its peers? What about Heritage Hills/Mesta Park? What about Deep Deuce? That is very interesting that there were additions to the CBD even in that bleak period.

The Pei Plan's damage was primarily limited to two areas: the CBD, of course, and the Deep Deuce/Northeast quadrant up almost to 23rd street. It's not politically correct to mention this any more, but it's historic fact that in the days of racial segregation, that northeast quadrant -- roughly from Walnut to Eastern (now MLK) and Reno to NE 23 -- was primarily occupied by those of African heritage, and at that time segregation prohibited them from living elsewhere.

It was not, however, entirely a ghetto, although many historic accounts tend to leave that impression. The great majority of residents in that six-to-eight square mile area were in fact middle class, and it was a middle-class community comparable to the heart of Capitol Hill, or to Bethany or Warr Acres. And Urban Renewal totally destroyed it, demolishing the majority of the residences and leaving the area looking more like a war zone than did Seoul, Korea, when I was there during the shooting in 1953!

As for the 80s and 90s, collapse of the oil industry was the biggest thing wrong, but loss of the General Motors assembly plant was a huge kicker as well. Pete mentioned the demise of the two leading banks -- but I don't think that any bank in the city at that time survived. Even the tiny neighborhood banks such as Northwest and Community went under, as did most all the Savings and Loan institutions. When I returned from California in 1962, downtown boasted at least five major banks: First, Liberty, City National, Central National, and I can't recall the name of the fifth one (at the corner of Park and Harvey and reputedly a part of the Bob Kerr empire). By 1990, all of them were gone. Development funding was simply non-existent with the collapse of the area's financial institutions. Those downtown additions almost all took place early in the period, before the disaster took everything down...

[ljbab728]

It's not politically correct to mention this any more, but it's historic fact that in the days of racial segregation, that northeast quadrant -- roughly from Walnut to Eastern (now MLK) and Reno to NE 23 -- was primarily occupied by those of African heritage, and at that time segregation prohibited them from living elsewhere..

I see no problem with political correctness in mentioning that. It's a well accepted historical fact.

[Pete]

The segregation/busing issue is an important one.

I know OKC schools had started to forcibly bus in the late 60's and early 70's and that had a profound effect on the central core.

Whereas before schools like Northwest Classen and John Marshall were considered desirable by the upper middle class, that all changed with busing and a tremendous amount of families moved further out. This was the time Putnam City schools became such a big thing.

So, by the 80's, the perception of OKC schools was generally poor which only further fueled flight to the outskirts, including Moore, Mid/Del and for the first time, Edmond (very strongly fueled by the Kilpatrick Turnpike).

By that time, everything but the CBD was rotting in the central core and there was no interest in urbansim. And of course, even in the CBD, all the new office construction did was take tenants from existing buildings and there wasn't much economic growth to fill in the vacancy. It started the long slow slide of anything built earlier than 1975. We are still trying to resuscitate many of those buildings.

[Urbanized]

It also is responsible for a lot of the huge development gaps in the suburban fabric. Developers would ignore large parcels of raw land that were within the OKC district and instead develop a mile or two further down the road where the land fell into another district's boundaries. Resulted in a lot of patchwork and gap tooth development at what was at the time the outer fringe.

[Pete]

The 70's and 80's also saw a huge amount of highway construction around town.

Lake Hefner Parkway, Kilpatrick Turnpike, the widening of I-35... All these were completed during this time which were great catalysts to people moving to the very far north and Edmond.

I remember in the late 70's having a friend who lived in Edmond, and it was an epic poem just to get there from NW OKC. That all changed in the 80's.

[ctchandler]

The 70's and 80's also saw a huge amount of highway construction around town.

I remember in the late 70's having a friend who lived in Edmond, and it was an epic poem just to get there from NW OKC. That all changed in the 80's.

When did the construction start that made "the Broadway Bottleneck" four lane? I think it was the mid to late 70's. I drove that three mile bottleneck (two lanes) for a while in the late 60's.
C. T.

[adaniel]

I was born in 1986, but my family has been in Central OK for some time so a lot of this is just what they've relayed to me.

My grandparents were the first black family to buy their home in Wildewood in the 1960's. Most of the NE side north of 23rd back then was white working class, and even their area was a fairly intergrated neighborhood until cross town busing. My older uncles went to Northeast HS, but my mom and dad both were shipped across town to Northwest Classen HS. Even though Wildewood was (and still is) an very nice area, most white families were out of there by 1980.

My grandfather at the time owned several service stations along 23rd. Back then, it was the street, ferrying large amounts of traffic from the capitol complex to then-fast growing suburbs like Midwest City. The completion of Tinker Diagonal cut that significantly. But they were holding on until the Penn Square Bank fiasco. My grandmother still recalls Linda Cavanaugh breaking on live TV to announce it. That was pretty much the death blow. The economy of OKC limped along for a few more years (the more serious collapse in oil prices didn't occur until roughly 1985), but the damage to the local real estate and banking markets was chilling. My grandpa sold the stations--one of them is where Tucker's Onion Burgers is now located--I was born shortly thereafter and my parents and a good number of their friends and siblings left the state.

It's important to note this entire part of the country was a complete nightmare, between oil prices collapsing and agricultural prices declining as well. Everything along I-35 from Texas to Minnesota was in terrible shape and a lot of people moved to "coastal" states like California to find work, inclding quite a few in my family.

In looking back I can't really say the 90's were much better. The economy had improved in OKC thanks to the ramp up at Tinker and overall strength of the US economy. But there was still a cloud over the city...I can't put my finger over it but I felt it even as a kid. Downtown was dead, the state outside of OKC was still struggling, hell even OU stunk. Tinker initally was very close to being shuttered during the mid 90's; OKC dodged a huge bullet there. And of course, you have the giant cherries on top of the turd sundae, the 1995 bombing and 1999 tornado. Even though MAPs had passed, there wasn't really any tangible evidence of success until the ballpark opened.

Now the city is in much better shape but I can't help but think a lot of things you see in contemporary culture in OKC (at best the civic unity or, at worst, the blind boosterism) resulted from this era as a sorta-defense/coping mechanism. This city has a lot of battle scars and I think a lot of places, if they were to go through what OKC did, would have just fallen apart by now. I frankly am not so sure Tulsa has ever recovered from the initial 80's crash. Its a testament to the people here, not to mention some of the lucky breaks OKC has received in the past decade or so.

[Eddie1]

As an outsider, having been born and raised in the DC area (I moved here in 2005) it is very interesting reading these posts...keep them coming.

[TheTravellers]

... There had to be a reason that educated people wanted to move to DFW or somewhere else as soon as they were able to rather than stay here. ...

I left in 1995, had been wanting to leave for a while, actually, was 30 years old then. While I was a kid and teenager, it was OK, had lots of stores, concerts, etc. to go to, then for some reason, things started drying up, the stores I went to closed (record and book stores), good live shows were getting fewer and further between, and I got married and we both just decided OKC was too dull, not enough going on, we both wanted big-city concerts, museums, etc., so we went to Chicagoland (by way of Milwaukee for about a year). It was basically just not enough for us, we wanted more...

[traxx]

loss of the General Motors assembly plant was a huge kicker as well

But this had mainly to do with mismanagement of the company at large and very little to do with OKC. As evidenced by the bailout only a few years later. That's quite different than United Airlines not wanting to build here. That was all on us.

As for the OP, I think it was just a confluence of several bad occurrences, one on top of another. The Pei Plan didn't happen, it razed a good portion of our downtown, the oil bust, the bank failures etc.

Someone mentioned FedEx in Memphis. OKC really needs something like this. If we had a FedEx or Walmart or Microsoft, a major industry that wasn't energy related, just think how much of an impact that would have on OKC.

[Urbanized]

Unless you are Chicago, NYC, Dallas or a precious few other cities, it's all but impossible to nab Fortune 500 companies away from other cities. Your best bet is to grow your own, and in OKC's case for better or worse that will almost always involve energy.

[Pete]

And really, across the country most the job growth has been coming from small and medium sized companies.

And besides all the tremendous home-grown job growth, we also have Tinker and Boeing which are absolute monsters and steady, rock-solid employers.

Job growth and creation has really been the least of our worries.

[Tritone]

For Jim Kyle:

"When I returned from California in 1962, downtown boasted at least five major banks: First, Liberty, City National, Central National, and I can't recall the name of the fifth one (at the corner of Park and Harvey and reputedly a part of the Bob Kerr empire). "

When you included the address the old commercial jingle machine in my brain kicked in...

"Park Avenue and Harvey. Bank with your friends at Fidelity National Bank."

[adaniel]

Someone mentioned FedEx in Memphis. OKC really needs something like this. If we had a FedEx or Walmart or Microsoft, a major industry that wasn't energy related, just think how much of an impact that would have on OKC.

No economic silver bullets exists anymore...this is somewhat outdated thinking IMO. I'm sot sure what Plutonic Panda observed in Memphis; I can tell you Memphis is struggling mightily even with FedEx.

Energy can be a bit unstable, but why would it be better to be a "company town" and be at the whims of one single employer, with the way companies go out of business, get bought/sold, go bankrupt, etc.? Just look at the list of Fortune 500 companies back in 1990 and compare it to today.

I have to think what would happen if United did select OKC instead of Indy? Sure we would have gotten jobs, but no likely no post-loss "come to Jesus" moment and subsequent MAPS projects. It would have just strung us along economically for a few years at best. And of course, proving my point, post 9/11 United ended up closing shop in Indianapolis anyway.

[Jim Kyle]

But this had mainly to do with mismanagement of the company at large and very little to do with OKC. As evidenced by the bailout only a few years later. That's quite different than United Airlines not wanting to build here.

However, GM did pick us earlier, which might have been mismanagement but presence of the plant did help our economy greatly. When they later shut the doors, it tossed a large number of people to the unemployment office. That impact was what I had in mind.

We also had a pretty good batch of high-tech, but low-profile, establishments in that era. The hard drive in your computer system may well have been built right here in OKC out at Reno and Morgan Road, although toward the end of that period the actual manufacture shifted to Malaysia (cheaper labor) and the OKC site was "merely" Seagate's design crew.

I think a large part of what hit us so hard was just the effect of a nationwide recession coming right on the heels of our local banking and energy disasters. And in any case, we didn't take nearly as much damage as, say, Detroit or Flint...

[traxx]

I think I gave the wrong impression by saying I wish we had a FedEx or a MS or a Walmart here. If we did have one, it would have to be a home grown company. I can't see stealing such a company from another city very easily. But my thought was more that it would help our identity nationally and perhaps globally. A company that everyone knows (like the ones I mentioned) and we can say, "Yeah, that's ours. It's and OKC company."

[Pete]

^

Hobby Lobby is getting darn close.

And they have very aggressive expansion plans yet to be realized.

[flintysooner]

When Penn Square failed I certainly had no idea of the significance to my own business as well as to my customers, vendors, and service providers.

The year after Penn Square our business dropped by 1/3. It was very painful especially cutting payroll expense sometimes laying off employees of many years. But we survived it and thought maybe that was the worst. But it wasn't.

One by one all of the banks we dealt with failed. Mainly because bank stock had been allowed to be used for collateral. The collateral became less and less valuable and the equity holders had no place to go for more and so the banks began to fail.

Then we had Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC). That's where many of the loans - maybe most - went from the failed banks. Didn't mater if you'd never been late your loan ended up there and was called. And a lot of people couldn't meet the call. So RTC took the property. Mostly they turned around and sold it to people who had cash. Many of those investors bought property for 10 cents on the dollar that a few years later became worth 150 times or more their cost.

We also had this huge increase in interest rates for our loans. Some of us ended up paying more than 21% interest. Made building payments and credit line interest payments double and triple. Pretty much another nail in the coffin since there was no market for the real estate at anywhere near the value and sales were continuing to drop by about 1/3 every year.

Most everyone that survived in the industries I know about had to go out of state for business. And some fought for more than 10 years and still succumbed.

Pretty hard to imagine how bad it was unless you were a part of it.

Could it happen again? Pretty sure it could. Hope not.

[Achilleslastand]

I think I gave the wrong impression by saying I wish we had a FedEx or a MS or a Walmart here. If we did have one, it would have to be a home grown company. I can't see stealing such a company from another city very easily. But my thought was more that it would help our identity nationally and perhaps globally. A company that everyone knows (like the ones I mentioned) and we can say, "Yeah, that's ours. It's and OKC company."

Horrible food aside........we do have that already and it goes by the name of Sonic.

[RadicalModerate]

I mark the beginning of the turn-around for downtown Oklahoma City as the day I noticed The Spaghetti Warehouse while buying some shingles at Willard's Wholesale Roofing, just down the street, in the Industrial Slum now known as The Bricktown Paradise.

btw: Sonic Corporation food isn't exactly "horrible" . . . It's more like Garcia y Vega cigars: "The best cigar for the most people." They would go up a notch in my book if they would add Cheese Frenchies to the menu (a suggestion I've made for at least two or three decades.) (Cheese Frenchies? Google it. That or "King's Fine Foods")