Thanks.
Honestly I can't believe I held out in suburbia for as long as I did. Downtown is a very different world and it isn't something you can fully be a part of unless you live downtown. Though it may work for some, for me, living in the outer burbs and commuting in didn't cut it. I am glad things worked out the way it did though because I got an excellent place that I am really loving that probably wouldn't have been available if I would have moved sooner. There are still things I dislike about OKC but its getting better fast and I don't have the desire to move to another city that I did when I lived in the burbs. I think many of my remaining complaints about it here will be non-issues within the next 3-5 years if it even takes that long. I don't know what will happen in the future but for now, I am content here.
Crap. SINCE. I'm my own spelling police.
There's a lot to be said for contentment. So many look for a constant happiness that just isn't there for most people. Contentment is good. I've noticed the change in posting style as well. You're not as negative about so many things and I think that your new lifestyle and willingness to make real change shows right here on this board. Everything has its own time, it's clearly your time to blossom. Best of luck, bchris.
Looks as though Texas is trying to target many Fortune 500 companies as they can gobble up. They now raided 4 from Oklahoma:
Fleming, Oklahoma City
Kerr McGee, Oklahoma City
Phillips 66, Bartlesville
Williams, Tulsa
MAPS is the only reason Houston doesn't currently have Devon Energy.
Oklahoma needs to address this issue before we lose what few Fortune 500 companies we have left to our 'greedy' neighbor south of the Red River. That's four they've plucked out of the Sooner State.
You remember Exxon-Mobil was lured to Irving, Texas (Dallas suburb).
Laramie,
True, but if you remember, Fleming was near bankruptcy before they left for Texas. I think they were gone in about three years. But you're correct to list them as one of the four. Were you around when Fleming moved into The Waterford, then began whining about the cost of the leased space? By the way, they moved to OKC in 1981, to Lewisville, Tx., in 2000, and in 2003, filed for bankruptcy.
C. T.
Thanks ctchandler!
That would explains that upon moving to the Metroplex why they are no longer a Fortune 500 company; their trouble began here?
IIRC: Fleming was originally in Topeka, Kansas before their relocation to Oklahoma City in 1984; then, Lewisville in 2000. Karma you might say, The Dallas area did to OKC what OKC did to Topeka. The plight of capitalism.
That Fortune 500 Tag looks more like a tiara (façade) on a company's portfolio; until you remove the cosmetics; then you can take a real look at the company's aesthetics.
Cities within Texas gobble them up. XOM is moving to The Woodlands from Irving.
Laramie,
I attended some kind of conference hosted by Fleming at their corporate headquarters in Topeka. Boy, what a pain to get there from here. I worked for Scrivner at the time. How does the number two food distributor in America (Fleming) buy number four (Scrivner) and as number one in the country, end up bankrupt? I believe Scrivner was pretty solid, they had a mix (not a balanced one, they were primarily a distributor) of wholesale and retail. Remember Food World? They also owned a few other chains around the country. Fleming didn't believe in owning grocery stores and when they purchased a wholesale company that owned stores, they disposed of them fairly quickly, like Food World. I guess you could say, OKC was the beginning of the end, but the way I see it, they started going down hill in Lewisville. They were sued for fraud by a Texas chain and it wasn't long after that and they were gone.
C. T.
Kerr-McGee was a husk of its former self when Anadarko bought it. That wasn't much of a coup in retrospect, either.
Texas deserves all the corporate tax-parasites they can attract.
It's hard to keep up with the latest. I remember at one time, it was felt they were simply staying in Irving to fulfill an incentive program that had a costly exit clause. It's hard to not see the Houston campus as anything but a headquarters. I can relate to your impressed/terrified feelings. But, wow, it's nice.
I work in construction and a stone supplier told me when they were building the campus that the large quantity of marble throughout that single project caused the material price to increase on projects across the US. Not sure how true it is but an interesting story nonetheless.
Catch22,
Did you read the article? It's not like the system failed, plus, I don't know of a perfect system in any type of transport, just some are better than others. Pipelines are statistically safer than rail or trucks. The article said "Heine said the damage to the pipeline was related to third-party excavation activities.". Just like my phone and internet outage from Monday till Wednesday, construction excavation cut a major cable and our whole area was without phones and internet.
C. T.
It's hardly a "spill" when someone opens up the pipeline with a backhoe.
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