BOK Park Plaza

[SOONER8693]

Don't see anything wrong with that GARAGE.

Agree.

[bombermwc]

It has a better look than many other of our garages but it looks extremely odd next to a shiny new glass tower. The color and detail of it simply doesnt match the sleek glass tower.

I think that's where most of us sit. Wondering why they chose that particular material for the facade since it doesn't match anything around it at all....or even blend with it. I mean i know you dont have to, but personally, i think it stands out in a bad way. But i'm also willing to acknowledge that it holds cars no matter how it looks, so as far as the developer thinks, it's fine and they wouldn't have to do anything to "blend" unless the city forced them to, which i think would be a bit of a stretch.

[catch22]

I drove past it today hoping a fresh look would help. It didn't. It is downright ugly. The "vent" panels make it appear like the side of some facade hiding an electrical substation or utility. I'm fine with having a garage there, just needs to have a better appearance.

[Pete]

Due to the subtle variations in the panels, it's obvious there are hundreds of pieces stuck together in a patchwork rather than any flowing, clean lines.

I think they were going for a masonry appearance but the end result is just a sea of brown/beige.

Certainly looked a lot better in renderings, and the color turned out to be very different.

[Rover]

Parking garages require a great deal of ventilation, obviously. That's why most have either visibly open floors of striated concrete, or cover the openings or whole facade with some sort of mesh or fins. Personally, I would rather have a facade which hides the open floors and the look of a concrete parking garage. This facade hides the raw concrete floors and doesn't allow direct viewing of the inclined floors, etc. It appears they tried to create an impression of a "building" rather than a "parking lot". I think that is in fact preferable. The also attempted to create some interest and integration at the street level with commercial and faux commercial fronts which are considerably more finished out than most.

Do you think it would have been better to have a highly contemporary exterior as opposed to a more traditional look given the building they serve is modern? Would that have fit in better with the other elements on the block?

[Urbanized]

Two that look a whole lot better than ones in developments downtown whom we give a pass on because they serve apartments instead of commerce. Big double standard on this site. It seems to be not what you do but who you are.

In fairness, most downtown residential developers would like nothing more than to eliminate parking spaces required to build and market housing. They are eagerly anticipating a time when their residents are less car dependent and they’re watching/debating when the time will be that they can start providing less parking. It’s a ticklish subject, because they don’t want to build too few and have an unmarketable property.

They do recognize that - at least for the foreseeable future - the land use decisions made in the past mean that their residents can’t realistically live car-free. Many of them are working hard to change that, including themselves subsidizing loss-leader tenants like retail and grocery, in an attempt to make downtown more liveable and walkable. But believe me, they don’t like being in the parking business.

Contrast that with some of downtown’s recent corporate tower developments, which have taken seemingly antagonistic stances towards walkability, streetlevel interaction, bicycle lanes, traffic patterns, thoughtful multi-mode boulevard construction, streetcar, etc.. Not presuming to speak for anybody on the board, but I think the people who you’re railing against with this post are mostly just turned off by what they see as a corporate dismissal of urban living and walkability as pure novelty and even at times some seemingly intentional undermining behavior.

Perhaps these posters feel that corporate interests aren’t giving honest thought/effort to better integrating in a way that would encourage employees to interact with the rest of downtown or even LIVE in or near downtown (for those so inclined), but rather that the companies work from the assumption that 100% of their employees forever and always will be driving private cars to dedicated garages, walking through skywalks to get to their offices, grabbing lunch at the commissary, walking back through the skywalk to their cars, blasting down wide, fast streets to the expressway, and commuting back to the bedroom communities, which in turn gobble up their sales taxes and school-supporting property taxes, often leaving OKC high and dry revenue-wise.

Now, I for one see and appreciate greatly the value of these corporations, the jobs they bring, the taxes they and their employees contribute to our economy, the charitable giving, and on, and on. I’m sure the other posters do, too. At the same time I’d like to see some thought given to treating downtown less like a remote office park to be viewed from afar, commuted to, barely interacted with, and instead more like an organism to be nurtured, and a viable place where at least *some* of their employees might choose to work, bike to work, raise kids, walk to lunch, pay OKC property and sales taxes. Otherwise, why not just build your tower in the suburbs?

I’m not saying the balance will ever tip in favor of urban living - nor should it, perhaps - but the best cities have MANY lifestyle options, not just one.

[Rover]

Urbanized, I understand and agree with much of what you are saying. However, I don’t think Devon invested downtown just so they could make their workers drive downtown and destroy the urban fabric. If they were looking to do that they could have built anywhere. And apartment builders who put their garages on prominent corners of their development and don’t design street level interaction aren’t overly concerned with good urbanism either.

[Pete]

[bombermwc]

Urbanized, I understand and agree with much of what you are saying. However, I don’t think Devon invested downtown just so they could make their workers drive downtown and destroy the urban fabric. If they were looking to do that they could have built anywhere. And apartment builders who put their garages on prominent corners of their development and don’t design street level interaction aren’t overly concerned with good urbanism either.

I would agree with this. And to be frank, developers are concerned with really one thing. How does this make me a dollar? Parking for residents isn't as profitable as leasing more space to tenants. So i wouldn't be so quick to give them the "urbanist award" for the year. True, there are better developers than others, but i think it's a bit too generic to put all corporate into one bucket and all residential into another. Each have their good and bad, depending on how you look at them.

OKC cannot support retail on every square foot of ground level downtown either. I'm not sure how we will get there, because we're going to have to up our residential density of the AVERAGE JOE downtown before you can make that work, and we still haven't seen anything downtown that really focuses on that group. The masses are what will eventually make downtown livable, but we're quite a ways away from supporting that. We're still looking at the upper end and there's only so much of that we can put in there and only so many specialty coffee shops/local clothiers/etc that all close by 5pm and dont bother with the weekend, before we pop that bubble. Now, you throw in some sort of urban growth boundary, and i think you'll make that more attractive to developers. But good luck with that. OKC sees the growth area as lifeblood. Throw in a boundary and i think you'll just see suburb growth instead.

I'm a little concerned for BOK Park now with so much of the space now being empty. Devon was going to be a pretty good part of that building, and it doesn't sound like BOK is going to eat up as much as i think we thought they would. And then, what are we going to do with their old-ugly-ass building once BOK is out? We got HELLA lucky with Continental taking Corporate Tower after Devon moved in, but we see the emptiness of Cotter with that same move...and it's not filling up. Those lower class buildings are going to have a hard time. And much to what i said above, we dont need more "convert to upscale residential" once the building is low on tenants.

[HOT ROD]

OKC may not yet hve the residential density downtown (but I'd argue that it DOES) but OKC does have density of office workers and they should necessitate a significantly more amount of streetfront retail than is offered.

This would be more of a true fact IF OKC didn't have the tunnel system or the pedestrian bridge connecting garages to office towers; this would truly illustrate the amount of office workers we have and THAT TRAFFIC would warrant double or more of the amount of current retail options.

Because OKC and downtown are still growing and downtown is adding significant residential population, I think MOST new developments should have retail buildouts on the ground floor regardless if they are immediately used so that growth can create the market. To me, what OKC is missing besides the chain retail (7-11s, supermarkets, drug store, supplies) is local mom and pop restaurants. Go to other downtowns and that is what you mostly see in downtown storefronts; OKC has as much as you can count on your hand. This needs to change IMO and I'd charter the chamber and downtown OKC to take the lead on linking local (and ethnic/poor) merchants into these downtown retail spaces [perhaps having a grant and/or startup period on the rent/utilities to get them going].

[Doug Loudenback]

Beautiful pics, Pete. Thanks a bunch.

[Pete]

The bus station sign is now illuminated, both the sign itself and the glass sarcophagus.

[Rover]

They were taking street barriers away yesterday.

[Pete]

^

They are all down now and the two parking garages are open.

Still a lot of construction tents and equipment in the plaza.

[Pete]

You can see in the first photo that the facade along Hudson has been set up for illuminated posters / artwork in each of the windows. This area will not have any retail.

The 2nd photo is of the parking entrance on Main to the north garage. The other garage entrances all looked finished and operational.

[Pete]

Some shots of the lobby which show the patterned walls and escalator.

[G.Walker]

I like looking at this building coming up I-35 from Moore going to downtown. This office tower really added density to the skyline & turned out to be a great project. Anything over 400FT is a pretty good height to have skyline impact. If & when OG&E adds their 25+ office tower next door, that will be really be nice!

[HOT ROD]

i agree, still wish it was at least 550 though. ...

hopefully it fills up quickly and we'll get another, taller spec tower (and OGE Center) in the works. ....

[hipsterdoofus]

Getting back to the parking garage, I think we are spoiled by the main street garage, which compared to other's in town, is pretty gorgeous. I think if nothing else, they could have done something with the panels so that there was variation in the color, instead of it being all one blah color.

[Pete]

Lobby tonight. The plaza is pretty much finished; should be opening their doors any day.

[baralheia]

A friend of mine works for BOK and they've already begun moving furniture and equipment into their new offices upstairs... Been doing so for a couple of weeks now. I don't believe any employees have officially moved over just yet though.

[Pete]

A friend of mine works for BOK and they've already begun moving furniture and equipment into their new offices upstairs... Been doing so for a couple of weeks now. I don't believe any employees have officially moved over just yet though.

Yes, they are moving in but the building is not open yet.

Very close though.

[Jeepnokc]

Any word on restaurant or retailers? It looks like the retail space in the garage is walled off but can't tell.

John

[Pete]

Any word on restaurant or retailers? It looks like the retail space in the garage is walled off but can't tell.

John

Absolutely no building permits other than BOK on the top 4 floors and then a small branch in the lobby and Devon doing a very small office on the 2nd floor.

[Pete]

In the last two photos you can see they seem to be installing a traffic light and crosswalk at Hudson & Main.