OKANA Resort & Indoor Waterpark

[Pete]

[OKCBayou]

Great pic! Still bringing in fill and possibly starting underground storm drainage. Looks like a possible culvert for underneath the future road in the bottom middle/right?

[Pete]

^

Yes, the new road will roughly follow along the tree line on the south edge of the property.

[Shuffinator]

Really excited to see how this turns out! Another great place to have a live camera set up for people to watch.
@Pete, is that something you can relay to the powers at be?

[Pete]

Really excited to see how this turns out! Another great place to have a live camera set up for people to watch.
@Pete, is that something you can relay to the powers at be?

Construction cameras are up to the contractor.

In this case, it's Manhattan and they don't do much of that. I love them myself because it allows me to see if anything major is happening and then get out there with my drone.


However, I'll be taking and posting drone shots every couple of weeks for the years it will take the first phase to be complete.

[Plutonic Panda]

^^^ Pete, thanks for your dedication and hard work!

[jccouger]

Glad this is happening after I235 & I44 interchange wrapped up, I needed a new project to obsess over Pete's drone pics!

[Pete]

Glad this is happening after I235 & I44 interchange wrapped up, I needed a new project to obsess over Pete's drone pics!

Haha... I feel the same way.

It's really fun to track progress when something is big and complex.

[David]

Thinking about the history that got this property to this point, I wonder if the state totally flaking on the museum project managed to be an accidental best case scenario for OKC? I have a hard time imagining OKANA would be being planned in the same way if the Chickasaw weren't so involved with the FAM and had the surrounding land development rights.

[ABryant]

The state is probably happy.

[Laramie]

Thinking about the history that got this property to this point, I wonder if the state totally flaking on the museum project managed to be an accidental best case scenario for OKC? I have a hard time imagining OKANA would be being planned in the same way if the Chickasaw weren't so involved with the FAM and had the surrounding land development rights.

Very good points, David

[brianinok]

Does anyone know how big the indoor water park will be? Skimming through I can't find that info, but I may have missed it. Just quickly searching tells me Great Wolf tends to be about 80,000 SF and Kalahari down in Austin is over 200,000 SF I believe.

[brianinok]

Does anyone know how big the indoor water park will be? Skimming through I can't find that info, but I may have missed it. Just quickly searching tells me Great Wolf tends to be about 80,000 SF and Kalahari down in Austin is over 200,000 SF I believe.

Found the answer: 100,000 SF. Good size. Especially considering the other attractions on site. https://www.unitedforoklahoma.com/stories/okana-resort/

[Pete]

Found the answer: 100,000 SF. Good size. Especially considering the other attractions on site. https://www.unitedforoklahoma.com/stories/okana-resort/

Plans also show "future expansion" of the waterpark to the south of the planned site.

[Pete]

This is what is on one of the building permits:

[Pete]

I found this on the latest version of the zoo's strategic plan:

[brianinok]

It's probably a reasonable timeline. I just wish it was quicker for my kids' benefit. They may be teenagers before it opens, assuming it happens.

[Grant]

Real shame they were denied the opportunity to stick this in MAPS 4 with a canal extension running through it. The City would be much better off with this somewhere downtown.

[Pete]

Real shame they were denied the opportunity to stick this in MAPS 4 with a canal extension running through it. The City would be much better off with this somewhere downtown.

Yeah, very strange the proposal at Producers Co-op didn't get any traction.

In the end, Mayor Holt basically decided which projects would go forward and there must have been good reasons to pass on the aquarium because it couldn't be more popular.

[HangryHippo]

Real shame they were denied the opportunity to stick this in MAPS 4 with a canal extension running through it. The City would be much better off with this somewhere downtown.

So much this!

[ABryant]

It was a last ditch proposal.

[BoulderSooner]

Real shame they were denied the opportunity to stick this in MAPS 4 with a canal extension running through it. The City would be much better off with this somewhere downtown.

it is almost like all the projects were decided well before the council presentations .....


they should have just added 100+ mil on to MAPS 4 with the required number or extra Months

[Pete]

it is almost like all the projects were decided well before the council presentations

That was clearly the case because the presentations ended up being exactly what was included in MAPS 4 -- no more, no less.

[Grant]

The Council and Mayor brazenly pretending to take public input in a farcical process with a predetermined outcome should be far more of a story than it's been. They effectively defrauded the people of OKC out of real input here. MAPS has never failed at the ballot so the only true question is what projects to include. And they very clearly rigged that.

And now instead of a really impressive canal/aquarium combo that would:

1. Contribute to the economic growth of downtown and local stakeholders.
2. Punch far above it's weight due to the creative/cool nature of the canal involvement
3. Improve Bricktown by making the canal interesting again.
4. Improve our investment in the Boulevard by bringing some life to the dead eastern section.
5. Give a boost to potential future development of the Co-op site.

We now get to throw our city's aquarium in an off the beaten path area that will mostly just enrich the Chickasaws. Obviously there's some economic benefit to the city anyway at this new location and the tribe does a lot of great work, etc. but I can't shake the impression that this is just a gross backroom deal that further subsidizes one group and their investment over the rest of us. An investment, OKANA, which would be massively successful even without our aquarium in the middle of it.

[ABryant]

I assume we are not conspiracy theory jackasses yet.