I thought the Cox Center was good enough until I went in it.
I thought the Cox Center was good enough until I went in it.
I felt the same about a small motel in northwest OK once .... once.
Hopefully, the city can get back to business as usual; maybe Dr. Shadid will put the brakes on this recall of the new convention center.
"Oklahoma City looks oh-so pretty... ...as I get my kicks on Route 66." --Nat King Cole.
Barring untimely cancellations, by the time the Cox is replaced, it will be nearly 50 years old. Can you imagine the delay if the CC process is derailed and it takes us years of duking it out with public opinion and the naysayers to get funding for a replacement (if it gets killed I don't see it ever appearing on a MAPS ballot again)? Remember it took/will have taken 25 years to finally get a streetcar back once it failed to make the MAPS 1 ballot.
Ironically, outside of a future MAPS situation, any future CC would probably have to be debt financed and never be able to pay for itself. So much better than the debt-free version we're about to get that won't have to worry about paying for itself.
Stop making sense.
I see the Convention Center issue being divided into 3 camps.
1) People who don't want a new convention center
2) People who do want a new convention center but at a different location
3) People who want the new convention center on the Ford site
I think the vast majority of people are in camp 2.
I saw that Louisville is getting an Omni hotel for their new convention center hotel. The descriptions sound pretty sweet, so we'll have to see how it turns out.
I was in camp 2 until I saw the site plan and joined camp 3. My main concern that put me in camp 2 was that it would split up the two parks, but if we end up with something similar to the proposal it will look like a convention center inside one single park as opposed to one that separates two different parks. That would be a result I am perfectly fine with, and might even give us something a bit unique in the convention market (at least compared to the other convention centers I have been to [Anaheim, Moscone in San Fran, Philadelphia, Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, there might be another I am forgetting]).
The convention center functions poorly in the south of Chesapeake location. By necessity the front door would be on the west side (loading docks on Shields). Additionally the convention hotel on the north end of the site would place the front door even further away from the CBD and the amenities that make it possible for OKC to over-perform as a convention market. The closest the front door of the convention center would be from Sheridan and Oklahoma (considered the zero corner) is 3/4 of a mile. That might not seem that far, but it would take close to 15 minutes EACH way by foot to get there, making lunches in Bricktown during conferences and conventions difficult if not impossible. It would also require convention-goers to cross major, high-speed and traffic corridors including the new boulevard, Reno and EK Gaylord to get into Bricktown, which is the amenity the CVB HAS to use to lure convention business to our little burg.
The convention business has a hard and fast rule; anything that exceeds a ten minute walk basically doesn't count. That is, all of the dining and entertainment amenities plus the recently-added hotel rooms in and around Bricktown really wouldn't be a factor when booking a convention, making OKC a MUCH weaker market for convention bookings and effectively wasting much of the effort we are putting into building a new convention center. Much has been discussed here about the various successes and failures of new convention centers and hotels in other cities, but one factor tends to unite the failures: poor location related to the respective city's amenities and hotel rooms.
Before someone brings up the streetcar as the solution, please keep in mind that we are talking about equipment that can move a hundred or so people at a time (vs. thousands that can be in attendance at a convention) on reasonably long headways, on a line that isn't even currently planned to touch the area immediately adjacent to the site in question.
As a marginal market from a national image perspective anyway, OKC needs to play to its strengths, which is a surprisingly dense and walkable variety of hotel rooms and entertainment options within a ten minute walk of the CC. Putting it in a place where it will encounter legitimate sales objections based on proximity would be a complete boondoggle from the word go. THIS is why the CC committee intervened when the assumption was being made that it would be in the south-of-Chesapeake location. The convention center BY FAR is more location-sensitive than any other MAPs 3 Project. Location is critical to its success. Talk about the lumberyard or east of ballpark (though it appears this has development activity) or wherever else you want, but I wish people would stop trying to shove the CC to a backwater location just because it isn't sexy enough for their tastes. Please drop the south of 'Peake location. It doesn't work for this project.
Urbanized, I've recently been thinking that the Streetcar as planned in the zeta route would give a benefit to the Ford site location based on the Bricktown connection it would provide. Do you think that I am being overly optimistic about that?
I don't think the south of the Chesapeake location is much farther away than the chosen location.
What about replacing the Bricktown Events Center?
I don't think it is about the physical difference in distance but the mental difference. Instead of crossing one six lane street (EK Gaylord) to get to BT, they would have to cross two (EK Gaylord and the Boulevard). I put a marker on the SE/C of SW 3rd and Robinson (directly south of The Peake) and put walking directions to Spaghetti Warehouse and googlemaps said it would take 13 minutes and it was 0.6 miles. I then moved it to the SW/C of Reno and Robinson and it said it would take 10 minutes and it was 0.5 miles to go to the same destination. Again, I really hope they narrow EK Gaylord from the boulevard to at least Main Street from six to four lanes to make that area more pedestrian friendly.
I was pretty firm on preferring the south of the Chesapeake location until I read this. Still not crazy about the selected site, but my alternative certainly appears to have a couple of drawbacks. But if past MAPS projects are any indication, this will turn out pretty good after all the fussing is over and construction is complete.
I really hope once the CC is built, they rethink how the lights are done on the Robinson and Reno and Gaylord and Reno intersections. You will have hundreds of people crossing all at once to get to lunch and I hope there is a four way stop so people can cross whichever way they want and it is for a few minutes. Think about when a Thunder game gets out but with less people.
The convention center will be find at the old Ford Dealership location. Some tier II type conventions may need the Chesapeake Energy Arena as we move toward attracting and growing our convention tourism.
We need to make sure the new commuter rail goes through the convention center & hotel into Bricktown as well as expanding the Bricktown Canal to the convention center & hotel complex.
The study shows that we could support a 735-room hotel; let's hope we build something with a minimum of 1,000 rooms to allow for expansion. Our central location is a plus for any national assembly requiring travel. A $15 -$20 million incentive should put us on the radar for any hotel chain investing $150 -$200 million on building a hotel on the convention center complex. There is $30 million in a contingency fund where some of that money could be used for incentives.
"Oklahoma City looks oh-so pretty... ...as I get my kicks on Route 66." --Nat King Cole.
The Cox Center (formerly the Myriad) looks better than it did before it was somewhat refurbished. I like that it's right on the street now instead of that huge setback. But the refurbish has been about 20 years ago. And it's just not large enough if we want to attract bigger and more conferences.
Hopefully someone who's been in the building a lot more recently than me can answer this. Is the main arena area used much at all? If so, what are it's uses. Was anything ever done to that or does it look the same as it did in the 70s?
vs.
It's definitely not large enough if we want to attract bigger and more conferences. Twenty years since it has been refurbished--the interior looks kind of gloomy--like those 1980 mortuaries, the type of carpet you would roll out a casket upon. We can definitely do much better.
The main arena is used occasionally when the convention usually brings a trade show or competition along with it. Example: Red Earth.
This should really sum up the need for a new convention center:
Hoping for progress on new convention center
"Nowhere else in Oklahoma is there a suitable convention center for trade shows and events of our size. The 100,000 square feet at the Cox Convention Center as well as the management and staff have helped grow the show well...
With the new convention center, more shows of this size and capacity could locate to Oklahoma City, continuing the city's upward trajectory of growth. These conventions and events funnel revenue to Bricktown and the surrounding districts that have grown up in the past 10 years. What starts in the core of the city will ripple out to the surrounding communities. Attendees, vendors and speakers continue to compliment the city for the wide range of venues available close to downtown to entertain their clients during their time here.
The Oklahoma Indian Gaming Association and other organizations like it are eager to capitalize upon the growth in Oklahoma City, through the construction of world-class facilities like a new downtown convention center. We hope to see more progress toward its completion. I look forward to the day we can spread our wings along with the new convention center, downtown and the entire city."
http://oklahoman.com/hoping-for-prog...rticle/3940974
"Oklahoma City looks oh-so pretty... ...as I get my kicks on Route 66." --Nat King Cole.
I'm not a naysayer, I'm just kind of playing devil's advocate with this question. Are conventions and trade shows still as big of a deal as they were in the 90s? I know trade shows like the Consumer Electronics Show have been downsizing and I'm just wondering if that's the trend now or if it's just a few select conventions.
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