Fair Oaks Urban Center

[UrbanistPoke]

I don't think I saw a thread on the Fair Oaks Urban Center, so figured it would be worth starting. Lots of new development is going to be coming to this area that is the current Robson Ranch. Robson family are the developers behind Forest Ridge and a lot of residential stuff in the Eastern Tulsa County and Rogers County areas.

Facebook is planning on building their AI data center project here on one of the ~200 acre parcels Robson is giving to the City of Tulsa. Site is within Catoosa school district. Not surprised by that given that the Google data center in Pryor is where a lot of the AI projects data center wise are being done for Google. Won't mean a ton of jobs but these data centers are $$ gold for school districts. Initial phase is going to be $800 million with likely expansion over several years.

The portions of the Robson Ranch being retain by him is going to be developed into what is being said as the largest new urbanist community in the United States. Will be slightly bigger than Central Park in Denver (formerly known as Stapleton) and bigger than the Muller redevelopment in Austin. Robson is married to a Walton as well and was already very independently wealthy with a lot of master plan development experience. The residential areas will be mostly along the corridor of the quarry lakes/large ponds on the east side of the Creek Turnpike. They are planning to modify these some and will 'navigable' for kayaks, etc.

The land donate to the City of Tulsa was in exchange for the water treatment facility being built and other infrastructure upgrades. This is the site that Tesla was considering for the CyberTruck plant. That's what got all this rolling was the fact that one of Tesla's biggest complaints was lack of supportive housing and that if a large 'mega' project went into this area that there isn't development ready or capacity to scale up development quickly like there is in areas like Austin. This site was also passed over in second place for the Ford Lightning EV plant and a few other 'confidential' mega projects that looked at the site since Tesla. Same issue Mid America is dealing with as well and this would be a big 'gap' filler on the 412 corridor (future I-42) between Tulsa and Pryor area that could serve double duty as housing for Tulsa area projects or Port of Inola projects or Mid America projects (the residential portion is 25 miles from the Google Data center site & ~10 miles to Port of Inola site). I'm sure the connection with the Waltons is a motivation as well given the push by that family and Kaiser/others in Tulsa to align more with NWA and further develop that corridor between the two regions.

[Urban Enthusiast]

Ah yes, I have heard some about this new urbanist project. I've never seen any plans, however. Do you know if they exist anywhere?

I've also heard that the Walton Foundation is interested in having a greater tie with the Tulsa area. I think that's great, personally. Tulsa and NWA seem to have pretty close ties. Perhaps not economically, but proximity for sure. I'd say NWA is much more tied to Tulsa than other parts of Arkansas, particularly the Little Rock area.

[BG918]

I haven’t seen any plans for the residential developments yet. Some maps of where this is all going on the east side of Tulsa:

[UrbanistPoke]

Ah yes, I have heard some about this new urbanist project. I've never seen any plans, however. Do you know if they exist anywhere?

I've also heard that the Walton Foundation is interested in having a greater tie with the Tulsa area. I think that's great, personally. Tulsa and NWA seem to have pretty close ties. Perhaps not economically, but proximity for sure. I'd say NWA is much more tied to Tulsa than other parts of Arkansas, particularly the Little Rock area.

Not that is public yet - my guess is once the first one or two commercial projects start you might see the residential phases announced and plans published. They've been working on a lot to get the codes and zoning in place so that way if parcels are sold off that any new developers or builders are restricted to building in this area similar to new urbanism standards. I'm not sure if Robson will develop all the residential portion or sell it off in phases to large builders. I am not sure if this will be a new zoning standard or if they will enforce this through overlays and deed restrictions/covenants or what. It may be into 2025 before much more is revealed. Partner Tulsa has been a massive failure and part of why Kian "stepped down" was over this project and several others they've delayed unnecessarily (like several of the downtown projects) so likely new mayor will clean house a bit and reboot it fresh and then you might see some of these projects move finally.

[The]

How has Partner Tulsa been a massive failure? Can you expand on that?

[UrbanistPoke]

How has Partner Tulsa been a massive failure? Can you expand on that?

Oh that is a massive list.

They have hired a lot of good people don't get me wrong but there's a few at the top that have put the breaks on a lot and if they don't feel like it benefits them (financially or personally) good luck getting anything out of them. Kian was one of the highest paid public employees in the entire state and has accomplished nothing - there isn't a single large project that has happened because they helped foster it. Casey Stowe is a massive liability for the city - it's odd to me how someone who has unpaid loans, massive conflicts of interest, etc. is able to be in charge of the finance portion of development projects. There's half a dozen developers who have gone to city council and the mayor to complain they are stalling projects and being obstructive. They've done nothing with the Our Legacy project either beside let the land sit there and non stop show off renderings that mean nothing. They refuse to work with most developers, took the Evan Fintube project away from that developer for made up reasons. Partner Tulsa claimed JE Dunn Capital pulled out of the project all while that developer gave the mayor and others a signed letter from JE Dunn Capital saying their commitment had not changed and that just one of their employees was no longer with that firm and no longer involved with the project which Partner Tulsa used as the reason to remove the lead developer saying her "capacity as a developer changed" and it's because Casey wanted to give the project to the development team his girlfriend was involved with (not a conflict of interest at all). So it was no shock that Kian is "stepping down" to save face and I expect there to be other housing cleaning done hopefully soon so some of the good people there can actually make a difference.

Rose Rock's 3rd & Denver project is on hold waiting on Partner Tulsa, the reason Pivot's Arts District project is on hold is because they are waiting on Partner Tulsa, etc. etc.

Crutchfield has been asking Partner Tulsa for 2 years to get a TIF formed to kick start a massive neighborhood redevelopment lead by Guru Stu/Helmerich Foundation (who now owners like 65%+ of that neighborhood) and others in the neighborhood. They had to go around Partner Tulsa and go directly to City Council and the Mayor and just got that TIF approved. They had to do that because Partner Tulsa said no - wasn't worth their time to waste on them and they were too busy with other projects.