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JoeMommaBlake
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« Reply #42 on: January 23, 2012, 12:36:19 am » |
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My wish list.
1. Improved Parking Solutions
Our downtown parking situation is a mess. We have all kinds of issues: broken meters, unfriendly enforcement, poorly designed on street parking, unfortunately placed parking structures and ugly and abundant surface parking lots. The whole thing needs an overhaul.
2. Additional Police Presence
As has been mentioned, the issues we have with visitors feeling safe are easily solved with an increase in uniformed presence. My suggestion to solve the parking enforcement problem with a new class of police officer is a step towards this solution.
3. A developed 5th Street Corridor
The conversation here thus far, if summarized speaks to the reality of our downtown development situation. It is going to have to consider visitors and residents, young and old, suburbanites and urbanites, wealthy and not wealthy, etc. A 5th street retail corridor would do the following things:
a. Connect the civic center plaza with the East Village.
There is a good amount of interest in developing the East Village, which includes a park, new housing, new retail, and even maybe a movie theater. Using the 5th street corridor to connect that activity around Elgin (which is already a growing hot strip) with our city's Convention facilities.
b. Take advantage of our most walkable and visually stunning streets.
5th Street is great. Bartlett Square is cool (even cooler with a real fountain) and of course Boston is our best looking street and home to some cool things already happening in restaurant and retail.
c. Take advantage of the existing real estate situation.
5th street already has a good amount of small (and often empty) storefronts all along it, and is home to residential in the YMCA lofts, Mayo Hotel Lofts, Mayo Lofts, Vandever Lofts, Philtower Lofts, and the new ones planned at 5th and Elgin.
d. Give our convention sellers an arrow in the quiver.
A significant retail district would be a nice attraction for downtown visitors, especially those staying in the Mayo, Aloft, Marriot, Holiday Inn, and Hyatt. It's tough for our CVB to sell Tulsa when similar cities have a much more visitor friendly downtown area. As much as I love what's happening downtown, until we have a more dense retail area, we're not in the same league.
e. Give suburbanites and surrounding rural folks a reason to visit downtown.
Today, downtown's biggest selling point is its local restaurants. The few retail places (especially Dwelling Spaces, Fleet Feet, and Lee's) we have do a great job of pulling people into the IDL, but they can't really do it alone. Suburbanites are not coming downtown for dinner. They're very happy with their food options in South Tulsa and BA. They'll travel to Dallas to shop, though. Putting a unique selection of retailers that don't exist elsewhere in Tulsa would attract folks from all around to shop in the urban environment (think Denver's 16th Street). Picture Nike Town, Lucky Jeans, Urban Outfitters, The Puma Store, Northface, Levi's, Apple, etc. These are the types of stores you typically find in urban shopping districts like Gaslamp in San Diego or at Union Square in San Francisco. Naturally some of our local flavor would exist in the mix. It already does in places like Spexton, which is a great fit. Add in some basics like a Radio Shack, CVS, and a bookstore like Denver's Tattered Cover and you'd have a heck of a shopping destination. Take a drive down 5th next time you're downtown and picture what I'm talking about. Know that it wouldn't just be 5th Street. It would likely go a block in each direction north and south of the main spine on each of the north/south streets. The property owners on the strip want this to happen and the city has folks looking in to it, but it needs my item 1 to happen first...and will need parking structures at each end and maybe a free street car/bus loop from convention center to 5th and Elgin.
4. More diverse housing options
To create a true community, we're going to have to have some more affordable housing for the younger folks. You'll find that the majority of our new downtown housing is full of older folks. The young downtowners live in places like The Blair or Central Park or Gunboat Park or in little apartments above businesses here and there. More of them would live downtown if we had small, simple, affordable units. This could/should include student housing options for our downtown college students.
5. New transit/connectivity solutions
Tulsa's biggest problem is connectivity. Our best districts are just far enough apart to be a problem. Brookside, Cherry St. Utica Square, 18th and Boston, Downtown, and the up and coming Pearl District, Kendall Whittier, The River, and hopefully Rt. 66 are all great and getting better. They just need to be better connected. This same issue exists downtown. Deco District, Blue Dome, Brady/Greenwood, Arena are all great, but just a bit too disconnected. Until those areas have grown into each other (which will make the whole thing more walkable), improved transit will be vital to connecting them to each other. I, like many of you, would like that to be in the form of street car/fixed rail. It's time to start thinking about what all of these things will be in 5-10 years and planning for it now. I don't want us looking back when these districts have really come to life and wish that we had started solving the connectivity problem a decade earlier. This item also includes little things like getting people over the tracks from Blue Dome to Greenwood/Brady in a better way, fixing one way streets, adding and improving signage, etc.
6. More art, streetscaping, trees
It may sound silly, but Tulsa's really lacking in public art in our downtown area. We need more statues, structures, murals, etc. Our surface parking lots at least need landscaping and trees. Part of the whole walkability thing is having nice things to look at. I'd love our reputation as a creative city to grow. Part of that will be putting that type of thing in our downtown so that everywhere a visitor looks, they're seeing the results of our creativity.
7. The return of DFest or the emergence of a new one to replace it
Someone mentioned this. DFest was great for us and had a chance to be even better. It's a real shame that it's gone. It looked great on Tulsa. Perhaps we can get back there. Large music festivals in urban areas aren't that common. Ours showcased our incredible looking downtown and some of our great venues. You want creative young people to want to live in Tulsa? Things like DFest are a part of that allure.
My wildcard
8. A sound stage/miniature studio city
I'd love to see us work to establish Tulsa as a place for filmmaking and creativity in general. The economic impact of filmmaking is tremendous and Tulsa has a great deal to offer in terms of geography, architecture, multiple seasons, etc. We also have a creative talent base here and a history of excellence in film and music. Tulsa has a bit of an arts personality. It would be tremendous if our citizens could recognize this asset and work to exploit it. Tulsa is often considered to be a city without an identity. When we're mentioned, our past is referenced, which is nice, but I'd like to be known for what we are right now...and I'd like for that to be that we're a leader in creativity (film, music, art) and energy (oil, gas, alternative energies). Creative Energy. We can get to the place where people think of us and think nice things, but it will have to be because of bold decisions about where we want to go. Look up how Indianapolis just decided that they were going to be a sports town. They built an NFL stadium with no NFL team. They're hosting this year's Super Bowl. You guys referenced Austin, Portland, etc. Those cities all attract young, creative people (which in turn attract the types of employers that employ them). This should be our primary objective...keeping and attracting creative talent.
Summary. I really like this conversation. You guys have made some great points and shared some really cool ideas. I like the comments about figuring out who we're aiming at and defining our personality. I couldn't agree more. My thoughts there, having profiled my guests at the restaurants over the years, is as follows.
- Our downtown working crowd has room to grow. There's plenty of office space downtown and we should be working to fill it. Part of that will come from doing things like the 5th street corridor I mentioned earlier. All of those commercial property owners agree that if their bottom floors have cool things going on, their top floors will increase in demand. Regardless, the comments regarding downtown workers are right on. More workers = more housing demand = more entertainment options = more workers.
- Our residents should/will continue to be a mix of newly divorced people, traveling professionals, college students, empty nesters, and young singles or young marrieds with no kids. I know some people want us to be New York and have something for families, etc. That's fine, but that's not our target market. If people want to try to raise kids in downtown with no yard and a smaller floorplan, that's their decision...most Tulsans are not going to do that, and frankly, downtown doesn't need them to. Tulsa has places for those folks. My family is like that. We're not moving downtown. There's nowhere for the trampoline.
- Tulsa can do better with visitors. We've got a top notch facility in the BOK Center, an amazing asset in The Cains Ballroom, and Rt. 66 running right through our city (and our downtown). I think "visitors" is our largest potential area for growth. They're great for the local economy and they use far fewer resources than citizens. The new museums will also help this as people from the area will also come to visit. Back to Rt. 66 for a second. The fact that we've failed to capitalize on the presence of Rt. 66 in our city is more of a shame than people act like it is. Look up some stats on Rt. 66 tourism. We're really missing it. Downtown has a great opportunity to capitalize on it, as does The Pearl District, Red Fork, The River, Kendall Whittier, etc. If this works, it will be the thread that connects all of the significant up and coming areas in Tulsa...with downtown and The River at the center of it.
Forgive the long post, but I couldn't resist. I'm a dork for this stuff.
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