The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

Heard it sold and the property behind it....Supposedly an Abuelo's is going in there.....Makes no sense to me.....

As long as it's pedestrian friendly I don't care what goes in there.

Makes sense that something other than a carwash go there, but Abuelos?  Come on.  I can make better Mexican food in my kitchen.

"I really like the one that I ate at in Dallas. The food there was so yummy!!!"  ::)

Lots of people like Abuelos.

I'm not sure why, or who, but they exist.

Probably the same people that like Ted’s.

Funny, we just got back from eating at Smoke tonight and I was thinking the view of the car wash was not the best view from the front window.  Can’t say Abuelo’s will be an improvement.

I use the car wash more than I would use Abuelos.

Does the zoning actually require it to be?  I know the newer buildings where Chipotle is located were built facing the sidewalk with all parking behind, but wasn't sure if that was mandated.  All new buildings on Cherry Street should be pedestrian friendly. 

I'm surprised it isn't a Ted's

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No, sadly enough the zoning doesn't require it to be, actually the zoning requires it be auto oriented.  The developer of that new building you mentioned actually had to go before the board and get an exception to NOT have to tear out more buildings around him to meet the minimum parking requirements for instance.

I actually like Ted's. Well, the Tulsa Hills one. But I'm not as adverse to loud as you are. With two small children, every meal is loud.

Ted's is a 'last resort' Mexican food place for me.  Which means if I'm dragged along during a work lunch, I won't complain about it, but there are certain items on their menu that I will eat, and many I won't.

It sort of reminds me of a little more upscale El Chico....

It's the only place I've had rice on Nachos.

Seems like a good spot for an Embassy. 
Not sure about a mexican food embassy though.

So it has to meet parking minimums for a restaurant, but the planning board still has to approve the site plan.  I would think anything not in character with the rest of the businesses on the street would get turned down, which is why we see new buildings in Cherry Street and Brookside facing the sidewalk.  Now if we can just get the code to also reduce parking requirements then we would be in better shape as these districts evolve.  I hope eventually the streetscape on 15th can be improved; the angled parking is fine but there needs to be bump-outs at the intersections and better sidewalks, with more trees.

Hoping this isn't another chain, Cherry St has plenty of those already and is already saturated with Mexican food.  

Abuelos would be the 4th Tex-Mexicanish chain restaurant on this stretch of 15th (Chipotle, Mi Cocina, Qdoba), plus a local Mexican joint - Chimi's.  Seems that type of food is pretty well covered from low end to high end.

Nonetheless, replacing the car wash would be good for Cherry St., especially if whatever is built maintains the character of the rest of the street.

Yeah Mexican really doesn't make sense here.  A big patio area on 15th would be nice though.

The empty lot to the north has some really big old trees, hopefully they can preserve some of them for what would likely be the parking area.  There are newer townhomes just to the north (the brightly colored ones).

Hopefully they will build to the street to match the area, they must understand that the zero setbacks on Cherry Street are what make this street work and helps to bring the crowds. As long as they build for form over function then we will at least have a new building when Abuelo's goes under.

Shouldn’t be a foreign concept to them, since the one in Hicktown, er Bricktown is a zero setback building, but so is pretty much everything else there.

(http://www.eastontowncenter.com/Portals/0/graphics/tenants/photo_tenant_abuelos.jpg)

or

(http://images.citysearch.net/assets/imgdb/4b/3c/6b/45/15/f2/bd/c1/67/a6/ff/19/d3/82/c/9e/8/0/4/1/7678041.JPG)

Angled parking is awful! Needs to be parallel parking on one side with bike lanes on each side. I don't care if people can't find a spot. Bike safety is more important.

Biking on 15th was scary before and even more so with the angled parking.  Since they just changed it I don't see it going back to parallel anytime soon. 13th and 14th are better alternatives for biking in the area.

I don’t care how they configure it, there is simply too much traffic, too many turn ins, and too many distractions to the motorists to even think about riding a bicycle down Cherry St. from Utica to Peoria.  Change the parking configuration all you like, it will never be safe on a bike.

Its barely safe for pedestrians...I don't ride my bike on Cherry Street unless that is my destination.

I jog through Cherry Street all the time.  You have to slow down to go around pedestrians but that's no biggie.  Crossing the street is admittedly not ideal.  The worst part of jogging through the area is smelling the good food and seeing people having drinks and enjoying themselves and hoping your run ends faster so that you can partake.

Has there ever been a proposal to turn 15th from Peoria to Utica into a car-free zone? The road is pretty narrow, but would make a great walkable boulevard. Not sure where folks would park then, but it seems to be one of the most ideal places for a full pedestrian takeover.

Interesting idea but this is Tulsa.  We've taken an intersection in DT and made it pedestrian friendly and then ripped it up and made it car friendly again.

Actually that area of downtown did not have pedestrian zoning.

During the late 70s and 80s lots of cities lots of small to medium sized cities tried the "pedestrian mall" concept.  One city I was reading about, in the late 90s noticed that theirs had died and did some research about what other cities had done.  They noticed a trend.  Every city that had pedestrian zoning in their pedestrian mall area, the area had flourished.  Every city that did not have pedestrian zoning in their pedestrian mall area, the area had failed. Any 5 year old could understand the concept (a pedestrian mall should have pedestrian zoning). Too bad we apparently don't have anyone at the top in our city with the intelligence of a 5 year old.

 Tulsa does not have pedestrian/transit friendly zoning in it's downtown and did not have pedestrian zoning in the pedestrian mall area (and subsequently saw numerous developments which basically gutted the pedestrian friendly nature of large sections of main street.  Btw, the city that did the research, changed their zoning to pedestrian friendly zoning in their pedestrian mall area and it has since become one of the booming bright spots in their downtown.

I don't however think that Cherry Street would work at this stage as a pedestrian only area, but would benefit greatly with some pedestrian friendly zoning.

Where I get confused is what is “pedestrian zoning” exactly?  I don’t think Main Mall could have been more walkable than it was.  What improvements does pedestrian zoning provide that helps an area like that?

I suspect some of the failure of the pedestrian mall on Main Street in downtown was also due to terrible timing that came along with a fairly sour economy in Tulsa in the early 1980’s and a lot of energy-dependent jobs which used to be downtown had gone to either the suburbs or Houston.  Williams moved much of their operations to the office park at 66 & Yale that now houses Warren Clinic and various other companies.

Interesting, just as soon as I wrote that, I pulled up this old blog from Batesline from 2005 that indicated this was a dying trend around the rest of the country when this was instituted here in the late 1970’s.

http://www.batesline.com/archives/2005/07/lost-tulsa-the.html

Never mentioned zoning.  Just would've been a motherf'er to drive through.

Pedestrian zoning will create a contiguous area of pedestrian friendly development.  Aka, development that is attractive to people to walk past, that is engaging, that is permeable (lots of windows to see in and out of, and doors with people going in and out of them), that is comfortable and takes into account pedestrians needs as it relates to weather (includes awnings and or loggias and or trees, to shade from heat and sun, protect from rain, calm the wind, etc.)

Pedestrian zoning would not have allowed the Tulsa World to have built that monstrosity there on main street as it is, nor would there be that pedestrian unfriendly wall that my kites are painted on, nor would that plaza and those black buildings have been allowed to have been built as they are either, then there are also other non-pedestrian friendly developments all up and down main street in that area.  All of those buildings could of course have been built, but not built as they were as affronts to pedestrian traffic rather than attractors to pedestrian traffic. If the area had been zoned as pedestrian friendly, then even if downtown suffered other changes, once the tide changed and growth began anew, this area would have been in a far better position to take advantage of that rather than be in the difficult position it is in now with large, anchored in, "pedestrian dead zones" hurting those few pedestrian friendly developments which remain.

Remember how Waite Phillips decided to buy up the property across from the Philtower in order to develop it himself in order to make sure that what went in across from his investment would be a positive rather than a negative?  Not all of us can afford to do that which is where zoning can help in a downtown, pedestrian friendly environment.  Think of the poor businesses now facing that TW building on main street.  That facade hurts the building owners and the businesses in them. Not all streets can have pedestrian friendly development along them even in a great downtown, but surely thats what you would want on your "pedestrian mall" and your main street of all places.

Yes indeed other situations conspired to hurt downtown and other pedestrian areas of the city, like 6th street in the Pearl District.  Loss of interest in those types of areas as peoples attentions shifted to the suburbs, exodus of numerous companies from downtown, demographic shifts, etc.  However, redevelopment did occur in those areas during that time, but that development rather than reinforcing any pedestrian fabric was more often than not of the type that now stands as barriers to redeveloping these areas as the trend has shifted back to people being interested in living in a good urban environment. One can understand peoples ignorance of these things say 30 years ago, but during the last few decades there is really no excuse for not having rezoned these areas to have begun promoting pedestrian friendly development instead of auto oriented development, for the "writing has been on the wall" so to speak for quite some time now showing what went wrong with these areas and what the future was going to hold if we continued on our current path (as we are still doing downtown). 

Don't we now have a better zoning code for the Pearl District?  Why not expand that south to include Cherry Street, and west to include downtown?

Artist,

I guess I’m still lost on the issue of pedestrian-friendly.  I’m thinking back to when I was the ad director at Urban Tulsa in the early 1990’s when our first office was in an outer-facing small storefront in the Pythian Building.  Fifth Street terminated just east of our office and Main was still the pedestrian mall from 6th street to the Williams complex.  I used to walk to all my clients up and down there as well as further areas around downtown.  Partly because I enjoy walking, but also due to the donkey-pain of finding parking and plugging a meter if I drove a few blocks away in downtown.

I thought of pedestrian-friendly meaning wide sidewalks and places to shop or eat being in short, convenient walking distances.  Renberg’s still operated a store downtown and there was a gallery or two and perhaps a gift shop on the mall, if I recall correctly.  There were plenty of places to eat or bank.  I never thought of monoliths like the Tulsa World or the big wall at the Adam’s Mark (what it was called then) or the Darth Vader towers as being pedestrian-unfriendly.

I think of Cherry Street as being pedestrian-friendly since the sidewalks span from Utica to Peoria and there is no shortage of retail store fronts or eateries to explore.  Utica Square is another development I think of as pedestrian-friendly, and sounds as if most of it would fit the definition as you explain it.  Complexes like Tulsa Hills are not pedestrian-friendly in any way I can conjure in my mind.

I’m not challenging you on your interpretation versus mine, simply pointing out I’m fascinated that there are different ways of viewing what is or is not pedestrian-friendly.  All this time, I’ve always thought of downtown being that way when, by the planning definitions of it, it is not.  I always enjoy getting your take on development and learning from your posts.

Parts of Cherry Street are pedestrian friendly, but there are some obstacles.

1. Traffic and pedestrians are jammed together and at odds. I often see people trying to get into their car but can't open the door because of traffic, or they can't cross the street because no one will stop for them.

2. The back of Marquette creates a dead zone on 15th and traffic congestion during events

3. There are no protected pedestrian crossings

4. Lots of bike racks, but no bike lanes.

Thank you for the response.  Want to point out something you may not have noticed in your response that goes to some of my points. First you do mention that pedestrian friendly means wide sidewalks and places to shop or eat being in short convenient walking distances.  I too agree those are important.  Then you mention "monoliths like the Tulsa World or the big wall at the Adam’s Mark (what it was called then) or the Darth Vader towers as being pedestrian-unfriendly"  I would like to point out that those are NOT full of places to shop or eat.  

And to continue, pedestrian friendly is not just about what is there, but how it is there.  How "it" interacts with the street, or should we say, wide sidewalks.  

Might want to watch this video it has some examples of good streets.  Look for "fine grain" (aka lots of small buildings or various entrances and exits in large buildings, lots of shops, restaurants next to each other and or interesting things, interesting architecture, etc. along the sidewalks, and so on). Notice all the awnings, loggias, covered areas of all sorts that protect people from the elements, and or trees (yes indeed, even Utica Square has those), and notice how this compares to the TW building, the Adams Mark wall, and the Darth Vader towers, etc. which do not have these elements and are not places where people would like to walk.  

http://www.streetfilms.org/melbourne/  

We can't get TMAPC to approve the pearl district zoning for the pearl district yet.

I have not noticed before, but are there flashing crosswalk signs on Cherry St.?  Flashers and “Yield To Pedestrians In Crosswalk” might help the plight of crossing since most motorists ignore the basic law that you are supposed to do just that.  Oklahoma seems to be the only place out of anywhere MC and I go where motorists are ignorant or indifferent of crosswalk laws.  Hell most people now seem to consider red lights and stop signs as optional.

Actually, the Williams Forum still existed at that time, though it was waning down to the skating rink and was close to being taken over for office space.  When it opened in the early/mid ’80’s it was a pretty vibrant shopping and eating destination, IIRC.  I’ll take a look at the video when I get time a little later today.

Lol, what I meant was not full of outside sidewalk/pedestrian friendly places.

Someone from Tulsa upon visiting Melbourne would be saying: “This is the most unfriendly city for cars!”  ;D

I get a better idea what kind of development and street structure you are talking about now.  The issue becomes how do you incentivize a private/public partnership to develop pedestrian areas like Melbourne has when much of what we have downtown is re-purposed slab-side buildings with wide boulevards?  That was more or less what was done with Main Mall albeit without much coordination from the property owners.

Interesting when you mentioned Waite Phillips and the fellow in the film was talking about the arcades.  First thing that popped in my head was the lobby of the Philcade and it’s original intended purpose.

I think the biggest problem you have with our city leaders is what people like myself have been used to for decades here.  I remember going downtown with my mother in the early 1970’s and seeing people walking about at lunch time.  Buses dropping off people on their way to work in the mornings and picking them up in the evenings.  To me sidewalks have always meant pedestrian-friendly (for the most part).  I think that’s the kind of myopia that you see with leaders like Dewey who think the same way.  (Geez, I just put myself in the same cart as Dewey?  WTH is wrong with me!)

There again, you are The Artist and you see things many of us don’t.  It will probably take a younger generation of leadership to have a better vision of what an inner city looks like or even smaller districts around the city. 

For my part, I’m simply working toward a hoped-for working retirement in a small community in Southern Colorado.  I dream of wide-open spaces and little congestion.

Definitely reinforcing an idea I have wanted to tackle (once I make the time for it) which is to make a video showing good, pedestrian friendly, urban development ideas and "not good" ones lol.  I can talk/type till the cows come home but sometimes a picture can indeed be worth a thousand words.  Even that video I showed you was not the best and did not get across many concepts.  As for incentivizing to develop pedestrian areas, well the main thing you really need is zoning, Form Based Codes are one type (though a lot of them hate the comparison of Zoning and Form Based Codes).  We zone for auto oriented development and do quite well in creating that type of development as a result.  All ya got to do is do the same thing for pedestrian oriented development. 

The PUD for this development goes for approval June 4.  The site plan shows demo of the car wash and one home behind Full Moon.  A new 2 story building (35 ft tall) constructed up to the sidewalk from the alley to Trenton along 15th.  Looks like 9,200 SF of restaurant space with a setback for a patio closer to the alley, and 9,200 SF of office space on the second floor.  Parking to the north along Trenton and an expanded parking area along St Louis north of Full Moon's lot (where the home will be demolished).  This should be a big improvement over the car wash...now we'll have to see what goes in there..

Too bad they have to add the parking lot

Any visual for the site plan?  It sounds like a good deal.  Up to the sidewalk, office space included.  Parking is necessary because Cherry Street draws from a wide area, glad to see its in the back consistent with the rest of the neighborhood.  I jog through Cherry Street quite often and it gets busy with cars and can be difficult to cross sometimes, but drivers seem to be pretty good about obeying crosswalks and allowing people to cross.  I really hope its something other than an Abuelos.

Cherry Street now needs a hotel.  I live very close and I hate that when family and friends visit they have to stay somewhere farther away (my home is small and they generally prefer hotels to my couch).

http://www.tmapc.org/tmapc/PUD-811.pdf (http://www.tmapc.org/tmapc/PUD-811.pdf)

Glad to see 2 stories but also wish they could just have parking to the north and not have to add more along St Louis.  FWIW the rendering in the PUD application doesn't look like an Abuelo's but who knows.  :P

This was one of the last really under-utilized parcels in Cherry St.  The other ones are the parking lots at Lincoln Square in front of Jason's Deli/Chimi's and the empty lot that Bumgarner owns (or owned?) at 14th & Utica.  I'll throw the A&W/Long John Silver at Peoria in there too.

As for hotels, I agree it's puzzling that there isn't one in midtown.  I'd like to see something like a Westin or JW Marriott on the H&P property by St John/Utica Square.  Great views from that spot.

What has happened to the Savoy near 6th & Peoria?  Is it still a going hotel/short term stay or whatever it was?  i never hear anything about it

Seemingly closed.

I wish TMAPC/our council would drop parking requirements and/or get 1-2 parking structures in the area.

Hotel Savoy closed?  If so I imagine it would be a good candidate for an apartment/condo conversion.  I had forgotten about the Campbell Hotel on 11th.

The one good thing about seeing a near buildout on Cherry St is that hopefully we won't see more parking lots encroach into the neighborhood unless there is some larger scale redevelopment.  I really want to see a better streetscape on 15th with more ped crossings, that is a big issue, and more shade trees planted.  That western sun can be brutal during the summer.

No updates to their Facebook page in a couple of years.  There’s a review on Trip Advisor from someone who stayed there in December of 2011, and last FB posts were in Jan. of 2012.

That could be a great opportunity for someone as the Pearl continues to gentrify. 

This really should complete the street.  The carwash really was out of place.  I really like the renderings.  All the area needs now is a mixed use development that includes a hotel at the 14th and Utica lot.

111 parking spaces for a restaurant and 9,000sf of office space? That is patently ridiculous. I'm quite pleased that it will be behind the building, but all that is really accomplishing in this case is blighting the residential neighborhood along St. Louis instead of 15th Street. Given that St. Louis is the street that goes under the highway, it seems like it ought to be one we focus on keeping pedestrian friendly. Hot expanses of asphalt are not pedestrian friendly. Nor is it particularly kind to the neighbor across the street who instead of facing a home will be facing a parking lot and the wonder of headlights beaming in their windows at all hours.

I'm not saying that zero parking is appropriate, but it seems like the vacant lot behind the car wash, which they are also converting to parking, would be sufficient. A client of mine owns a very similar building on Dickson Street in Fayetteville. They have a similar amount of parking to what I'm talking about and seem to do just fine.

If they really feel like they need 111 spaces, they could put some of them underneath the building and raise the structure by 10 feet or so. If the zoning code requires 111 spaces, we need to get out our torches and pitchforks.

This where a modified zoning code for certain areas of the city, like Cherry Street and Brookside, would be good to have so that the neighborhoods surrounding these corridors are protected and parking requirements set for more suburban areas aren't applied to an urban district.  It won't save this site plan, unless the planning board denies it, but if such a code is put in place it could lead to the eventual redevelopment of some of these parking areas since the parking minimums would be lower.  I agree I hate to see St Louis with less density since it's an important connector between Cherry St and Hillcrest/Forest Orchard to the north.

Outside of 14th & Utica what other areas could potentially be redeveloped requiring more parking intrusion into the neighborhood?  Lincoln Park is good candidate and the only place so could realistically see some kind of structured parking if the lots along 15th are developed.  Maybe the Subway that has the parking in front.

Need a light?

Apparently. If all 18,500sf of the building were one or more restaurants, it would require 185 parking spaces, which would take up more than 8 times the footprint of the building itself. It's like our intention is in fact to make it impossible to keep our city from going in the crapper.

We need to lower parking requirements citywide by some decent percentage. Maybe a tiered level like 50 for the first 5,000sqft, 40 for the next 5,000, etc.

One would think that "bad government telling businesses and property owners what to do" Republicans would be all for getting rid of minimum parking requirements all together.

This isn't going to a chain.....

This parking issue is ruining Tulsa.

Would nice if we could have a reasonable requirement... or even progressive one.
We already know the current car/sqr-footage requirement is excessively high and counter to walkability and density

I don't think I've ever factored in how much parking a city or destination has when planning a vacation.   If it's worth visiting, parking is probably a pain.
Which comes first:   cool destination, or nowhere to park, or just good city planning and codes?

Not to get too sci-fi.. it's looking like driverless cars will be here in my lifetime.   Will we still need a bunch of nearby surface parking when our cars can drop us off at the door and go park themselves a half mile away?    The rest of the country will be using teleportation and we will still have minimum parking space requirements.

The carwash has been demolished.  Any confirmation on what the anchor tenant will be?  Still Abuelos?  I'm kind of hoping not.

I thought we confirmed it wasn't Abuelos

I've heard that a brew pub is a possibility. The restaurant (brew pup or not) aspect will be local and not a chain.

Beer is good.  Local beer is even better.

I spoke with someone involved in the project who confirmed that it would be a locally-owned brew pub. The developers already own a very successful local bar/restaurant.

That would be a very good addition to the area.

I'm excited. 

Do we have any hard source on that?  I've got smug jerks telling me it's going to be a Mexican joint.

Craft cervezeria pub.  It could work!

That actually sounds pretty cool.  Craft Mexican style beers with tacos.  :)

Z's taco shop downtown should drop the sad market side of things and put in some vats

I dunno I think Tulsa has enough pubs and restaurants, a Mexican joint may make a better anchor. Don't ya'all think Tulsa is over saturated with beer/grille/restaurant joints? I'm just sayin.

There’s plenty of places to get tortillas and refried beans already.

There can never be too many

Please stay downwind.
 
 ;D

Bar & Grill focused on good beer going in on this spot.  Same group involved with a couple established spots on Brookside.  Don't expect construction to start too quickly.  They're trying to get a few other projects finished first.

Oh good God, they bought 7 parcels of land so they can plop down a 140-space surface parking lot. It's like they're out to kill Cherry Street or something. That's 42,000 square feet of surface parking lots.

Tulsa World article (http://www.tulsaworld.com/business/realestate/three-restaurants-coming-to-new-building-on-cherry-street/article_b03970e1-0631-5756-a791-aa5b919e8786.html)

(http://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/tulsaworld.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/ba/7ba22431-2b49-515f-b3ce-699922dd811c/566b28f0152d3.image.jpg?resize=760%2C363)


Don't Jenks my Cherry Street.

Get a trolley going up and down Cherry street, close it to auto traffic, allow "roadies" on 15th from Utica to Peoria and we would never need parking on there again.

Not sure which seven parcels immediately near there they could have bought. Oh well, the parking lots are future development space to me.

Edit: Also, Cherry Street does not have parking problem.

It's probably the empty lots of the north and west of the car wash.

But if those spots are behind the building, it does actually keep Cherry walk-friendly, and adds to the number of people who could/would visit there.   I agree that for the most part there isn't a huge parking problem, but it can get tight at times.   This situation is basically the same as what already exists on Brookside, with the large lots in behind Cosmo Cafe, Cafe Ole, The Brook, and In The Raw.

(http://i.imgur.com/sjRjF2G.png)

Lots that were bought and razed, yeah.   900k spent in land and they just want to pave it.  Maybe they could have spent less on land and built vertically?  Who knows...

Oh, and the two lots still at the corner of 15th and St Louis are Full Moon's old building.

Yes it does.....

I think the most I have ever walked is like 3 blocks. That's nothing.  Once it gets to a quarter mile or so then lets talk. 

But anywhoo, wish we could get good transit going and people park say in the vast sea of parking on the south side of downtown.  With good transit that would be more convenient than wandering around the back alleys of Cherry Street.

Our City is dumb.

We have few areas in the city that are drawing in quality, dense, urban development... East Village of downtown, Brady, Cherry Street and Brookside. And we are taking 65,000 square feet of one, building an 11,000 sq/ft footprint and paving the other 54,000 square feet.  God willing it goes to Condos later.

I'd rather leave them interest little bungalows.

BUT ---

The project adds vertical frontage and adds overall density to the area.

Win and lose. Probably more win than lose.

I think you're probably right about this.

For what it's worth I'd rather they had taken the Cherry Street Villas than some interesting bungalows. Those things are kind of dumpy.

The problem with private parking lots is that it's not necessarily legal for people to park in them.  Is this lot being built with the understanding that it's for all Cherry Street patrons? Or just for the properties it abuts?  Parking needs to be managed at the neighborhood level, not the lot level.

At one point they were looking at structured parking on the two St Louis lots, but I don't think the office leases worked out to provide the cash flow to do that.  The pro on this building is it has office space.  But, the lease rates to make the project were top of the market for anywhere in the city.  Adding daytime pedestrians is a good thing for Cherry Street IMO.  Also, I believe only three of the 10-23 lots between this development and 14th St are all multi tenant "lofts" with the re-purposed fire station being on 14th St.  This would have to be one of the more dense multi-use blocks in the city.

Nonsense.

I pretty much avoid Cherry Street b/c I CAN'T ever find parking when I want to.  I'm a busy man, I don't have time to drive around for 25 minutes to find a parking spot so I can enjoy my lunch.

Cherry Street over lunch is about 1/10th as busy as Cherry Street on Farmers Market day, and on Farmers Market day the street itself is closed (removing a bunch of parking). Yet I seldom have to park further away than 3 blocks. Whenever I have gone to Cherry Street for lunch, I don't think I've ever parked further away than 2 blocks.  Instead of driving around for 25 minutes looking for a closer parking spot - just park 2 blocks away and spend 2 minutes walking. If you don't have 2 minutes to walk, then you're too busy for lunch. Have your assistant grab you a sub and stay at the desk.

What people will have to understand is that an urban space is different than a suburban space. If you want to enjoy dense urban neighborhoods (Cherry Street, Brookside, Brady, Blue Dome, East End, etc.) then eventually you have to give up vast surface parking lots. If we installed parking garages at the ends of Cherry Street like some are clamoring for, people would still drive around for 25 minutes looking for a closer spot because the parking garage is 4 blocks away.

Taking advantage of the automobile centric subsidized parking.

 ;D

Kind of. Almost always on-street parking.

I was thinking "Free roads and highways (use taxes like tolls, the gas tax, and tags only pay 50% of road costs)." might be involved.

Hence the "kind of."

Michael Overall: New Cherry Street Development Sets the Gold Standard for Tulsa (http://www.tulsaworld.com/homepagelatest/michael-overall-new-cherry-street-development-sets-the-gold-standard/article_82e298ba-c514-5b11-bd14-ac8b9db084cc.html)

I remember, years ago, getting a window seat at the old Bourbon Street Cafe and looking out across the street — Cherry Street, in reality, not Bourbon Street — and mentioning to my wife that it was only a matter of time before the car wash over there would disappear and be replaced by some kind of restaurant or retail development. You can put a car wash anywhere, so why waste valuable real estate in a trendy area like Cherry Street?

It took longer than I expected, with the car wash outliving Bourbon Street, which is now a restaurant called Smoke. But my prophecy did finally come true last year when bulldozers turned the northwest corner of 15th Street and Trenton Avenue into a patch of dirt.

My first reaction when driving past the newly vacant lot was, “Yep, I knew it.” But my second reaction, about half a second later, was “Uh-oh, that’s what I was afraid of.”

For one thing, I used that car wash all the time, so where am I supposed to vacuum the crumbs out of my son’s car seat? But more important, I was worried about what kind of monstrosity was going to be built there.

The old car wash wasn’t exactly gorgeous, but it could have been worse. An architect who fancies himself to be an artiste might see a traditional, historic area like Cherry Street and want to drop a giant glass cube in the middle of it, or maybe a windowless LEGO block or an oddly shaped Guggenheim wannabe. Worse yet, the developers might want to go the cheap route and build a generic strip mall with an ugly parking lot in front.

So I waited nervously for months to see what kind of damage might be inflicted on the neighborhood’s urban fabric. But now, with the final touches being put on the new building, it’s safe to say that the developers have gotten it right. In fact, they may have set the new gold standard for infill projects in Tulsa.

Two stories of red brick with subtle and well-crafted details — coming right up to the sidewalk, with parking in back — the $6.5 million building will fit comfortably next to its older neighbors without drawing much attention to itself. But when people do notice it, they will see a handsome and dignified edifice that will look as good a generation from now as it will on the day it opens — which should be sometime this spring. With 22,000 square feet of space, it will house three restaurants, including a Prohibition-themed craft-beer pub called Roosevelt that sounds like it might become my favorite place in the entire world.

For Tulsa to be the vibrant city that we all want it to be, midtown and downtown are going to need a lot more infill developments in the years ahead. Hopefully, investors will visit Cherry Street to see how it’s done.

Weird. I was sitting at Smoke Thursday night thinking the same things. Nice addition. Great to see some franchise didn't scoop it up or a strip center. BTW, there is a pretty decent car wash about a mile away on 11th and Birmingham.

I don't mean to bust people's bubble - but they is still a far cry from "A Gold Standard of Development". A move in the right direction? For sure. The parking lots behind this building still encroached on housing. If this truly was a Gold Standard Development then were the surface parking lots are going in there would have been housing instead - and the parking would have been underground. So no, this is not a gold standard of development and a neighborhood like Cherry Street can do better still.

And I dislike his need for all the architecture to be similar to other buildings in the area.

Gold standard for Tulsa. 😐

Cherry Street definitely needs a shared parking solution.  I think it's at critical mass that it could support a parking structure in a strategic place.  I'm all for transit, but reality is that people use their cars and need a place to park.  Lets find a middle ground solution between no parking and oversized lots. 

Bike lanes...

Well it sounds like if I bring my father back I won't be visiting these areas with him and my aunt since you want no parking and nothing but bike lanes, we won't  visit  since they are wheelchair bound. Guess you just want able bodied people and not the handicapped.

How many people are going to get dressed up for a fancy dinner and ride a bicycle to dinner?  A casual bar stop maybe unless it's 98º at sunset in the summer.

No one is taking away anyone's right to drive.  There isn't a single place in Tulsa where parking is challenging by the standard of a major US city.  You can go downtown, Cherry Street, or Brookside at peak business on Friday night and have no trouble parking as long as you are willing to walk a few blocks. 

The problem is when we make every single store have sufficient on-site, off-street parking for peak business.  Taken together it results in a sea of parking.  What makes the Brady District and Cherry Street so great is that their urban forms are pre-parking.  It feels like a small town Main Street meant to be experienced on foot.

Finally, I challenge anyone to name a single great urban space in the United States where parking is plentiful and easy.  The greatest, most popular spots in every city - where you take out of towners and have your wedding photos - are universally built around people and not parking.

Uber

I bet you would be amazed at the number of out of towers that stop at my store downtown (granted many are from Europe) and when they ask about Cherry Street and how far away it is they go "Oh not far, we will walk."    So really, even Tulsans could use the ample parking around say the Boston Avenue Church and nearby to easily walk to the heart of Cherry Street.  Are we really so lazy that that is not an option?  That is actually a fairly pleasant walk from there.

There has to be enough handicap spots by law, you'll be covered there for sure. As you should be.

As TheArtist mentioned, take Uber.

I don't have, or want, a smartphone.

Plus, I am not going to take a cab or Uber from 111th & Memorial.

In my case, the question is academic anyway since I don't like to get dressed up to go out to dinner.  :D

There really isn't a strong debate at all for building larger roads and/or more parking lots. Bike lanes, Uber, Lyft, etc.

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/36.1518858,-95.9888691/36.1406486,-95.9755673/@36.1462448,-95.986531,16z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!4m1!3e2
It won't automatically come up in pedestrian mode.  Click the pedestrian symbol and it will change.

You probably won't find too many Americans willing to walk almost 1-1/2 miles, especially in bad weather.  It would be a good route for a (real) Trolley though.

Any chance they are thinking 1-1/2 Km?

Parking garages to replace surface parking downtown might make sense.  Uber, cabs, etc make sense within downtown but I think they are too expensive for long distances.  One of my friends in the Navy had another friend that had a car breakdown in Richmond, VA.  He had to take a cab to Va Beach (NAS Oceana).  It was r-e-a-l-l-y expensive. 

Uber doesn't want to comply with ADA requirements and discriminates against the handicapped.

Pointless argument because by law you have to have handicap spots. No one on this forum would debate against it. You're arguing for a very small minority and no one is disagreeing with you.

That's the equivalent of taking a cab from here to Oklahoma City.

I was just thinking about how expensive a cab would be from 111th & Memorial to downtown when I remembered that.

My buddy took one to that area a few weeks ago from Oneok and it was 17 bucks.

I just looked it up on the internet and it was about $40 each way including a 15% tip.

http://www.taxifarefinder.com/main.php?city=Tulsa-OK&from=8100+e+East+111th+Street+South%2C+Tulsa%2C+OK%2C+United+States&to=409+E+1st+St%2C+Tulsa%2C+OK%2C+United+States&fromCoord=36.00281090000001,-95.88609910000002&toCoord=36.1573241,-95.9869974

He used Uber. It's cheaper.

Even at $34 for a round trip, that's still a bit expensive to come to downtown for a couple of beers.

My immediate expense driving the Astro Van would be about 2 gallons of gas.  I don't recalculate my total ownership cost per mile for every trip I make.

It's the mindset, and I have fell victim to it as well. My wife and I spent an entire summer in New York during college and walked EVERYWHERE. I still recall a "pleasant relaxing walk" home one night consisting of a 2.5 mile walk through central park and down Madison Avenue at night (although we exited the park right at sunset  ;D). After college we moved to Bartlesville to an old house close to downtown. We were sitting on our porch one evening enjoying some unusually mild Oklahoma weather and could hear music in the distance. I had remembered there was an outdoor show in front of the Price Tower that day and I suggested we walk down there. It is roughly 3/4 of a mile from our old house to the Price Tower (similar to the Methodist to Cherry Street) and at that time we considered that too far. When I think about it, it is less about the actual distance than it is the scenery in between. New York has a lot of "distractions" along any route. Bartlesville (and Tulsa) not so much. Could people make those walks. Yes. Will they.........

I try to be one of those people that "reminds" others or instills in them this "new" idea/habit that "it's not that far and you can walk".    I think if there were more of us doing that, then we can begin to change the culture.  It's happened in other places.  Its really amazing how just a handful of people can make a difference.

It takes very little to do, other than remembering to take advantage of situations when they arrive.

The other day I was with a group of friends who met up over by the Hyatt downtown and we needed to go to the East End.  To my surprise as we were leaving to go there they all said "Lets just walk!"

It does work!

Every time someone comes into my store and says something about the parking downtown I laugh a little and say something about how lucky we are and how easy it is here compared to other cities, or "But isn't this a beautiful street to walk down, If more of Tulsa were this incredible I could walk forever!?".  I bet if they heard something like that from just one or two other people, most of them would change their tune.

I'm one. I don't drive if I'm going to have a drink and I take my bike if I'm only going a few miles. If I'm in a group we ride share.

I'm totally with you. It's all about interaction with the walker. If there are things to interact with, even just potentially it makes the walk "shorter". Walking through a sea of parking is the opposite of that. BUT, in this city we will always need to at least not be at war with the automobile, because it still represents customers that will be the large part of the base of most businesses anywhere in town. That being said, there is not a parking problem ANYWHERE in town and that is the mindset that needs to change. Let's all just be tactful about it. People don't like to be told they are wrong or irrational. If you can show them the better way and let them "discover" it people I believe will be more willing to change their habits.

My gawd! Can't we all just agree that the new building on Cherry Street is better than the old green car wash! Its not perfect because of many reasons but the problems with Cherry Street as a pedestrian friendly, mass transit corridor, residential oriented, affordable little neighborhood with charm, excitement and convenience started decades ago. By the time we address those problems successfully we'll all be living in tiny little houses stacked on flatbeds and trailered out each morning.

Can we also agree that it's better than other development being done around town.

"Gold Standard" simply means "better than everything else".   Frankly that's a low bar in this town.

Iron Pyrite standard? Or ChalkoPyrite. I forget a lot these days.

It is always interesting to me that when we travel my wife is open to walking more. Be it NYC, Boston, etc, etc, etc....we walk everywhere. Come back to Tulsa and she has a near meltdown if I park too far away from our ultimate destination downtown. My recent "parking in the middle of nowhere" incident was when I parked on Cameron between Main and Boulder and we "had to walk all the way" to The Woody Guthrie Center.

Uber makes sense within about 4-5 miles of downtown. From 15th and Harvard to downtown (about 3-4 miles), it is about $6-8 and can be up to $11 late night, but typically ~$15 round trip. That's cheap and very cheap if you carpool. Plus, taking uber feels pretty neat, like you're in a bigger city. Being chauffeured around at the press of a button! You can meet up and ride with others and not worry about where you end up vs a parked car.

If Uber/Lyft/cycling all pick up (and they seem to be), it will help tremendously with auto congestion in Cherry St/Downtown, even though parking is rarely if ever an issue. You almost need big empty parking lots to keep the suburbanites and South Tulsans coming in without complaining about parking.  :D