The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

Does anyone else find the Mayor's and councillor's comments on these subjects a bit unsettling?

I always have issues with those unfamiliar with our river boldly asserting the importance of "developing" it. What they mean by development is usually pretty vague and their familiarity is with the political/fundraising portion of development, not the reality of coping with the nature of the river. The real questions are, "shall we manipulate the river to produce polluted but waterfilled postcard ponds?" and "what type of development is acceptable on this type river?"

For instance, they often point to San Antonio and OKC as success stories but never talk details of just how that success is quantified and the related costs involved.

And I am really confused by remarks about educating our legislators (yeah that will go over well) about how cities need more revenue sources than what the state law allows, but in the same paragraph limit those possible sources by talking about it being "revenue neutral" (code for taking it from someone else's slice of the pie) and totally eliminating any consideration of a periodic or low level city income tax preferring to instead rob the county by taking property tax. Combine that with the governor's insistence that cities may not institute minimum wages. What you have is .......confusing.

I guess I shouldn't worry with the time frame being a decade or more and the history of failure of even good plans for river development but it is instructive to see how politics limits the growth of communities. Insistence on lowering taxes, failure to support wage earners and failure to acknowledge that the opposite of those views is bringing prosperity to other communities explains reams about Tulsa.

Please, don't invite me to the meetings. Done that. Futile. Scripted questions, little interaction and lots of emotion. It doesn't work except on paper. I want to hear what you folks think.

I haven’t deviated from my opinions on river development.  San Antonio and OKC are irrelevant in comparing to the Arkansas through Tulsa as the big commerce area are on fabricated ditches which run through the middle.  Personally, I’ve always liked the green space which makes the Arkansas more unique.  I wish the banks were better kept, but then again, it’s a nice mix of nature doing what it does on the banks of a prairie river and an area for recreation along-side.  If the Creeks want to busy up their end with all sorts of commercial enterprises, more power to them.  Also let them pay for their own LWD at Jenks if they want water in the more southern reaches of it’s Tulsa leg.

I do like the idea of low water dams in terms of making the river more stable for various water sports and recreation.  I simply think each municipality can pay for their own LWD, recreational facilities, and access.

If Tulsa wants a “river walk” like OKC or San Antonio, it would need to be Crow Creek or un-capping the buried creek along 18th & Boston.  We discussed this at length in the run- up to the river fleece tax vote in 2007.  

My opinion has evolved somewhat on that.  I really don’t understand our identity crisis where we think that Tulsa needs something or everything that Austin, San Antonio, OKC, Dallas, KC, etc. has.

 

I haven't checked your previous posts on this subject, but I seem to detect a bias against the dams in general and not just with the monetary concerns.  In particular, why would you suggest the lakes would be "polluted but waterfilled postcard ponds"?  To the best of my knowledge (and I obviously yield to those here with additional information), all the health issues related to the river have been discussed and of all the various issues, pollution is not a problem that would deter development.

The second point, related to quantifying the success stories of San Antonio and OKC, is interesting.  I'm sure those types of studies have  been done, particularly regarding OKC who went through a fairly lengthy evaluation prior to building their "river".   But as to "success", is there any doubt that both developments have been wildly successful?  To discard obvious success by asking for specific criteria seems to be a biased perspective.  But the two above examples are both artificial creations.  Tulsa has a real, actual, river.  Look at Austin, or numerous other cities, to see how successful these type developments can be.

I mention Austin above because I am more familiar with what they have down there.  As an example of the kinds of ancillary things that could be developed along the river, see the Texas Rowing Center Summer Camps:  http://www.texasrowingcenter.com/summer_camps.htm    Very cool.  We sent my daughter (and friends) for a couple of years, and now my son will go this year.   There is activity all up and down that river, and while it will undoubtedly be different up here, there is no reason to expect that Tulsa can't achieve a similar outcome.

Here is  a link to questions on water quality in the river:

http://www.riverparks.org/how-safe-is-the-water-in-the-arkansas-river/

Also, had not seen this article before.  Thought it did a pretty good job of encapsulating all the river issues:

http://www.tulsatoday.com/2014/03/28/tulsas-arkansas-river-challenge/

Tulsa’s rowing community will be well-served once repairs to the Zink Lake dam are complete.  Are your kids in the TRC juniors program?  Great program!  One of my daughter’s is a veteran of it and she got me into rowing via her interest.  I have not rowed actively in a few years due to the flow issues with the LWD.

(http://static.flickr.com/99/315989926_8398cc95d5_o.jpg)

(http://static.flickr.com/118/315996774_607b08e192_o.jpg)

Your point?

No need for photo sarcasm.

There's always need for photo sarcasm.

I really don't see any chance of city or county driven river development happening.

New River Plan Floated

http://publicradiotulsa.org/post/new-river-plan-floated (http://publicradiotulsa.org/post/new-river-plan-floated)


Even KWGS is posting the story like it means diddly.

Actually, the photo is important because it is a reminder of how that silly plan's legacy is poisoned electorial waters for river development that any good future plan has to overcome.

I don’t know if it is unsettling, but my problem with talk of “river development” is it is so generic and undefined.  In reality, Tulsa’s portion of the Arkansas River is already quite developed.  The east bank is covered by a good (and a section of it soon to be a fantastic park) and next to the park are residential neighborhoods.  The west bank is covered by 2 refineries, apartments, a park, a concrete plant, a city maintenance facility, a PSO power plant, and a sewage treatment plant.  Any redevelopment along the river, presumptively along the west bank between 21st St. and highway 75 is going to be expensive because the 2 existing commercial property owners (concrete plant and apartments) will want to cash in big time.

What’s undeveloped is the actual river itself.  Fixing the one dam we have and building a couple more so that there is better visual appeal to the river is not a bad thing, and creating some recreational opportunities for rowing and rafting would also be a cool thing.  I just don’t know if the benefits are sufficient to justify the cost, particularly given that we really don’t hear anyone describing the likely benefits in any detail.

Our needs/wants are many, but our resources are few.  Let’s stay focused on our investments in downtown and look to expand on it by focusing on transit and further improvements in this proven success story.

At the risk of boring those who know my past I will do a quick synopsis. I hold the distinction of being the only person since the turn of the 20th century to have operated a ferry/shuttle/canoe/kayak excursion boat operation on the Arkansas river in Tulsa. It was a controversial, enlightening, exhilarating business that struggled under RPA for about three summers. I was the recipient of much hands on education in river lore, river misconceptions and the reality of how these dams work and the damage they do.

That experience plus my business degree make me quite skeptical of "river development". I want to know what development is, what it will cost and how it will change the river. At least a projection of what "success" might return in real $$. I supported the last proposed project because they were wise enough to include actual river activities (white water related) and provision for allowing interconnections between proposed "lakes". Both of those faded away over time and are no longer part of the conversation. That's a shame. Without them one wonders if just putting water in the river is a good investment. No way to know really till someone yields details.

We lost striper fishing when the Zink dam went in.  We lost a couple dozen people to undertow when the SS dam went in. I would swim in the upper reaches of the river from Newblock up to the Keystone dam but not below 11th street unless the flow is above 10000cfs. Don't trust them entirely. Fertilizer run-off, geese droppings, stagnant water, leaks from upstream operations and trash have all taken their toll. Walk into Zink lake at low water and be observant. Take a sample and test it yourself.

The dams themselves. Why? There are other ways to manage this type river that may yield even better cost/return ratios. Beware who stands to profit from more of the same. Many states are tearing out or replacing their dams because of ecological damage. Is it too much to ask just what particular benefit will be derived from building more of them instead of rethinking the concept in terms of today's technology and climate?

Would you feel secure investing $50,000,000 without getting these answers?

I am always happy to see the destruction of striper populations. That is not a native fish, and it has destroyed native fish populations in nearly every OK lake and waterway where it has been introduced.  It decimates sandbass, crappy, walleye and several panfish species.  Originally striped bass never made it this far north up the waterways until it was introduced and maintained as a sport fish. The adult populations only entered fresh water to spawn, now they have adapted to several OK lakes and rivers.

I'm a sportsman, so I like to catch them, but hate what they do to the habitat. Fish a lake like Eufaulla and you realize how prolific and diverse other species can be without them.

Well, you don't have to worry about them much in the Arkansas River. They can't make it up the dams to spawn so whatever is there came from Keystone lake. However, the Arkansas has a multitude of species including walleye, gar, sturgeon, flathead and channel cats, spoonbill, perch, rock bass and many others as exhibited in the Jenks Aquarium. I wanted to point out that when we change the river for appearance, we change entire ecosystems. The addition of a dam in Jenks may do little damage but the one in SS will be awful for the Shell Creek area.

 I was for the low water dams, and still am but with a caveat.  There is only so much money to go around and by doing the dams now we will not be doing other things, that may work even better, to "generate new sources of city revenue" like applying some of those funds to ramp up Downtown development.  

Also, at one time when Tulsa was trucking along at a better pace I could see some developer coming in and doing a decent sized project along the river.  But I have seen too many of those types of plans falter and now Tulsa is growing at an even slower pace with less momentum and positive energy.  So don't see any type of Branson Landing type project or even really any retail type project in those areas either.  Living, fine, but that won't add a lot to the tax base and again I would like to see more living downtown (more revolving funding help from the city for instance and if it goes to the river instead…), and more retail downtown.  

I think downtown is still not on the most solid of footings and there is only so much growth in our city.  Trying to pull some of that to the river at this time might not be the best choice.  If we were growing stronger and better my opinion would be different.   I even wonder what effect the new park by the river will have on downtown.  Over all, and over a longer period of time, I think it will absolutely be a plus, but I can see some of the Guthrie Green crowd going to the new park and thus decreasing traffic there. There will likely be new events and "programming" at that new park and from my experience here, those types of things can cause retail downtown to be slow on those days. I want to build up more good days downtown and not have more lackluster ones added to the mix.

 Again over all that park will be a huge plus for Tulsa, but as for more city funding to try and spur tax growth in the area around the river. I think you will get more bang for your buck using even half that money to spur more development downtown and the Pearl, etc. at this time, then once that is on more solid footing try the river.  Your core will actually then help the river as growth can "flow out" in that direction.  I don't see it happening the other way around, spending the money on the dams then trying to entice development along the river and hoping that may help the core.  Will just spread things out even more thinly and leave us with less monetary options.

Lets finish what we have started and do it right.

Maybe the park could be a Trolley Park like the ones from the turn of the 19th to the 20th Century.

Love the idea!  Kind of like Oricutt Park (now Swan Lake)  Used to be you would take the trolley all the way south as far as it would go to the "lake out in the country" and go picnicking, rent a rowboat, swimming, dance at night in the pavilion, etc.  So soon people could enjoy themselves out in the new park then go downtown or to Brookside and dine/shop and make a whole day or weekend of it.  And visitors/tourists/residents to downtown could have another really interesting place to easily get to. 

But of course there won't be any money for trolleys, dams are more important.

M

I don't think downtown development and river development are incompatible or even dependent on each other. That was a fallacious argument used to kill river efforts.

The issues are what jumps at me now. Funding methods and failure to identify a specific need for dams. This reminds me so much of the 60's/70's period in Tulsa when everyone seemed convinced of the obvious logic of urban renewal and destructive expressways. Now we wonder how they could be so short sighted. Long term funding for cities that evens out sales tax revenue and eschewing unsupportable projects no matter how sexy they may seem will keep us from repeating that era.

Aqua, a thought occurred to me yesterday about how ADHD our development goals seem to be.  30 years ago, it was a grand idea to have apartments on the west bank of the river and an amphitheater for events.  Fast forward and the Westport Apartments were ready to be sacrificed for The Channels project or even whatever development might have come on the west bank as a result of the ’07 River Tax.  Now the amphitheater sits un-used, the stage sold off in the last city auction.  Our idea of “long-term” seems to be about 20-30 years when it comes to development in Tulsa. 

If that long. RPA systemTically removed vestiges of 70's supporters by letting stuff just waste away. Landscaping,art and trees placed in honor of everyday people. The message that sends is clear.

Something doesn't feel right about t-town right now. Good editorial contribution by Bill Leighty in World this am.

Side note to start.  I just re-read most of this thread, and I have to say that this is the type of discussion that I joined up for.   Local concerns discussed, with insight from those impacted and those that have experience and/or direct involvement in the issue at hand.   Unlike the National and International political discussions that most often dissolve into inanity.

Now back to the discussion.   Honest question here.  How long should "long term" be for planning a project?  30 years or so is a generation, and with the exception of roadways it would seem that thinking beyond that timeline for most projects would  be speculation, at  best.   

Take the Westport Apartments example.  I lived there in '88-'89.  Loved it.  Went to events at the amphitheater, ran the trails, etc.  It was a great setup.  But now both the apartments and the amphitheater are old and would need significant money to renew, and maybe now (30+ years after they were built) the growth and use patterns are changing and maybe something different needs to done in that area.  (I'm not advocating a change, just saying that an honest evaluation is not a bad thing.)  That doesn't mean that the decision 30+ years ago was wrong.  Both the apartments and amphitheater added value and no doubt contributed in their time to bringing the West side of the river into the fold of greater Tulsa.  To that end they did their job, but 30-40 years changes things and maybe Tulsa needs something different now.

The point is not "change for change sake", but also we should not allow ourselves to question something because in 30 years or so we might want to do something different.

Spending the week in Austin. We should build a bat habitat under our bridges. Bats are the key to river development.

The Congress Avenue bridge in Austin is amazing. They have bat viewing parks along the river to see the million bats all fly at sunset. Standing on the bridge looking down with thousands of bats flying under your feet is very cool.

Watching highly highly intoxicated people watching the bats has been even more fun!  Every time I visit I'm amazed by how drunk everyone is. Watched an older woman walk down the street nude from the waist down and covered in her own vomit yesterday evening as I ate dinner at a 6th street restaurant at about 6:30pm. By about 8, everyone walking the streets was staggering hammered.

I bet we will repeat.

We still have the "growth for growth's sake" thing going on. 

Couple things about the 30 years...one thing would be to stop allowing development projects like Westport and the apartment "stuff" going on all over town where the design life expectancy is 25 of those 30 years.  Require building standards to a longer design life.  But then the price goes up some, and that is poison to a "value of money" calculation.

Second is how do you get human nature of this country to have a societal attention span of longer than that.  Right now we are "celebrating" the re-use of what is left of the old - 1920's and 1930's - buildings in downtown Tulsa.  This is a fad that is likely to run it's course in about another 15 to 20, if that long, since it has been in process for most of the last decade.  At that point, the next 20 year fad will be in full swing.


I watched Wesport being built - had a nephew working on them - and a couple family members have lived there over the years.  Nice places at the time, if kinda sloppy built.  Don't know how they are now.  Sounds like they are beyond salvage if gonna bulldoze them for the next new thing.  Not mechanically, just at end of fad life.

The stuff going in all over town is probably worse.  Today's apts are the mobile homes of urban housing.

There’s nothing wrong with Westport.  From the exterior, they appear to still be in good repair and when I was in a friend’s unit five years ago, it was well-maintained.  I’ve heard nothing to the contrary since.  We need housing in the area for active singles or couples as well as students at OSU Med School.

Tulsa has a bad habit of not maintaining it’s assets in re: Riverparks and our park system which the city is now considering selling up to 17 city parks for other development.  Why has there been an issue with the LWD at Zink Lake for several years now?  Because we did not maintain it.  Now, it’s finally being fixed.

http://www.fox23.com/news/news/local/city-tulsa-identifies-parks-possible-sale/ngcRW/

Other cities seem to have a sense of history and preserve their gems.  Tulsa doesn’t seem to appreciate history and preservation seems to be a foreign concept in the private and public sectors looking at all the landmark buildings which are now gone from the downtown landscape.

Tulsa builds public amenities with no regard to future maintenance needs or simply cuts corners in the design and engineering phase to simply make it happen which helps to shorten the life-span.  Structures get neglected, erode, then the cheapest thing to do is simply destroy it or sell it off like old City Hall and the Civic Center Plaza or the amphitheater.

Rebound, I know things change as do the frame you view the world from. Smart  cities hang onto the best from each period to provide some continuity and context. We seem to not do that. Downtown is lovely but we almost lost it.

During fireworks at Boulder park a friend remarked to me that he feared the whole river area  and the gathering place has been redesigned to favor a slice of population that ride bikes, push strollers and walk dogs. As such when they approach middle age or empty nester status the whole area will fall in disrepair due to dis interest. That may only be 15 years.

I don’t see that happening.  There will always be younger people who will utilize the RP system to replace those who “age” out of it.  It’s been that way since the early 1970’s.  Now, whether or not RPA chooses to maintain them is another issue entirely.  Let’s hope the KFF gives them a generous endowment to at least have the funds on hand to maintain them.

Anyone remember when they first constructed the pea gravel trails?  I was thinking around 1973 or ’74.

Yeah, I'm going to have to agree with Conan.  If we don't assume that future generations will utilize a thing, and that it was only being built for those that fit the age/interest pattern at the time, we'd never build anything.  (Or we really would be tearing everything down every thirty years.)  If the resource, be it a park, golf course, lake in river, etc..,  is kept up well, future generations will use it.  It may have to be tweaked (you don't see many racquetball courts anymore...) but good recreational facilities will always be an asset.

But I am with you on hanging onto the best things.  Tulsa had definitely had it's share of destruction of historical structures, etc.

Exactly.  The point I made about the Civic Center a couple of years ago....while building the Crashship.

The Maxwell House suffered from functional obsolescence moreso than its deferred maintenance issues.  It’s still used as a convention center today.  We needed the additional seats the BOK (Craship, duct tape roll, etc.) offered to get major concerts and events that promoters had passed Tulsa over for years because we couldn’t sell enough seats to get the likes of Paul McCartney, Elton John, or NCAA regional playoff games.

This turned out to be one of the more brilliant moves at marketing Tulsa and helping to revitalize downtown.  That’s one time I’m happy to say I was wrong in my predictions for the new arena.

second that

Yeah, the arena is great, but still short on seats. Especially for the cost. We spent a lot of money on stained stainless steel plates, and it looks like we will spend more.   I wish it had been more of a conventional design with far more emphasis on capacity.

I was one very vocal person who argued for the dams before and did not think it would hurt downtown development.  But, we are in a different economic climate, development climate and "demand/interest" climate than we were then.  There are times to "seize the day" when certain factors align (including development fads).   Right now I think we would get more economic benefit ("new sources of city revenue" via increased sales tax collections and the benefits that would come from that, including in the future building the dams) from using those funds to further develop downtown, Pearl, Brookside/Crow Creek, and other nearby areas than we would by spending that money on the River.  If anything we can see that the new Kaiser funded park and improvements will step in to add improvements to our "Quality of Life" offerings in that area.  The river will continue to be a great asset and be an even greater one once the park is built as another major jewel along the ever improving River Parks system.  

 If you want more retail sales/tax growth in the city, the Downtown/Mid-town areas that are starting to develop would today be a better investment than dams in the river.  The interest, desire  and potential is greater there now than ever "seize that" and run with it now while the momentum is there.  While now it also seems that interest in putting dams in the river is even less than it ever was with the over all populace and even with developers, other than perhaps the Casino.

Consider the impact building a Branson Landing-esque development on the west bank would have had in stifling retail growth in downtown and midtown.  All that after buttering the concrete plant owner to the tune of $50 million for a few acres of land.  :o

I think it is a great question as every generation falls prey to the latest development trends and fads - Tulsa is hardly alone.
I don’t think you can look at different assets and think on the same time horizon.  Things like office buildings, parks and infrastructure by their nature should have a longer life span than suburban style apartment complexes.  

For all our tut-tutting now, the indoor shopping mall became wildly popular for a good reason.  Then along came big box stores, only to see the rise of life-style centers.  The internet now threatens the viability of much of the brick and motor shopping model.  Even Wal-Mart is planning to build smaller stores that only carry basic items and will serve primarily as a location for customers to pick up their on-line purchases.  Some things we build simply are not built to last because they won’t.

Tulsa’s convention center did not become obsolete because it was poorly designed or Tulsa’s leaders were not forward thinking.  It was built to the standards of the day and what was reasonably anticipated to come.  It was a premier center that was a major stop for most concerts and hosted premier events such as the U.S. National Figure Skating Championship.  It became obsolete because everyone else was not standing pat, and the needs of conventions and concerts/events changed in such a way that it could no longer service them.

The BOK Center, as awesome and successful as it is, will likely be obsolete in 30 years or so.  Then it will have to be massively remodeled or replaced to match whatever the latest and greatest centers then have to have to be successful.  That’s not a failure of the Tulsans who led the way for its creation, but simply reality.

Tulsa’s worst failures over the past 30 years were not necessarily in what we did (although there were plenty of mistakes made along the way), but in thinking that our 1960s structures and investments were enough to carry us into the 21st Century without anything more.  

And I would tend to agree with you but they are just "feelings" based on perceived logic. The same way leaders in the 60/70's just felt that historic old buildings and nearby neighborhoods needed to be razed to make room for expressways to lower crime and speed access to the suburbs. Right now, I can't see and have not seen:
     - any quantitative analysis that shows building dams is worth the large investment, ongoing maintenance and the ecological upheaval they bring
     -No numbers from comparable developments in other cities.
     -No explanation of what development is and where it would be.
     -no projection of sales tax revenues or increased tourism (without tourism the pie is merely being redistributed and then I agree downtown gets screwed). 

I suspect a dam near the casino is the real goal and frankly, they can build one themselves if they desire.

This whole idea of increased sales taxes being generated by river development is just a guess. More likely that nearby homes will increase in value and we could extract some property tax increases but that goes to the county. This is a twofold problem: lack of compelling numbers for river development via this type of dam construction and stubborn insistence that sales taxes are our only route to budget balancing.

We're swinging at fastballs in the dark.

In hindsight it probably would have been a dud.  The economy was going gangbusters for quite a while and by the time we got on the ball to do something and catch some of that growth, well it was towards the end and right before the recession.  Things are actually doing ok now for parts of the country anyway and I almost get worried that we only have about 5 years before things slow down again.  Would like to see downtown and those other areas get solidly anchored in and well done before that, not go off and start "another project" that by the time it just about gets underway, the rug again gets pulled out from under us leaving it not done or done right and also downtown/mid-town not where it should have been had we kept focus.

The Crashship is fine - it's doing much better than I expected and I am very glad for that.  The whole gist of what I have always tried to get at was that we should never have let the Civic Center go down like it did.  It appears as though the general decay was used as part of the rationalization of why we needed new, rather than make the case as a standalone issue.  But perhaps that would have made it even harder to get done...??

Duct tape - that's good, too!   That has been out in the Oklahoma sun too long and slumped sideways.

The Tulsa Metro outgrew the Civic Center with it's 9600 maximum capacity.  That was more of it.  Too many good acts passing up Tulsa because of not having a venue with enough seats.

The Civic Center still hosts venues it will hold.  Myself, I'm glad I had the opportunity to go see Rush and Foo Fighters and other bands that otherwise would have passed on us for either OKC or Little Rock or Kansas City.

And I like the design of the BOK.  I've been to MANY cookie cutter arenas in the country.  What I can say is that here, the concourses aren't crowded because of the open design.  I went to several NHL games in St Louis at the ScottTrade.  It's a great facility, but the concourse are too narrow.  AA Center in Dallas is the same way.  Toyota Center in Houston.

Task Force Thinking Trust for Dam Funding

(http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/kwgs/files/201211/Low_water_Dam_2.jpg)

http://publicradiotulsa.org/post/task-force-thinking-trust-dam-funding (http://publicradiotulsa.org/post/task-force-thinking-trust-dam-funding)

"Support" is nice, but the real question is how much the Creek Nation is willing to contribute to build a damn.  No single entity stands to gain more than the Creek Nation on its casino/resort/Riverwalk investment in putting water in the river.

To me the real question remains why we should build another dam at all. Has not been established. To use an Okie'ism, "we buyin' a pig in a poke".

So there can be a water taxi between the new hotel and the West side of the river.

Could someone please add a vomit smiley or a face palm smiley to our selection list?  So many time when they are needed.

More dams is stupid.  Rather than trying to copy OKC or Austin or any other town with a dam and some water, how about using some imagination to come up with a different idea that plays to our strengths on the river.  We have an excellent start with the parks and paths that line the river now.  We already have a dam - one more is redundant.  Most of the year, it is a "southwest" style dry riverbed feature, so make use of it that way.  Different.  Imaginative.  Unique.

So we can 'sell' ourselves with something other than the slogan, "just like.....<fill-in-the-blank-of-the-previous-yuppie-nonsense-that-someone-thought-up-that-we-think-is-cool-so-we-want-to-copy-it>...!!

Austin has their river - let them have it!!  Portland has VooDoo donuts.  Seattle has a troll.  All of which are notable and noted as landmarks from time to time.  San Francisco has Lombard street.  And if we make ALL of that stuff here - we could do it if wanted to - we still aren't gonna be 'unique'.  We are gonna be - "and Tulsa has one, too".

Well, we have a big blue whale.  Arcadia has a round barn.  We got rid of most of the character along Route 66 that makes for nostalgia for that kind of thing.  Let's do something different.  Or have we cut education/imagination/cleverness by so much that we can't come up with something new??

Sing it brother! The choir has the sheet music!

We still have a few penguins.

Damn it! We don’t need another damn dam!

What?  Imagine a large nekkid indian statue where the liberty statue is...

(http://img.grouponcdn.com/deal/jNr8sUkLN8uzpvnyASBk/P9-700x420/v1/c700x420.jpg)

(https://s3.grouponcdn.com/images/site_images/1626/6954/Manasquan-Water-Taxi-3.jpg)?

I love the penguins!!  That was brilliant and I want one!!  Or two....

Was in a small town out west somewhere - Utah, I think - and they had the bison equivalent of the penguins!  Very cool.  Need a bison, too!!



I have to spend time to figure out how to post a picture....I have a couple of interesting shots of the old oil well and some of the equipment used with it that is sitting on the Ark River bed.... we should have an oil industry museum here in town.  Something small would do nicely.  I know...it's kind of redundant with what Woolaroc has, and the gas station setup on highway 11 in Barnsdall, but it could be kind of interesting, especially if could get an old gas station building (like the one in Bixby!!)  Maybe get that building and the lot it sits on for the museum...??   I know...it's called the Bixby Museum Complex, but they really haven't a coherent plan there yet - just good intentions that need some help!!

Maybe drag that equipment out of the river to put on display...?  Get hold of the old Spudder Restaurant collection of stuff?  Anyone have an old 'one lunger' engine they don't want?  One that works would be nice..!!??

Could be a nice little attraction.  After all, we like to call ourselves the "Oil Capital"....

Maybe we could talk the fairgrounds out of the Golden Driller....

You guys are confusing, or at least confounding,  tourist attractions with livability improvements.   You don't move to Portland for donuts, you move there for the way of life, proximity to the ocean, mountains, etc.  (and you might not move there because of the high cost of living...)  Parks are great, and I'm all in favor of them.  And the resurgence of downtown is awesome and I hope continues.  But neither of those is unique to any other city in the area.  People like water in any form, be it lake, river or coast, and I do think that filling the river with water (and the related activities) would add immensely to the overall livability of Tulsa.   But I can accept that it's a huge monetary investment, and so needs a lot of consideration.  But tourist attractions aren't the answer.  What is something fundamental that Tulsa can do that would greatly enhance the overall livability and attraction of the area?

How about something like a Great Raft Race?  People could get up early in the morning for a launch in Sand Springs and local corporations could sponsor and build creative floats with water cannons that could drench crowds on the Highway 97 bridge and river banks along the way.  Commemorative merchandise could be sold and the finish line could be at a river festival held where the  old river amphitheater used to be...Well...it was fun while it lasted...8)

Get rid of Fallin, Inhofe, and Sally Kern for starts!

We have none of those big physical things like mountains and ocean, so we have to make do with what we got.   We DO have massive water infrastructure in all the big lakes around.  Anyone who can afford the trip can have plenty of water fun of just about all kinds...

Your last question is key - what constitutes overall livability and attraction?  Something very different to everyone.  I know for a fact that the things I like are dramatically different from many if not most posters here.  What do we not have that pretty much everywhere else has??  Not much - we have just about everything that anyone else has.  I would like to see us quit worrying so much about the "next big thing" and start to keep working on - and accelerate the effort - the stuff that we already have.  Roads is one of the really BIG ones, and one of the most glaringly obvious.

Making it easier to move around the area would be very desirable (this has typically been the "Public Transit" tab).  Raising the education standards (very long term) and getting a higher level of intellect all around.  We need more people who have read books than are Call of Duty Champions!!

Filling the river with water for the money that would be needed is gonna do what??  Put a couple dozen kayakers on it for a few months a year?  Sculling, like in OKC?  (Another "me too" event for Tulsa).  A dam IS a tourist attraction....how does it increase livability beyond those few dozen?  We have had dams on the river for a hundred years...why haven't they provided this "ultimate" livability experience that we seem to be chasing before now??  

We talk about development on the river - there is a lot of it.  Most of it is a very popular fad for 3 years, then fades away.  We have housing - Westport - and they are gonna bulldoze it.  We have a huge recreation lake about 10 miles from downtown.  We need to stop thinking about making the river another GRDA scale event and think of a different way to make better use of it...the way it is used now is pretty darn good!!  How can it be enhanced - incrementally!! - without crazy money for another dam?  Make the natural way it is into a feature that can be appreciated and utilized rather than just trying to change it's nature!!!

We get bored easily as a society, don't we?  Short attention spans!

Let them do a monorail.
 
 :D

In a vacuum, I'd be totally for the low water dams (done right, anyway). However, I think good points have been raised regarding the tradeoffs involved in building them. Perhaps cost-share with the Creeks for the Jenks dam and spend the rest of the money we want to spend on more dams on transit, so people can actually get to these places without their cars and the attendant massive amounts of parking.

It's pretty clear that transit isn't going to happen, though, given that we recently decided that the drunks and carless folks don't need to get around after 8PM. This is Oklahoma, after all, where drunk driving is a rite of passage. It's pretty hard for anything to be less desired by our leadership than form based codes, yet somehow here we are.

Are you speaking of the equipment over by Sand Springs park near where their old dam used to be? (the one that promised livability and development and only delivered death and fishing). I've heard many descriptions of what that equipment was from sand dredging to drilling rig. I've seen pics showing lots of derricks on the Cimarron upstream but not near Tulsa.

We started discussing this issue some 8 years ago when I first began to post here. The problems created will far outweigh any benefit, especially in livability. If you want to work with the river instead of against it then yes, the formula changes. But the leaders of these "water in the river" crusades are only interested in one solution, dams. There is a reason and its not livability or development potential or tourism. Three entities stand to gain. Doesn't take much to figure it out either.

Rebound, its worth pointing out that few think of Tulsa as a tourist attraction yet when my business was on the river, almost three fourths of my riders were from out of town, out of state and often out of country. They were here on business, for reunions, for layovers, for events, tournaments and some because they saw me on Discover Oklahoma and had never thought of the river as being navigable. Tulsans per se were not big customers because they thought the river was polluted. Big surprise when we travelled a few miles upstream.

When you limit your definition of what tourism is, then yes, we have little tourism. Those hotels aren't filled on weekends with Tulsans.

Maybe a mile or so north of the 71st street bridge...could be a little more.  Well casing, couple spools of wire, an old wooden mounted piece of equipment that looks like an old "one lunger" engine, or maybe just a spool for wire.

It was a few years ago, so might have been taken out....haven't walked the 'beach' - river bed - for a while.

Bury powerlines, stop killing the trees to protect the powerlines.  Plant more trees.  Change the parking lot laws.  Change the liquor laws.  Sidewalks, bike lanes, public transportation to name a few things.

Or move Tulsa somewhere out in the Rocky Mountains or along a coastline.  There’s probably a better chance of that happening than your ideas.  :o

About as likely to happen

Good discussions all around on this one...

I had to go back and re-read this thread from the beginning.    There are several good points made along the way, and I have to say that the overall argument around "where to best spend money" is a solid one.  Artist in particular makes a number of good points in this and other threads in support of downtown and related infrastructure improvements having a more immediate payback, and I think there is merit there.

Also several posts around The Channels, and other previous (and in the case of The Channels, stupid...) efforts to do something in the river that have poisoned any reasonable discussion or chance of getting a consensus.   Unfortunately this may be true, but it's sad state of affairs when earlier bad ideas preclude moving forward with possible good ones.

One point or position that keeps coming up that I disagree with, is in referring to the river as "a prairie river", or references to "leaving it in it's natural state".   The river ceased being a natural prairie river when the Keystone dam was put in.  Since then, it's just a tail-race that flows (or not) at the whim of the dam authority.  Better managing the ebb and flow, with dams or some other method, would go far towards proving a more stable environmental background against which to allow organic growth (both actual flora and economic) to occur.

Conan suggests getting Zink lake dam back in order will at least get the rowing club back in business, and if those improvements also create a fixed body of water, and eliminate the danger of the undertow of the previous dam, we should see a natural increase in use along the river anyway, especially when combined with the proximity of the new park.  That should be an interesting test case to see if additional future investment, ala more dams/lakes along the river, is warranted.

The current zoning we have in Tulsa makes it illegal to develop the "quality of life" they have in Portland.  But they will cut the budget here to move forward on changing the zoning and cut the budget on transit versus increasing it, etc.  But they work hard to "find" money for dams, and if they do that will even more likely end up being an excuse to have to not fund, or have the flexibility to fund, those other things.

You can't have it all all at once.  I say do the zoning and transit first (and more for education), then the river.  

Plus, downtown isn't just a tourist attraction.  A quarter of our city population growth is already downtown (city growing about 2,000 per year and about 500 of that going downtown) and it should be higher and could be higher (increasing our over all growth rate) if it were a more attractive place to live for those who want urban living (which is more and more of the population all the time) instead of only offering suburban style living (which is great, don't get me wrong, just not for everyone) and thus missing out on good growth opportunities.  But downtown also needs better zoning (and could use more of the housing assistance funding to help get more old buildings rehabbed, but again, if we build dams with that money instead…) and especially the areas around it need something other than suburban style zoning.  Portland has zoning that even the most fanatical of us on here would not dare to ask for, but we can't even get the meager zoning changes the people have said they want, implemented, for one thing, for lack of funding and the desire to find it.

These arguments date back to the start of Tulsa and the construction of levees.

 You haven't heard me make the argument re "natural state". But it is by nature a 'braided prairie river". We have temporarily modified this 15 mile section to be a hydraulic river in operation but its nature was long ago determined by geography, geology and meteorology. We constantly fight nature and we pay a price for that. Zink lake is a shallow, sandy pond that is prone to poor water quality due to animal droppings, fertilizer, and leaky sewers. Without the rhythmic cleansing that occurred before the dam was built it will always need to be tested. Now they just post no swimming signs and consider it done.

The Keystone dam opens or closes not by whim of the authority but by the whim of nature. When nature pumps too much water into the reservoir we are forced to open gates. When nature pumps up the heat they are forced to open gates to create electricity to run cooling systems. They manage it, they don't make the decisions.

My objections are based on what other communities have found out to be true. Damming these rivers is only good for the people who build the dams, the employees necessary to manage them, developers and nearby landowners. Even Sand Springs blew theirs up. Even Zink lake is an example of how little economic and livability impact they have. The paths don't need a river to follow. There are other ways to manage this river and create a truly unique area attraction but when they were offered they were tainted by the insistence on dams and overpriced access property.

Just think for a moment. If this project were offered to you as an investor with such little information as to how it will accomplish increased livability, increased economic development and a return on investment greater than or equal to other available investments........would you write the check?

We have had dams and removed them for decades - about a 100 years worth.  How is "organic growth" occur any differently next year, or next decade, than it has in the last 30 or 60 years?  What new plans have been thought of - that have not been advanced or actually done?  Where is the fulfilled "promise" of all this "growth" against the background of the Jim Inhofe Memorial Sewage Lagoon??  Er, uh...the dam at the railroad bridge walk path.  (The bike paths and all the things that have sprung up there are nice and good for the area...we aren't gonna get a Branson out of it, though!  Good enough examples of "organic growth".)



Definitely want to see something more definitive than the glittering generalities that are spread about regarding "growth".   What specific items would be done to after building a new pond?  Are we gonna get gazebos?  More parks?  Another Riverwalk Crossing?  Oops....maybe shouldn't have mentioned the last one....  



As for the flora...well what grows there now IS organic.  It is in great part the native plant species.  How about another Oklahoma Centennial Botanical Garden?  Talk about growth for growth's sake!  Someone benefited from the construction of that all right!  But what a horrendous location!!  How many people have even been there to see it?  How many remember hearing about it at all??  Could have been a Myriad type facility.....

So, who is gonna benefit from yet another dam??  (Can you spell Flintco??)  How about Tulsa citizens as a whole?  Where's the beef??  A dam is NOT in and of itself a destination point - unless it's BIG like the Hoover dam.....


As for flowing at the whim of Keystone...yeah, it does that.  We should probably remove Keystone!  Get back to natural!!  BEFORE Keystone - yeah, I remember that well - the river looked basically the same as it does now.  If anything, there is MORE flow occurring at shorter intervals than before the big dam!  It would be dry for months.  And then when it rained, it became a lake on Brookside that would go across Peoria (almost to Utica at times).  Regularly.

(http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee278/Renshi-kun/Untitledrainpukeunfin.png)

Awwww...Its got my eyes!

A looming larger priority was exposed on the news last night.  KOTV did a story on the deplorable condition of the Arkansas river levees.  According to Country Commissioner Karen Keith, the estimate is they need $26 million in repairs as of today.  The county is unsure where they will find funds for that. 

The current repairs to Zink dam are funded and I believe nearing completion.  There’s a dearth of information on that project either via RPA or the media.  The most recent story is 3+ months old on the progress of the repairs.

Artist, if there is enough demand for housing in downtown, private developers should have no trouble making that happen without a truckload of tax greenmail to make it happen.  I don’t believe any ideas for improving livability and reasons to be in Tulsa need to be mutually exclusive of each other.  I certainly do think an “eggs all in one basket” approach is not wise.  The river is close enough to downtown that positive developments in both places will compliment each other.

"I certainly do think an “eggs all in one basket” approach is not wise."

I agree wholeheartedly, thats why I do not think we should put all our eggs in the "auto oriented/suburban development" basket and ignore pedestrian/bike/transit friendly urban development.

As for the tax greenmail.  I don't think we have to have it, but it can help, especially with the older buildings where it often can only make economic sense with the tax credits, versus tearing them down for new development or parking lots.  Plus having the right zoning in and around downtown will help ensure the right kind of development instead of ending up with more suburban style development.

Chris was looking to put in a practice off of 11th between Utica and Peoria in a building that has sat empty for ages.  We have been trying to figure out how to make it work but with the parking requirements and other zoning restrictions, we have realized that essentially nobody can put anything in that spot unless they have deep enough pockets to purchase a building or home nearby to tear down and add parking. An Optometry/Optical is good business and we have financing but the numbers won't work if you have to have the minimum parking requirements.  Essentially the buildings where he is looking at near Ikes Chilli are set up to be pedestrian/transit oriented, though yes indeed it is on Route 66, in that they were built when there were no minimum marking requirements. They are supposed to be adding street front parking starting next year but street parking does not count towards minimum parking requirements. We have space for 3-4 in back, but once you meet the requirement for handicapped parking (which includes the width of the parking space, then an additional 8 feet path, and then an additional 12'drive, drive can't be included, we "may" only be able to get two parking spots in back.  The property owner next door doesn't want to "share".  We don't have the time and the money to sit around and play the "well maybe perhaps you might get a variance" game.

So again, even a halfway pedestrian friendly area with the current zoning your pushed to make it more auto oriented/suburban in nature. That affects how well your transit works and even though its outside the IDL, what's around it affects what's type of development pressures there will be inside it, aka less decent transit and less people using it puts pressure for there to be more expensive parking inside the IDL, even though there are no parking requirements there, rather than decreasing the pressures for it.  Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what will happen within a tiny island of "no requirements" surrounded by a sea of hundreds of square miles of minimum parking requirements and no good transit. The suburban zoning puts added negative economic pressures and costs on your urban development.

It's not fair to say "well if the market wanted it it would do it" when the zoning and regulations are pro one type of development and anti another type. Either fix the zoning to encourage good urban development, as we have zoning that encouraged good suburban development, or acknowledge that it's not fair and realize your going to have to occasionally subsidize if you want urban/transit friendly development.

I'm not fired up by the "put water in the river" message, but it seems self-evident that walking/jogging/biking/recreating in River Parks is much more enjoyable north of Zink dam than south of it.  Whatever the Arkansas River was and is with or without Keystone Dam, our general preceptions are that rivers should have water in them and a 1/4 wide expanse of gravel bars with a small creek running through it does not feel like a real river to most of us.

Fix Zink Dam and upgrade it to make it safer and more usable.  The more grandiose plans should be funded in large part by those with the most to gain (i.e. Creek Nation, Jenks, etc.).  Tulsa's portion of the River is mostly developed and it can afford to patiently await creative concepts and funding while focusing its scarce resources on more pressing needs downtown where the potential and rewards are much greater.  We should not let politicians seeking a legacy-style project to cloud our vision.

I wasn’t aware that zoning issues are preventing anyone from developing housing downtown at the moment.

I certainly appreciate the concept of making things more pedestrian-friendly if more people would take advantage of it and actually walk, ride, or take mass transit to their destination.  I do see more people who live near the urban core walking and riding so it’s obvious there should be incentives to encourage a pedestrian-friendly environment if that is what we want to cultivate.

As far as the building on 11th St. the parking requirements puzzle me.  I can’t imagine Chris would need a ton of parking for his business unless he was going to bring in several other eye docs.  I guess the issue the city takes with not having enough parking is then patrons resort to parking on side streets and disrupting the residential section of the neighborhood?  Correct?

And, by the way, I filled up at the 11th & Utica QT this morning, it still makes me sick to see how much lot space they took for that POS. 

Just about anything is possible.  What we are talking about is how the city basically encourages through zoning and a certain type of development/usage (making it more efficient and inexpensive to build) and that same zoning discourages another type of development/usage (making it less efficient and more expensive).  While downtown can be said to be "neutral" on the matter, it exists in a context that greatly influences the direction of that "neutrality".   


Yes people would walk/bike/take transit more if we provided the environment to do so.  Currently that is illegal.

No Chris would not need many parking spaces for his practice as a sole doc.

And yes, patrons might resort to parking on side streets (also more might use transit and walk/bike further distances if there were a more pedestrian/transit friendly area).  Though in many old photos when our city was actually more walkable, you would indeed see cars along downtown and adjacent neighborhood streets as you would in many cities all over the world without end of the world consequences.

But what we have here is more accommodation for autos and auto centric development than pedestrians and transit friendly development.

 Minimum parking requirements are an acknowledgment, proof if you will, that zoning works and is important.  Minimum parking requirements help make auto centric development work well.

Thing is there is no similar acknowledgement that pedestrian friendly development also needs certain things in order to work well.

What may be good for one may indeed actually hurt the other.  What we are essentially saying in our city is that we will try in every way to not have inconveniences for auto centric development, and then turn a blind eye to the inconveniences, added costs, inefficiencies, etc. that pedestrian friendly developments face in that environment.  And then say "It's up to the free market, if people wanted it they would build it."  Thats unfair and not right.

I agree with that.  I enjoy the river trails much more either when I'm north of Zink Dam, or when the river is full south of it.  I imagine the majority of people feel the same way.  Having a constant level of water in the river is important in that regard.

As for "river development" I hope that is just more recreational opportunities and things like parks, green space and trails.  As has been mentioned if you have to have urban development along a waterway do it along Crow Creek in Brookside, or the proposed canal in the Pearl.  Keep the focus on "development" in existing areas downtown and midtown, but enhance the river as a regional recreational destination.

I think a large part of the reason why people fail to notice the way that suburban style development is both required and massively subsidized is that it's "just been that way" for so long. The rules and requirements and flow of funds fades into the background much as the carnage on our highways and the great number of firearm-related homicides do. That is not the case for transit oriented development and pedestrian friendly zoning and subsidies directed at them. It's new and different, so people realize that it's happening.

What often infuriates me is that they confuse the former for the "invisible hand". Markets sell two things: the most profitable, and that which is required by law, rule, or custom. They don't sprout in a vacuum. It took thousands of years worth of government and private sector support to move beyond barter to legal tender, thus reducing the friction of markets and enabling large scale banking. But again, it has faded into the background, so it's "the market speaking."

Until people are willing to recognize that the status quo is the status quo because of all kinds of human effort rather than having sprung forth fully formed from nothing, we will continue to flounder as a city and as a nation because we'll continue to refuse to do anything truly different.

My younger years were spent near the Delaware River.  In the Philly area, it is subject to noticeable changes in levels due to tides.  The marina at Essington (near Phila Int'l Airport) had very big mud flats at low tide.   Kind of ugly really but that was the state of that river. The mud flats were totally gone at high tide.  The Arkansas frequently has sand bars.  That is the state of "our" river.

I believe Tulsans in general would be better served with a good downtown circulator transit system. Branches to Cherry St., Brookside, and the new park would be a real plus.  My choice would be fixed rail guided real trolleys but even a better bus system would be an improvement.

Who here considers themselves part of "the stakeholders"? One city councillor was ecstatic in proclaiming that the stakeholders are all together on this river development plan. Doesn't look like we have a consensus on this forum, but then we're just the ones who are going to pay for the dams. Nothing to see here. Move along.

My odds on dams within a decade? 40% chance. I can live with that. Better than the odds of downtown trolleys, forms based zoning or a major league sports team locating here.

Until a few years ago, despite Tulsa not yet being what I really wanted out of a city, I was optimistic and determined to stick it out until progress was made on the issues important to me, like transit. We were moving in the right direction and talking seriously about making the sort of livability improvements that would make me proud of what Tulsa is, rather than what it once was and has the potential to be again.

Sadly, the past couple of years have shaken my conviction and I'm seriously considering a move elsewhere. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of plans being made to great fanfare and then unceremoniously shelved. I'm tired of us building ourselves into the poorhouse with zero examination of how it is we keep coming up short in the budget year after year despite year after year of cuts to parks and transit and everything else not aimed at the suburban lifestyle. At this point, good news is almost always despite the city, not because of it. If it weren't for the small core of determined developers, nonprofits, and our big donors, we'd be going backwards instead of just treading water as we have been recently.

Don't get me wrong, things are a lot better than they were when I first arrived here. Unfortunately, it seems that our city's leaders are and think we should all be satisfied with where we are. They appear to be of the belief that all we need now is window dressing and adjustments around the edges. Much of this can be laid at Dewey's feet, but he didn't elect himself.

Anchorage, AK is a lot like that - high tide they have a bay.  Low tide they have a mud flat WAY out that way!!

That seems strange to me, but that's kind of typical around here - I drive and walk up and down the Riverside zone every chance I get - usually only about half dozen times a month, but I just don't see the river water as being that big a deal.  The park area and the road always takes the majority of my attention....but a sand bar is a feature too, as well as water.  And there is a VAST number of people south of the dam - more than north of it!  Yeah, I know - it's because that's where the paths go, and there is a greater length so will obviously have more people.  

The general perception of a river full of water is NOT a prairie river.  We live in a prairie...well, except for all those big lakes surrounding us!


The "put water in the river" message appears to be have become a mantra around town that just doesn't make sense.  The message is trying to sell us the idea the growth and livability depend somehow on this carp.  What have we been doing up to this point - somehow NOT living and growing??  Hog.  Wash.  If we are gonna have SO much better lives, brighter teeth, and good cell phone service just because of river, then that would mean the Riverwalk Crossing failed because they didn't have 100% water, 100% of the time!!   Anyone who seriously tries to advance THAT crock of carp loses all credibility!  Besides being an idiot!

For the supporters:  what "growth" or "development" or other benefit to the city might come from another dam??   Specifics - not glittering generalities, 'cause we have seen specifics fail on the river and NOT because of a little sand sitting in the river bed!  How is spending a ton of tax money gonna make it work any better?

The biggest problem we have is the attention span of a kindergartener....once the glow fades from the next Big Thing (Riverwalk), we are looking for the newest next Big Thing!  It is a societal ADHD issue - and I don't believe in Ritalin for kids or societal Ritalin for cities!!   (Let's see how far the "pissing off" goes with that one about kids...?)

We have an amazing amount of stuff going on downtown, on 15th street, down the river - all over town!  Again, anyone who tries to advance the notion that OKC is "so far ahead" of us just because they can put some rowing boats in their drainage ditch is again, an idiot!  And hasn't spent that much time there....they are busy, but not that much ahead of us!  If any...

Having been there /\ , let me clarify - I love water features - lake, river, pond, fountains in a garden, whatever.  It might be nice to have water below Zink, but it s NOT a prerequisite to using some imagination - ya don't have to have a Mississippi river to have stuff going on along a prairie river!

The family and I were down in Tulsa yesterday going through open houses as part of our plan to move to mid-town, and at one point we turned North up Riverside, somewhere about 26th street.  The river was flowing bank-to-bank, and my wife (totally unprovoked by me) said "Wow, that is just amazing! It's too bad we can't get serious about keeping water in this river full-time.  It's beautiful, and would do so much for the area."  (or something pretty close to that.)   It really was nice, and I agree it is just an opinion, but it's so much nicer when there is water in the river. Of course if Zink Lake dam gets fixed  that particular stretch will be a lake anyway, and maybe that's good enough for now. 

I can't quantify it, and per my earlier comments I don't know how to put a monetary value on it (although I would assume it could be done), but people like water in rivers.  Much more so than they like a dry river bed.  (Unless we want to open it up to "muddin" when the level goes down. Lots of folks in 4x4s might love that.)  I still think, respectfully, that you are too hung up on the whole Prairie River thing.  I get that in it's natural state, that is what it was.  But it's not natural anymore.  And even then, with the previously mentioned flooding, etc, people wanted to control it.  (Which is true for just about every river of this type going through any major city.  You have to control the flooding.)  At least for the stretch going through the populated areas around Tulsa (Sand Springs, Tulsa, Jenks, etc...) "natural" never has worked, and it's not natural now, so let's have an unbiased look of what we'd like it to look like.

Again, I appreciate the "we can only do so much and it would be better spent in other areas" argument.  And I  agree, to a certain extent, with those.  But that doesn't mean that the dams are a bad idea,  but rather that we should get this first one back in place and allow that to guide our thinking for future development.  It doesn't have to be all or nothing, but to discount the idea in total is not the best direction, either.

Back when Riverside ended at or near 61st St. the south terminus was a place where you would see dune buggies going in and out of the trees to go play on the sand in the river bottom in the late ’70’s.  I think it’s roughly where the mini park is at 61st now.

I don't have a problem per se with river to Bixby and beyond (my last comment previously).  To often it is tied to the idea that it must be done and in place before anything else can work.  Well, what we see 'working' - Westport for decades - appears to be on the path of a bulldozer real soon.  Independent of water.

From google view...it appears there is more developed area on the river than there is undeveloped - lots of 'stuff' there all the way to Jenks!  Largest areas left that could be developed are all oil refinery, so may have to just move them!  Sand bars haven't stopped stuff going on at all.  If we wanna make the case that the river should be dammed just to be pretty for it's own sake, well, maybe so....but supporters don't need to make specious ties to "growth and livability" - implying we can't exist or have improvements without a dam or two or three.  It is a perverse intellectual dishonesty that is just all to pervasive in Tulsa.  It is NOT about growth and livability - it is about getting big fat juicy construction contracts for the main "stakeholders"!   Again, can anyone spell "Flintco"??  Who is Chair of the River Parks Authority?   Answer: left as exercise for the casual observer.   (And I really don't have a big problem with Flintco - they seem to do good work from what I have seen - my problem is with the process.)


And why not have a dune buggy park out to the south somewhere in the prairie river - when Keystone is not releasing water?  Can't be much worse than abandoned oil wells and equipment sitting on the river bed...the next flow of water remediates any ruts and paths cut by a 4 wheeler.  Call it "Riverdunes Tulsa Sand Park"...or something.  We could have a festival in August, kind of like a dusty Octoberfest!  Beer!!

Sorry, Aqua, but I bet there are more people who would get enjoyment from 4 wheeling the river bed than go kayaking on the river....

After I wrote my earlier post, I have to admit that my redneck/country side was just screaming "Hey!  That's not a bad idea!  We could hold races up the river, and rent dune buggies, and all kinds of stuff!"    I grew up in the country with an ATV, and have seen my share of creek and river bottoms.  Don't think it would go over very well in the more populated areas, but down South of the metro that might actually work.

It's a great idea!!  People have been doing it for years and having a ball....just illegally.  Son and nephew called me one time to pull them out - buried 4 1/2 feet in the sand.  My gear couldn't get them out.

Rebound, you can check the Corps of Engineers website for the Keystone dam releases. It has a historical record of water levels at the 66 bridge dating back to before the dam iirc. You would be surprised to find out that the river at Zink Lake has been high enough to cover the lake probably 80% of the time. It is not that common to find no water in the river around 26th and Riverside. But when it is low the contrast is glaring. The Zink dam leaks and the area in front of it needs dredged. That is analogous to deferred maintenance on an old house. Like neglecting to replace the roof. RPA has been negligent. So, fix the Zink dam and call it a day.

To build more dams like this one for the reasons expressed is folly. What people don't know about the river, the levees, the old sewer and petrochemical lines that criss cross it, the capped wells, the buried toxics, the likely increase in water flows in the next decades, the serious lack of management ability for actually operating them and the increased bureaucratic nightmares.....will come back to bite the taxpayer in the rear.

Another good question for you. What happens if all the dreams come true and the water is neatly backed up into three little ponds starting with Sand Springs. Each community has developed restaurants, bars and parks along the banks. Then the corps has to let out record levels to keep the big dam from failing. Sand Springs isn't going to flood their development. Tulsa won't flood the refineries. Hello floating casino. Or the reverse. Record low flows means Sand Springs will hold water longer, Tulsa will take what it can and ....hello Dune buggies at Jenks.

Now you know why Sand Springs will not get the first dam.

That's why they "outlawed" it here. Actually, police have no jurisdiction on the river bottom but they sometimes act like it. A childhood friend of mine was beaten and nearly died at a riverbottom party visited by a motorcycle gang at 61st back in the late sixties. The only way authorities ended the parties was to have RPA own the land adjacent to the river and eliminate access. Levees are also gated off. But if you can get to the river bank through private land, the only authority is the county or the Highway Patrol and the law is fuzzy. Anyway, they got better things to do.

And uncapped wells...I have to take some time to figure out how to post a picture...the well casing is about 12 feet long, broken over with sucker rod still inside and another couple feet of casing sticking out of the sand.  No remediation there at all!!

Aqua, didn’t they run a dredge just north of the 21st St. bridge at the concrete plant there for many years?  Did that stop after Zink dam or before/as a result of the dam?  They dredged south of the Jenks bridge on the property where Riverfront Grill or the hotel is now back in the ’70’s and ’80’s when I was going to Jenks schools.

Knowing that they would need to periodically rechannel the dam area to keep the dam effective, RPA purchased a dredger when the Zink dam was first built. As in so many blunders over the years, they decided they could buy and operate one themselves rather than contract with an experienced dredger. I was told by people who were there, that one of our spring storms dumped the dredger over and damaged it to such an extent it had to be salvaged. We lost the entire investment (seems like it was $300k in early 80's dollars) and they gave up on dredging after that. A nearby boathouse was washed away as well. They were located farther south close to the skate park.

What you probably saw in Jenks was an active sand mining operation. Because it is so flat down in that area the sand builds up into major bars. The operation has moved downstream with the sand as it plays out and migrates. A dam will hold lots of sand down there.

I took my airboat down there once. One of the dredging platforms was anchored south of the bridge. It was supposed to be marked and only attached from one side of the river. It wasn't and the morning was foggy. The cables appeared with plenty of time but it could have meant tragedy. For me at least.

#waterintheriver

@fakedeweytulsa

https://twitter.com/FakeDeweyTulsa

That's hilarious-

"Cheese biscuits on the river!"

"OKC got the 66ers cause they have more water in their river!"

The Jenks operation was McMichael’s south mix plant which served the explosive south Tulsa construction at the time.

Whoahh there.  Where do you get the idea that downtown is growing by 500 people per year?  According to the Chamber of Commerce, we've added 478 housing units since 2010.  Typical occupancy of urban apartments is no more than 1.25 people per unit.  That would give us a population growth in downtown Tulsa of 600, in four years.  Nice growth, with more to come of course, but well short of 25% of the city's population growth (more like 7.5%).

When did they post that? 2011?   Anywhoo, part of what I was going off of was this TW article …http://www.tulsaworld.com/business/realestate/downtown-tulsa-living-options-grow-as-units-planned-in-projects/article_66a9f956-e7af-553d-a201-3f34ecec6528.html

I said "about" 500 and was assuming 1.5 occupancy.  In the article they say we are getting 313 units this year and "should" be getting another 381 in 2015 (though yes I know that is likely to change).  And regardless per many other cities, and even what many here say we could be doing, our downtown still isn't reaching it's potential growth for several reasons.  Likely though the rate of development will only increase as more people move downtown and more amenities come online and so on.

Some of the more recent units that I am aware of and not including some single home type developments …

Mayo 420  Lofts 67

Green Arch 69

Metro at Brady 75

Riverbend Gardens 40

Robinson Packer Lofts 12

Urban 8

Green Arch 70

100 Boulder 18

Philtower 25

Vandever lofts 42

Denver Y 82

Bill White 50

Harrington 24

Flats on Archer 61

Coliseum Apartments 36

Adams Hotel 56

Transok 37

First Street Lofts 23  (2015 maybe?)

111 W 5th 90

You're not young if you remember that one!

Not too far off your vintage, Kirby.  ;)

You missed Hartford Square (if that is still planned)...also, can't think of any reason to include First Street Lofts in any list of future planned developments.

drifting off here.

When it happens to me I just make a cup of ginseng tea.

Oh, it seemed like you were telling us that a quarter of our population growth has already been occurring downtown, but apparently you are only predicting that for the future . . . based on planned projects, and assuming that all of the planned projects are actually undertaken and completed in the year planned for.

It's seems pretty safe to say that not only has downtown Tulsa not had 25% of the city's population growth in recent years, it is not going to any time soon.  That does not take anything away from the huge success of downtown Tulsa redevelopment.  It's indeed very exciting to see the relative boom in residential projects downtown, but let's not get carried away.  ;-)

For a while Tulsa was losing population.  Some areas are still losing population, most holding steady, while areas like Tulsa Hills and the east side have seen increases.

And you might be surprised.   First more and more cities are seeing faster growth than their suburbs.  Very often infill and more urban in nature. Meanwhile our zoning near downtown still pushes for suburban style development and the zoning in downtown does not encourage good urban development either. And now we are beginning to see that in more and more cities the core itself is starting to see more growth than the rest of the city, and its often in those more desirable, pedestrian/transit friendly areas.   And more and more cities over all are trending in both these directions.  Tulsa actually seems behind the curve in that respect and again as the comprehensive plan studies showed that if we changed our zoning, our growth would be faster than it is now with the current zoning.  They said the Tulsa Hills area would give us about a 15 year reprieve to still catch some easy suburban style zoning, and after that, that type of growth in the city would slow down, and if it weren't for strong, likely Hispanic, growth on the east side of town, we might already be barely keeping even.

So we are seeing nationally this trend play out and we are ignoring it.  And we paid for a company to do a study and give us advice, and we are ignoring that too.

 One thing I was trying to get at was that we should and could be seeing higher urban style growth in and around downtown if we would zone for it like we do suburban style growth, and that would ramp up our attractiveness and growth numbers over all.

  We have no problem with telling people what to do with their property by having minimum parking requirements and separating uses, but feel it's a terrible intrusion to tell people to build up to the sidewalk and allow for mixed use buildings and neighborhoods.  Not having urban zoning around downtown, hurts downtown.  And not having areas within downtown that zone for pedestrian/transit friendly development, hurts the quality of the urban experience.  Both of those things also hurt our desirability and ability to capture the growing trend of ever more people wanting to live in good quality, pedestrian friendly urban areas.

We indeed are seeing the uptick in downtown growth, with this year and the next "possibly being close to say 20%" (how was that?)  (if city growth is about 2,000 per year and downtown is beginning to average about 400 per year) , and with our current game plan we could reasonably expect growth in the rest of the city to be steadyish over the next 10 years and the core, including downtown to continue to expand its growth rate.  Well, really our core "Could" and should be doing better, if we zoned for it to.  And by the time Tulsa Hills fills out more and begins to slow down, we could then be in an even better position to make up for that with even better growth in the core. They have been fighting for the Form Based Codes to be in the Pearl district for about 20 years now with the fight still going on.  No telling how long it will take to get the new Comprehensive Plan in place (cutting funding and personnel).  But they will fight for and find funding to try and do things like the Gilcrease expressway in order to try and open up more areas of the city for more hoped for suburban style growth.  Meanwhile, not, more easily, working to maximize the trend of people wanting good quality urban living.     

Well expressed, and I suppose, related to the topic in that you think its either "Water in the River!" or sustainable, pedestrian, transit friendly, downtown development. I can't agree less. The two are independent imo.

So with that in mind I would say that yes, it seems zoning should be suburban in suburbia and mixed use, form based in the older areas. And the river should be zoned "no artificial obstructions to water flow".

World had more pr for the project this morning. I give them kudos for being straightforward and admitting that this is to complement development of the casino and the gathering place.

They aren't related in the sense some might think.  They are related in that I fear the trade off will be, we will find money for the river, and that may likely put more pressure to cut or not fund the new comprehensive plan implementation, any potential trolleys or transit, low interest financing for repurposing historic buildings (like the Tulsa Club) into housing, etc.  

I suppose they will say that water in the river will spur more economic development and increase the quality of life/attractiveness of our city more than those other things.  I have serious doubts about that and think those other things could spur more economic development and more quality of life/attractiveness, and possibly for less.

I would love to do both, but I don't think we can.  If we did one now then the other say in 20 years, ( I know it's just as frustrating for those who want water in the river yesterday, and for those of us who want the zoning changed, etc. yesterday to think of having to wait another 20 years) but which would have been the better option to do first then second?  Which would deliver more over all growth, tax revenue and desirability over that time?  Think about it.

I can only speak to the transit/trolleys part of your post. The development of the river, at least the two principal elements of the casino and Gathering Place, would likely justify busses or trolleys running to those areas from downtown and the other entertainment districts.

The weak spot for me is that this development isn't, or hasn't been, quantifiable for return and exposure to liability. Downtown was and has been an economic boon for the city based on tax revenues, increase in property values and livability. We didn't do something out of our reach.

The real costs of "water in the river" are yet to be fleshed out both ecological and economical. For instance, dredging isn't included. Then of course, the fact that no attention is paid to actually doing anything on the river other than the crewing.

I would support fixing or improving the current dam and making provision for dredging and water activities like a white water element and ferry service. We don't need county support for that type of infrastructure improvement, it complements the Gathering Place and doesn't enable the constant drain of money to another country via gambling.

That is exactly what is said.  It is a lie.  And has been proven wrong - just look around the river above the Zink dam area.  Small, steady things with NO major "home run" development.  There really are limited spaces unless the city gets the refineries out and cleans up that mess (ain't gonna happen).  Or takes out one of the nicer remaining 'wild' spaces in town (Turkey mountain).  Or gets rid of some industry on the West Bank.  What specifics (which I still haven't heard from ANY of the dam fans) is gonna replace what economic activity is already present around the river north of Jenks??  Let's quit fixating on trying to be another Austin or OKC with the river thing and use some imagination to play to our strengths.  Whatever they may be....   but it is NOT the river as "Jewel of the Prairie"!!  (Get the 'Jewel of the Nile' reference?)

Where can this development/growth happen?   (71st to 81st, west side of river?)

What kind of development can it be that will IMPROVE all aspects of economic activity over what is currently being done in those spaces?

Why do we never see specifics mentioned - it's all about the "glittering generalities" of how great it will be when we just " <fill in the latest fad blank> ".



At the other end of the river, Riverwalk Crossing - massive fail!  And NOT because there wasn't any water in the river....much of the time Keystone has put water in the river.  This was "growth for growth's sake".  And people got over that "fad" in just a couple of years!

The aquarium - huge success, at least judging by the crowds I see in the parking lot at the times (random days and times) I get to drive by there!

The river trails are a source of pride for Tulsa.  They are some of the best in the country, and getting better.  Gathering Place has the potential to be one of the top river parks in our region.  The missing ingredient for this huge asset has been the actual river, which when full is really pretty beautiful since it's so wide and still has plenty of trees and vegetation along the banks.  Yes even with the industry on the West Bank.  If we can make it so that there is a constant level of river it enhances our asset even more. 

Why not make the dams attractions in and of themselves?  Have stacked stones on the downstream side so that instead of a dangerous hydraulic on the other side there is a series of cascades that kayakers could ply.  Get creative with it.

I’ve seen a lot of beautiful sunsets from the mountains to the oceans and I can honestly say one of the most beautiful ever was sitting in a rowing shell on Zink Lake.  I’d like for more people to be able to experience that, regardless of the craft they are in or just on the bank.

It was more than that that doomed it. It was that you weren't really on the river. You are kinda high above it on a bank covered in vegetation. They just built sidewalks and didn't stabilize the edge and erosion makes it a little dangerous. Someone needs to spend real money making a large deck toward the water.

Riverwalk name implies a walk while experiencing the river. That is what makes the east bank better. It is fixable and could be done by the new owners.

Go there Thurs-Saturday night and Los Cabos packs them in.  I personally don’t get the attraction as their food is nothing crave able.

Never understood it either.  The one in BA is quite mediocre.  If I want pretty good Mexican food, I'm going to El Rio Verde.

Good pick.  The latest hole-in-the-wall-barely-speak-English place MC and I have been frequenting is in a little mercado (It’s Tienda something, can’t think of the second word in the name at the moment) across the street from Conrow’s on 21st.  Tacos Don Francisco next door to Conrow’s is really good as well.  We suspect Don Francisco’s is probably a front for a gambling operation, there’s never anyone in there but the food is really good, somehow that has stayed open for 3-4 years.

Either place would be a quick lunch jaunt from your office.

Yeah, I was thinking that as well.  Not quite sure how these places missed my radar.  I still have yet to try the place at 11th/Mingo that many I know rave about.  I think it's called El Gallo Loco.

If that’s the one I’m thinking of on Mingo, it’s worth the visit.

In the strip center where the Git N Go used be (northwest corner 11th/Mingo)?

That’s the one.   Great little dive.

The Creeks have the money to actually do something like this.  I have my fingers crossed they can eventually turn it around.  They have stated before they want a ferry boat connection between Riverwalk, the aquarium and the casino/hotel which could be a decent attraction and like nothing else we currently have in Tulsa.

Riding over the pedestrian bridge this weekend, it would appear the dam repairs are complete and Zink Lake is holding water.  I still have never seen any sort of release from RPA that the project has been completed.

Not sure there...

They are looking to transform it into an outlet mall, which is probably a pretty good use.

I don't exaclty know the hold up on this. It's been nearly two years since the Creeks took over.

We have had the opportunity to go over there a couple of times in the last month just to look around a little.  We have always liked the place and went to several of the places when they were still there - our business is never going to be enough to keep someone in business.  It still puzzles me as to why none of those little shops/restaurants was able to survive...??  Especially when you have Los Cabos doing so well...!!  What's the deal with that??  It appears as though we want to have the "look/feel" of big town Austin, Dallas, St. Louis, etc but really don't have the overall taste to pull it off!   Los Cabos is better than Taco Bueno, but not a really great Mexican food restaurant at all. 

Deck - isn't that kind of what that amphitheater up north was supposed to do?  Platform for bands/entertainment, but also a kind of "deck" feel??

Riverwalk name...yeah, it kinda does!  We enjoy walking the main patio and the path a few feet further east out there, especially at night!!  The water in the river is nice, but we are mainly looking at the lights across that eastern vista.

Fixable....the whole west bank has those kind of problems and I'm betting a 'seawall' from Keystone to Bixby on both sides would be necessary but not sufficient to cure the erosion issues.  Would still have to absolutely guarantee there would be no "flood level" discharges coming out of Keystone - ever!


I see a big open area at 37th and Elwood that is totally wasted space now....I think it is called West Bank Soccer Complex right now...?  Shops, housing and entertainment could go there!!

That area is surrounded by refineries, trucking companies and dinky houses. I would love to see development, but I think the only way it would ever become anything other than what it is now is if we got a 41st street bridge that truly connected east with west and didn't bypass it.

And honestly, it's not wasted space. It does get a lot of soccer use. We have ridden through there many times when several games were going on and the parking lot was packed.

Yeah... I know... I think it is a good use of the space - just wanted to tweak the soccer-ista's a tiny bit!  You know how I can be....


On a little more serious note - we really don't have square footage for the 'grand vision' development stuff being fantasized about in recent years - unless we start tearing out neighborhoods on the east side of river!  Personally, I think that is a horrible idea - those neighborhoods are the character of Riverside Drive.  Going south to where they disappear and commercial development has set in....well, it isn't pretty.  That's what I don't see as "growth and livability"....  More Starbuck's and Los Cabos only leads to the "casino advertisement style life" - where all the customers of a casino are the beautiful people, always smiling, having fun.... and then when you go into a casino, look around and see the reality....

The "casino advertisement style life"  (CASL??) is shallow, mind-numbing inanity that brings NO value to any area.  Actually, that pretty much applies to the casino lifestyle - leaving the advertisement part out!!

The biggest problem the developer faced with this was no retail anchor(s).  The only non food or bar tenants were gift shops and high end furniture, IIRC.  Gift shops are about as risky a proposition as restaurants.  I have no idea what else is in there, I guess I should pedal through next time I ride out that way.

/edit:  Not much to see, apparently:

RIVERWALK CROSSING:

Benefit Informatics 918.491.3600
Los Cabos 918.298.2226
Marble Creamery 918.299.7907
Pinot's Palette 918.518.5433
Riverwalk Apartments 918.209.4000
Riverwalk Crossing 844.663.3473
Riverwalk Dental Spa 918.392.7654
Riverwalk Movies no phone
The Cigar Box 918.299.7110
The Melting Pot 918.299.8000

You (we) can't compare the amphitheater with the kind of deck suggested for RiverWalk, or any restaurant on the river.   The amphitheater was designed as an "event space", much larger in scope than the smaller decks suggested for the various river-front establishments.  Look at the deck at Blue Rose, for example.  Without that deck, it would just be near the river, not on it.  Same thing for Los Cabos, it darn sure isn't the food that would get me there, but sitting outside on the deck listening to some music is pretty cool.  (Although given the logistics of getting that far down there, it's been a couple of years since I've been there.)

Side note on Las Cabos and decks and eating outside.  I'm no fan of their food either, but the one up here in Owasso has a small outside patio where they have live music sometimes.  Really it's just a small area with no view, but there isn't another place like it in Owasso (outside, with live music), so it is packed any time they have music.   It's all relative, and a place doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to offer something the others don't. 

Normally I would agree with you but the Riverwalk was offering something nothing else in the city had. A riverfront shopping center. Soon the east side of the river by the bridge offered something similar but with almost no river view. Its still there and active, RW is pretty much dead.

IMO what happened to RW was poor management of a good idea. IIRC the builder/developer insisted on managing the center himself. Different skill sets. The rents were high, the spin was awesome (we're the Utica Square of the south, the low water dam will open in two months, we have huge tenants interested, we're expanding, we have more capital! etc, etc.), they never secured a major tenant because those type businesses smelled a river rat, the music was sucky, then the financial meltdown. I loved walking the place but often noticed people spreading out blankets and eating Sonic with high end restaurants nearby. They probably believed a lot of their own hype and overestimated their demographic.

If I taught retail development in college this would be a great example of how to f-up a good idea.

ABSOLUTELY!!  (You just made my case, by the way...no amount of water in the river would have helped that...)

Los Cabos has found the secret that locks in the flavor, in spite of rather pedestrian food...very edible, just not memorable/exceptional.  That's what it takes!  Someone in that organization is brilliant!  The one in BA, sitting on the pond is always packed, too.

We still enjoy walking around RW....just wish there was a shop or two to look at.... 

Outlet shops could definitely work there.  Add a few more restaurants back into the mix with outdoor seating.  Expand the actual Riverwalk closer to the river edge with a concrete sea wall to prevent erosion.  Add a dock area by the amphitheater for the ferry boat across the river and that could turn things around.  It is too bad the aquarium is not closer as it sees a steady stream of visitors.  Maybe a future phase could expand the Riverwalk and sea wall further south past Waterfront Grille to the aquarium and the boat could stop there as well. 

I like the thinking, unfortunately that site is a former demolition land fill.

From our downtown treasures of yesteryear?

Soccer is just fine, but land fill makes no difference....the area just east of Pittsburgh, from 11th north a few blocks was coal mine and land fill.  Then houses.

I've done multiple projects in the area of the scoccer field, the area is still settling?

We better wait then...or put piers in down to bedrock....

I won't start a new topic for this as its related.

News stories this morning about a "rescue" in the river repeatedly stated that "Swimming in the Arkansas River is prohibited, illegal, not allowed" or some such nonsense. The quality of our news reporting is at an all time low.

The truth is that only swimming near the low water dam at Zink Lake is prohibited.

The river is a public river. You may swim or boat in it at your own risk just like the Keystone Lake.

The Zink Lake area from 66 to the lowater dam is restricted to non-motorized boats except for the rowing crew.

From the news, I believe he was at or very near the LWD

This is from the KJRH news story:

"Breckenridge says the group did not know it is illegal to swim in the river until rescue crews working to save his friend told them."


Correct wording would be:

Breckenridge says the group did not know it is illegal to swim in zink lake by the low water dam until rescue crews working to save his friend told them.

Well, lots of good the crashship did us - Jethro Tull finished touring the US in October and didn't get anywhere near Tulsa!  (Dallas).  They even went to friggin' Midland, TX.... but NOT Tulsa!!  Geez!

As much as you might like it, Tull isn't an A list performer.  He may have gone to Dallas, but he played at the Opera House...not the AA Center.

Apples <> Oranges.

Wait, I see what you did there.

Never heard of him.

Rock Floutist...no one wants to see that.

Jethro Tull was a lawyer and agriculturalist in 18th century England.  Called to the bar on 11 December 1693. He invented the seed drill bringing dramatic increases in efficiency to agriculture!  Arguably, the father of 'organic' gardening and farming, he considered the earth to be the sole food of plants.  Organic gardening/farming "slogan" is; "feed the soil, not the plant!"  Note the similarity in philosophy.  The problem was he didn't make the connection between organic matter in the soil actually being the source of all goodness to the soil....

"That which nourishes and augments a plant is the true food of it. Every plant is earth, and the growth and true increase of a plant is the addition of more earth."



There is a band named Jethro Tull that has been banging around almost as long...well, maybe not quite.... still a good show!  They shoulda come to Tulsa!  Now I am gonna have to go to New Zealand or Netherlands to see them!!

Yeah....well, just a little bit more than that....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jz0AwsJ3_E&index=5&list=RDYfAHsiTHWfQ

The locations they are playing are nowhere near the size of the BOk Center. Think Brady or PAC.

Yeah.... Midland TX !!  Whole town could fit in the BOk Center....


I exaggerate....slightly....

Slightly off topic....


And who can possibly be a UFO denier after finding a whale in a field.... in Utah....!!


http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/mysterious-remains-of-a-whale-found-in-a-field-in-utah/





(And yes,...I know....it's been covered before...)

Ask Oregon how to get rid of a dead whale, just 20 cases of TNT is all you need..........

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBgThvB_IDQ[/youtube]