The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

Well I guess we know what is going to happen to the old Spaghetti Warehouse building...

(From KOTV News on 6 website) TULSA, Oklahoma - WPX Energy announced plans to build a $100 million office complex at 222 North Detroit in downtown Tulsa. The new company headquarters will cover an entire block, and have an 11 story tower as part of a multi-level development that is six stories at the perimeter. The design features a public plaza and walkway between the Greenwood District and Arts District, and a parking garage with 700 spaces available for employees and the public.

It’s the first separate headquarters building in Tulsa for the company, which has offices now spanning seven floors of Williams Tower. WPX was created from Williams, but became a separate company in 2011. WPX plans to move into the 245,000 square foot building in early 2022.

The plans call for demolition of the former Spaghetti Warehouse building and another warehouse used for storage. Demolition equipment is already on site.

Company CEO Rick Moncrief said the design intentionally faces east to connect with the Greenwood District, and is designed to encourage public access to the two parks on either side of the building.

He noted while the company considered several locations in Texas, "After we looked at the culture we've developed here, we knew this was the right place."

Moncrief noted the closest wells owned by WPX are 550 miles away, but the company has had great success with recruiting employees in Tulsa, and attracting them to Tulsa from other cities.

WPX employs 450 people in Tulsa, with an annual payroll in excess of $55 million.

I think this is a fair trade-off for the jobs created.  Brick warehouse is pretty ubiquitous in the Brady District, I really don't consider the demo a major loss for the area especially since office space will help residential and retail efforts within the IDL.

The best scenario would've been this development happening at Archer & Boulder, or one of the BOK lots along Archer or at Main & Cameron.  I'm just curious how they are planning to lay out the building on the site, how it interacts with Guthrie Green and Brady Street. 

I'm pretty sure this is the perspective from Brady & Detroit:
(https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/ng/services/mediarender/THISLIFE/022046773943/media/124643453253/medium/1561753052/enhance)

And this is the perspective from Guthrie Green, I can't believe they are having the parking garage on this side.  An no park-facing retail space.  FAIL
(https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/ng/services/mediarender/THISLIFE/022046773943/media/124643454322/medium/1561753126/enhance)

Honestly if you flipped this and had the Detroit side face MLK it would be 10x better.

(https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/tulsaworld.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/e/87/e870ca25-0ccf-5bf9-8da9-37b48a7f8bdd/5d166f84884a5.image.jpg)
The front of the building faces east toward Oneok Field and John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park

(https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/tulsaworld.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/8/66/866c914c-99ae-5938-811b-7aa605894f6e/5d166f8461637.image.jpg)

(https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/tulsaworld.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/8/03/803604ef-add8-53a8-a3ab-fec1601283bc/5d166f8417465.image.jpg)

(https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/tulsaworld.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/9/60/960bbd43-507e-5616-8868-853dfeeab887/5d166f84b5ec4.image.jpg)

(https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/tulsaworld.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/a/28/a28dc1a4-bdc3-5254-a4c1-e742202ca7ac/5d166f850d428.image.jpg)

(https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/tulsaworld.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/a/0e/a0e56b88-8009-50a8-a1bd-394d9c7f2701/5d166f85824ff.image.jpg)

That's a bit harsh. I see what you're saying, but there's many counter points for why the positioning they picked is better. They are probably taking many things into consideration that we don't know about. There's no retail or anything "walkable" to the north of Guthrie Green. It's essentially a dead zone around there with the news station, whereas there's potential to the north and retail that is online to the East and SE, even if a block away. Maybe they wanted to connect to the Greenwood side and be closer to the hub over there including Elgin Park and some other restaurants (and Ross Group buidling going up). Maybe they just want to be a bit further from Guthrie Green for concert noise concerns.

Who knows if in the future they may expand either above the garage or on the empty part of the lot on the SW (might be a secret potential phase 2 we don't know of).

This is taking 2 old warehouse buildings that were apparently not salvageable at this point and turning them into a beautiful 11 story 260,000 square foot facility with 700 parking spaces in 1 place which will can replace many lots. It'll be convenient for those parking for First Friday, Ball-park and Guthrie Green. They didn't have to, but they are making 6,000 square feet of retail. Look around at all the many corporations who fail to do that for their HQs. This is a great win for Tulsa.

Don’t get me wrong I think this is a great project.  I am just interested in seeing more details on how they treat the Guthrie Green frontage.  For retail it would probably make the most sense to concentrate that along Brady and have a restaurant space that opens out to the plaza on the southwest side.  Brady is an important corridor for people walking between Elgin/the ballpark and Main. 

The most exciting thing is the end result is going to end up actually looking like these awesome renderings unlike some other [cough] large downtown developments.

As for orientation, CEO said it was intentionally facing east towards Greenwood as an acknowledgement of the past and a connection to the future.

700 parking spaces will be a great addition and, combined with new Vast bank garage, will provide a lot of public parking in the area.  Hopefully that will expedite the demise of more surface lots.

As for the old Spaghetti Warehouse building, the flooding from the busted water pipe a few winters ago likely made a rehab of the building cost prohibitive if not impossible.

The buildings this will eventually cover won't be missed in the future.  They were really utilitarian buildings which weren't "timeless" by any stretch of the imagination. The only historical significance to the Spaghetti Warehouse building is that it was a huge risk in 1991 or 1992 when we got one in Tulsa and there was barely any lifestyle development in the Brady in those days.  The food was nothing special but by having one open in Tulsa, it indicated we were on par with Dallas or KC in our region and it did inspire more other entrepreneurs and developers to give north downtown a shot.  We definitely owe the SW parent company some accolades for being a part of the genesis of Brady gentrification.

Also Mexicali Border Cafe and Tom Wallace of Wallace Engineering

Forgot how to upload an image to post but, Spaghetti Warehouse is no more...

I think this is a FANTASTIC development.

I was seeing some people complain about it on Twitter because it wasn't an "arts/entertainment" development... but (IMO) you need developments like this to help anchor/spur further development in areas.

And I think it's a gorgeous building that fits in very well in the Arts/Greenwood District.

I see what you're saying. On the Guthrie Green side, it will always be a park, and while that may add more eyeballs for any retail restaurant, so far Guthrie Green has been a very tough place for restaurants (little to no walk-up customers most the time, with short spikes in demand). It is surrounded by News on 6, a block of manufacturing companies and block of museums. Not a great prospect for a future retail corridor. On the side WPX will front, there is a big parking lot next to Living Arts which could be turned into mixed use development along with a big building to the north begging for remodel.

I think this stretch specifically has potential to become something neat: https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1603255,-95.9910573,3a,73.5y,320.13h,82.54t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sBa7g6ruGDDUWfS_3KEdu7A!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DBa7g6ruGDDUWfS_3KEdu7A%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D162.12933%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656 (https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1603255,-95.9910573,3a,73.5y,320.13h,82.54t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sBa7g6ruGDDUWfS_3KEdu7A!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DBa7g6ruGDDUWfS_3KEdu7A%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D162.12933%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656)

Imagine those garages and that blank building turned into a series of small shops, cafes, bars or artist-nooks with office and apartments upstairs. That building on right (North of new WPX) has a pretty nice facade on the east side with large garage doors that could be great storefronts that direction as well. Then there's a big empty lot to the north of that which would be a good spot for housing.  This WPX development brings in hundreds of new faces, 15,000 square feet of commercial space and 6,000 square feet of retail/restaurant. After this development, it looks like what the district needs is more residential.

I agree. Their argument isn't even valid. There's 6,000 square feet of retail space they can use for art/entertainment if someone wants. If there's a demand for more arts/entertainment or an arts organization needing a spot, this opens up more opportunity either downstairs or in the 15,000 square feet of other commercial space.

Just curious what the lunch traffic is in the Brady area. I know in downtown Bartlesville, lunch crowds are good largely because there are about 3k-4k people working within blocks of a dozen or so restaurants.

I have to think this is a positive development for Brady in any way you could fathom.

Depends on the day.  If the weather is nice, it's usually a pretty decent crowd. If the weather is nice and it's food truck Wednesday, then there's usually a really good crowd.

This is will definitely help with foot traffic I would think, but also consider a lot of those people would just walk to Brady from the BOK Tower anyway. I do that all the time myself.

I love that old building by Gypsy north of Cameron between Detroit and MLK.  That could be a very cool mixed-use development with office and/or housing.

The renderings make it look like the "tunnel" through the building lines up with the old east-west alley that runs through the site and also through the block to the east (north of Living Arts).  What would be really cool is to see some kind of new construction housing built on the parking next to JHF Park and an activated alley through there from Detroit to Elgin.  I think you'll eventually see the same thing happen along the alley next to Wallace/Magic City on the block to the south, if/when Wallace expands their building to the west of the surface lot at MLK & Brady.

I was told today that they are not putting in a cafeteria with the main driver being to help further support local eating establishments.

They seem to be super focused on being good neighbors to the area. Almost feels like they were braced for some kind of blow-back for some reason? I know a few rando's have complained about tearing down the spaghetti warehouse, but that will be forgotten about within a week.

Maybe they just understand the culture of their younger workforce better. I've heard WPX is pretty focused on hiring younger engineers.

Either way, I personally believe this will be one of the most transformative downtown projects. A lot of people feel that office buildings can be a detriment to vibrant districts, but I feel like just about everything in this development is done pretty well. I would have liked some retail on the Guthrie Green side as well, but nothing is ever perfect.

I'm guessing the main driver is that it wouldn't be used much.  :)

We have a cafeteria in the BOK Tower and its use has been mostly decimated by the growth in food options downtown over the past 8-10 years.  When I first started here, that thing was almost always packed during lunch... back when there was like 4 options for eating downtown: McNellies, Mexicali, Spaghetti Warehouse or Billy's on the Square...  :D

Now unless it's ungodly cold/raining/snowing/etc., it's mostly empty.  There are too many other good options now versus using the "company cafeteria," no matter how good the food is... (and seriously it's actually pretty decent).

It does seem like they wanted to be above reproach, and boy have they earned that. They went above and beyond what even this board would ask of most businesses. Imagine if someone bought it and just redid those buildings, keeping the parking as-is and converting to a small bit of retail and maybe upstairs office... could've been decades more of that pretty mediocre use of a whole city block. Investing $100 million to build something like this takes guts as a company. It does diversify them a bit, even if slightly. I hope it pays off for them long term.

Now we can dream that the smaller companies around there will grow and expand with mixed use developments onto their neighboring parking lots. Imagine Wallace building a mixed use development on their parking lot and activating that alley (which has the Artist Nooks that open up to alley). They could strike a parking deal with WPX. A 700 spot lot really opens that up as a possibility for places like Living Arts and other firms.

There's nothing particularly compelling about the building and Spaghetti Warehouse was like Casa Bonita: You could never find a Tulsan who ate there other than those compelled by their relatives from Arkansas to join them for some "fine dining".  All gain here, no loss.

You need to have a balance between arts, street-level commerce, jobs, residences, and the income to make it all work.  I think this is a huge win for the Brady and the renderings seem very compatible with the balance of the area.  I also believe the infill seems to be well-balanced thus far.

With a tower crane up at the Davenport Lofts site and this project getting started we’ll likely have two tower cranes up in the Arts District.  The View will have a crane too, it may be a self erector though since it’s mostly wood frame construction with a crawler crane for the concrete garage.  I’d be surprised if they have a tower crane, would be cool though.  Now we just need Santa Fe Square to get moving..

I’m still interested in how the “tunnel” will connect to a future alley behind Living Arts and Elgin Park.  It seems like they are already planning for this alley to be a connection between Detroit and Elgin, with future development on these surface lots next to JHF Park.

(https://www.theguildcompany.com/s/cc_images/cache_4227327929.png)

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Yup ... and the two museum projects.

Good point, OK Pop probably will have a tower crane not sure about the Bob Dylan archive, I don’t think they have released any exterior renderings.

Trying to keep other threads active so the Downtown Development Thread doesn't get muddled.

WPX now has two cranes up... bringing the total for the Arts District to 4!

Exciting, exciting stuff.

(https://i.imgur.com/zkoLEiT.jpg)

(https://imgur.com/Hhi6nym.jpg)

They are now finally above ground level. Will be fun to watch this shoot up into the skyline. Something encouraging to watch during these times.

From last month so a little dated now but shows how big an excavation this was for the underground garage

(https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/103344691_10219882930678596_4085742280644325894_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=04vzgoyI2jcAX9P9oSS&_nc_oc=AQmudgI_TQVIHIz5evQFkMnQ2AZR0CsX6AWM1_PFOqgAd4fhkUsdZKYQC_VeuFe1Nus&_nc_ht=scontent-atl3-1.xx&oh=b74da3df27ccfa8d48609ec658a36dda&oe=5F4513C2)

I don't think they are above ground yet. I took these Saturday.

(https://i.ibb.co/3fPLLzk/2020-07-25-22-21-02.jpg)

(https://i.ibb.co/w7G6xnC/2020-07-25-22-21-16.jpg)

(https://i.ibb.co/47MmqNh/2020-07-25-22-21-19.jpg)

(https://i.ibb.co/c2gGVxC/2020-07-25-22-21-28.jpg)

(https://i.ibb.co/vX6vyZJ/2020-07-25-22-36-57.jpg)

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I drove by this morning, and they are definitely above ground on the South East corner of the building.

From Flintco's social media with Davenport Lofts in the background.

(https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C4E22AQH0Sf5UdXGEQQ/feedshare-shrink_2048_1536/0?e=1599091200&v=beta&t=9Xr1D5lQ0Vja2EAaT2d7bSJWX5z5tdRANsUWnus18Dc)

(https://imgur.com/R3tyCOe.jpg)

From last Friday. Really getting off the ground now.

(https://i.imgur.com/RKeSujE.jpeg)

Still plugging away. Not a jump in height yet, but it wraps around the block, so there's been a lot of progress. The basement on this thing is so huge, and they are still finishing the substructure on the west side.

Some recent pics of the concrete pumping operation

(https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C4E22AQGYvPLvGZrAXg/feedshare-shrink_2048_1536-alternative/0?e=1603324800&v=beta&t=Y-iRvIR4lZW8azopPI5kx5FGwf8WYPMqbvF4668mwEQ)

(https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C4E22AQFJ5IERfSDhsg/feedshare-shrink_1280-alternative/0?e=1603324800&v=beta&t=ZEUaOWa_X-gAvWMAvONk2dxfx5OZkQ31vCr6b4LzTZs)

(https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C4E22AQFyrkfg2p90Qg/feedshare-shrink_2048_1536-alternative/0?e=1603324800&v=beta&t=fFVZadDg96GFgdF4u8HqLZxWkFH7nV3UCrEBbty5nUM)

The scale of this thing is really impressive.

(https://imgur.com/24e27tF.jpg)


(https://imgur.com/v4vTly2.jpg)

The floor heights are pretty tall, so this is starting to dominate the area already. Looks like they'll jump another floor soon.

WPX rising with a beautiful John Hope Reconciliation Park in the foreground

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^ That's a pretty spectacular picture!  I wonder if there has been any movement on who will occupy this building once complete? 

I think it's been discussed before, but why is John Hope Franklin Park fenced off? Are they really that concerned about vandalism? It just doesn't feel like a city park, it feels like a private museum that only a select few get to actually enjoy. I would hope some philanthropists could create an endowment to fund vandalism repairs in real time if it happens, and to install cameras to shame those who would vandalize such a special place.

Probably so it doesn't turn into a homeless camp like this park in Salem OR

https://kval.com/news/local/salem-camping-ban-backfires-as-oregon-capital-city-struggles-with-homeless-crisis (https://kval.com/news/local/salem-camping-ban-backfires-as-oregon-capital-city-struggles-with-homeless-crisis)

(https://kval.com/resources/media/be3693f0-7050-4ba0-a42c-3975ba9ce288-large16x9_SalemHomelesscampcaptioned.jpg?1578509165290)

Or this one in Portland

https://katu.com/news/homeless-crisis-the-best-we-can-do/neighbors-of-laurelhurst-park-press-for-action-on-homeless-camp (https://katu.com/news/homeless-crisis-the-best-we-can-do/neighbors-of-laurelhurst-park-press-for-action-on-homeless-camp)

(https://katu.com/resources/media/dad106f2-8421-4592-a0d9-c37ab7811b1b-medium16x9_HomelessCamp7captioned.jpg?1597189932601)

Couldn't that be said of any city park, including downtown? Why hasn't Guthrie Green, or Chapman Green, or Centennial Park turned into "homeless camps" like Portland, etc.? That logic could be used to ever open new parks in downtown, and I would fight to the death for more parks as opposed to less.

It has a fence around it but several entrance points off Elgin and Detroit

Complete side note, is there anything planned for the vacant brick building across from WPX and next to the Gypsy on Detroit?  It's an awesome building, fairly large too.  Maybe one of the largest empty buildings left in this part of downtown.  I've always thought it would be a good spot for future OSU expansion into the Arts District.

I'd love to see Living Arts and artists lofts expand onto the parking lot to the north next to JHF Park.  Now that Flintco has moved into the building next to it (where Elgin Park is located) they will likely keep that parking lot behind the building.

Probably because the COT & TPD enforces no camping laws for the parks unlike cities along the west coast that quit enforcing those laws a few years ago.

https://kval.com/news/local/camping-is-illegal-in-eugene-people-camp-in-eugene-whats-next (https://kval.com/news/local/camping-is-illegal-in-eugene-people-camp-in-eugene-whats-next)

You have state and Federal courts that are ruling that laws against panhandling are a violation of the homeless persons 1st Amendment rights.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2015/09/01/federal-court-ban-on-panhandling-violates-homeless-peoples-constitutional-rights/?sh=80b7a5a12e75 (https://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2015/09/01/federal-court-ban-on-panhandling-violates-homeless-peoples-constitutional-rights/?sh=80b7a5a12e75)

And you can't arrest a homeless person for being homeless.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/cities-arrest-homeless-problems-71511969 (https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/cities-arrest-homeless-problems-71511969)

It's ironic there are laws which attempt to prevent homeless people from sleeping somewhere and trying to eat and punish them by putting them in jail so they can sleep and eat there instead and we pay for it. Why doesn't the city just hire them to do various manual labor like picking up trash and such and give them a small paycheck and a place to stay and food. It seemed to work well during the old WPA programs.

That is precisely what Mayor Bynum's "A Better Way" program is built to do:


https://www.kjrh.com/news/local-news/program-launched-to-employ-tulsa-homeless

That's great - I hadn't heard of it but it sounds like a good program. They should probably massively expand it and instead of giving people cash to go buy whatever, they give them vouchers that can only be used for food, clothing, and shelter. Or, offer them an actual 9-5 job with the city becoming their legal guardian in regard to how their paycheck can be spent. I understand there is no silver bullet to fixing homelessness and honestly not everyone wants a way out of that situation, but there needs to be a larger program in place that has various well-defined paths to becoming a functioning member of society for those that are serious about it. The rest we need to give Bus tickets to Dallas.  ;D

The next Vision sales tax package should have a funding source for homeless housing, IMO.  While it won’t solve the problem it would help get more of these people off the streets. 

No, limiting their use of money and acting like a parent is a horrible, horrible idea. Housing first. Provide everything needed to care for themselves. Hire social workers to help, not restrictive laws and bureaucratic paternalism. Sure, some will continue the cycle regardless of how much help you give, but that is not a reason to stop trying. The majority who are able to escape the cycle is well worth the investment.

"but there needs to be a larger program in place that has various well-defined paths to becoming a functioning member of society for those that are serious about it. The rest we need to give Bus tickets to Dallas."

I think Tulsabug was being a little humorous there, but he (and you) are moving in the same direction.   There has to be both carrot and stick in any solution of this type.   I definitely agree with "housing first".  Leverage a work-fare or similar program where the first need addressed is a safe place to reside, at a minimum simply for overnight stays.   That will be a good start to a good process that can help a lot of people.  But as you note, there will be those who, either by choice or due to mental health or chemical dependency or other factors, will not leverage this opportunity.   Simply accepting that scenario is not an option, either.   The end goal is to get everyone off the street.  Provide the carrots, but we will need to utilize "sticks" as well in order to fully address the situation.

It does depend on the person. Giving someone with an alcohol or chemical dependency, especially those with self-destructive personalities, cash to do with what they will is just going to put them into the grave. Those people really do need a legal guardian as, when you hit a point with addiction, you don't have a choice any longer. That monkey will dictate that if you have money - you go buy more drugs or alcohol and nothing else. All I'm saying is the city can pay them in vouchers that can only be used for food and shelter - financial blinders if you will.

(https://imgur.com/f0D5qa5.jpg)

They are still rocking along on this thing. They were working yesterday, on a Sunday.

5 stories now, and just about halfway to topping out.

I don't get out as much as I used to (thanks Covid) but I was out last week and it was quite a sight to drive west on I-244 in towards downtown to see all the cranes up on the north side of downtown.  I think i counted four, but might be mistaken.  This is definitely a good thing to see.

(https://imgur.com/C3O0LFM.jpg)

6 floors already on the south side, which should be it for that side? I believe they are already a floor or two higher on the middle/north end.

Can't be too much longer until they top out and finish with the concrete work.

It definitely makes an impact when driving down 244 and looking south toward downtown.

Hope they finish this project to its original specifications.  Six floors is definitely a good sign.  Once this pandemic show signs of clearing up, you'll see the growth trends return to the downtown area.

With QuikTrip continuing to expand, it would be nice to see them with a downtown HQ, and this building would work, but I'm sure they are happy out in the burbs.

Hopefully the building was too far along at the time of the sale to Devon to make any material changes.  Or maybe some WPX execs had enough remaining Tulsa civic pride that they made finishing the building as designed part of the deal with Devon.

In any event, I am keeping my fingers crossed this building ends up like it was planned.

WPX and Devon have both said, before and after the merger, that the building would be completed. It would really make no sense to do otherwise. (If they complete the building, they have an asset that has some value and can be sold or leased with some, perhaps very diminished, return.  If they stopped construction, they would pretty much have to give it away or just keep it sitting on their books with continued costs and no return. There is no reason not to take them at their word.

It appears they are working on the 8th floor now.

(https://imgur.com/lmlnwHR.jpg)

Yeah, no way are they stopping short at this point. Almost all of the superstructure is in place. Finally some wall material going up on the south end.

Hopefully they don't cheap out on materials for the façade. Please no Cimarex type exterior lol... Hopefully they had already ordered most of the materials so they couldn't cheap out on finish outs.

Thanks for posting these pics too and of the other projects downtown. It's exciting to see how much is going on still even with the economy. Hopefully oil going back up in the 50s/60s will help buoy the office market - seems like most of the domestic firms can thrive in that price range for the most part.

They've got to be close to topping this thing out. I haven't counted floors, but they are at least on 9. Parking garage is also nearly topped, so they could be done with structural concrete this month.

The news of them gutting WPX personnel really sucks. I had hoped they would keep this as an office for a few years and transition people over time. It feels very short sighted, especially with oil roaring back.

The problem is Devon has about 500,000 to a million sq. ft. of vacant office space they can use in OKC. They have several floors empty in the main tower plus they had leased the entire BOK Park Plaza tower next door (which is now being sublet by them to people like BOK). They also have sublet space all over downtown OKC too which they had put on the market (I'm sure some of those leases have expired) that they anticipated to consolidate that space into BOK Park Plaza prior to the implosion. Devon has more than enough space in OKC for probably a decade of growth at this point. They won't even spend the money to fix busted windows on the tower from a window washing accident years ago. Devon was probably the worst possible acquisition partner for WPX in terms of possibly keeping an office open in Tulsa. That's just how it goes for Tulsa it seems.

I will say driving down Elgin this building really makes a visual impact. I haven't been back in town for a while and driving around downtown and the Pearl area Tulsa really is starting to feel like a real city. The road diets make such a big impact too with having more street parking makes the area feel busier and safer to walk. It doesn't makes the streets feel like a ghost town anymore with the new street parking added. I'm so glad the city is doing so many road diets in this area of town.

There probably isn't an oil & gas company that would have been a potential alternative acquirer of WPC that does NOT have plenty of space for additional employees right now. The only way for this to have stayed in Tulsa would have been if the acquirer had been from Tulsa (and other than Williams, I'm not sure who would be in that candidate pool).

Photos taken today:
(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51020523031_9a219e1e47_c.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2kJvvYc)
WPX Building Construction (https://flic.kr/p/2kJvvYc), on Flickr

(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51019795903_53507d236d_c.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2kJrMPv)
WPX Building Construction (https://flic.kr/p/2kJrMPv), on Flickr

(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51020624292_d5615a070c_c.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2kJw355)
WPX Building Construction (https://flic.kr/p/2kJw355), on Flickr

(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51020624352_a646acda27_c.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2kJw367)
WPX Building Construction (https://flic.kr/p/2kJw367), on Flickr

Thanks for the pictures - the height really does change the feel of the neighborhood. Once the GKFF development gets going to the NW too this whole area will feel more like the CBD than some random separate area.

(https://imgur.com/Fozg9uk.jpg)

Still some concrete left to add. It looks like they are working on the last floor? The area on the north side is still being finished as well. Good progress on the south side with siding materials going up already.

Thanks for the picture/update. It's looking good. As far along as they are I have about zero concern this will turn into something really ugly (Cimarex 2.0). It would probably cost them more at this point to modify anything material wise or design wise than it would be to just finish the project how it was originally planned.

From the BOK Tower, it seems like they should have one more floor after the one they're working on.  I could be counting wrong or have misremembered how many stories  ;)

I will feel better once we see brick going on.

(https://imgur.com/ulxq413.jpg)
(https://imgur.com/ikZz4j3.jpg)

Updated construction photos from yesterday:

(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51131445340_3236d542c5_b.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2kUj2iN)

(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51130334661_ca2e8b54d4_b.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2kUdk9a)

This tower is going to look great!

Less filling!

Honestly I thought it would stick out being the tallest building in a mostly low-rise district but it fits in well with some of the other new buildings.  Now just need a company to move in and fill it with workers...bonus points for a new company moving to Tulsa and needing a brand new office in the most vibrant part of downtown

(https://imgur.com/FXpnzQu.jpg)

Surely they have to be at the top now. I believe that is 11 stories, but unsure if there is some kind of mechanical penthouse on the top level. Looks like one more level on the parking garage.

Windows already going in. Can't wait to see some exterior finish. Hopefully it will still be the brickwork originally shown.

I think it's going to be a tough fill since remote work is probably going to increase in the future but I guess we'll see. I'm glad they didn't scrap it when WPX left though.

Maybe in the short term but within a year things will be mostly back to “normal” maybe with more hybrid schedules but still keeping their offices.  This building will be the nicest office space in one of the best locations in the city.  Great spot for a growing company to plant a flag.

Something else that many people probably don't realize is the square feet per person post COVID is going to go up. Tech companies started it mainly because programmers/coders didn't need big offices and then every other company realized it was a way to cut down margins by cramming as many people into a space as possible. Then spin it as we're doing this for you, it's good for you, good for collaboration, etc. Pretty much everyone hates it outside of management hell bent on margin costs. There will be focus on 'social distancing' far into the future and actually looking into how that type of density in office space isn't a good thing. I've seen some studies that showed the flu went through offices twice as fast in the newer more dense floorplans. It's hard to avoid getting sick when you have 6-8 co workers staring you in your face everyday. It's also terrible for productivity for most workforces. So, while there will be a permanent increase to remote working for a lot, the amount of square feet per person using office space will likely double which in the end will limit some of the impact to office space usage. That trend wasn't overly prevalent in Tulsa, but in many of the bigger cities it was. I think you'll see it creep back up to 300 or 400 square feet per person where it was about through the 2000s but the 150 to 250 square feet per person trend is likely on the way out. There will also continue to be what is called the flight to quality, meaning newer buildings like this one. Better air flow, better filtration systems, etc. which helps keep people healthier. Well certification (https://www.wellcertified.com/) is the new 'LEED' but probably more beneficial.   

My company is going to try to reduce the building footprint post covid. I'm not sure how it will end up. But right now they are considering have some teams be a monday/wednesday/friday and some being tuesday/thursday. So you give each team more space, but they share it with others. Not sure what this will do the business space in the future though. I know quite a few companies aren't willing to do much work from home and are looking at increasing the personal space of everybody, so it may start to even out a bit?

Good stuff

Agreed. 

Also, not expecting this caliber of a tenant, but I wondered why Nestle USA moved from its swanky 30-year Glendale, CA headquarters to a building in Arlington, VA.  I figured it was to be closer to lobby the federal government or similar.  But, I read an article where a Nestle exec/insider said increasing Cali costs of all kinds and longstanding time zone business issues in California set the company looking for a new state.  It was said a large part of the Arlington decision aside from any incentives (which everyone offers) was a new Class-A swanky glass office tower overlooking DC. It was empty --- can't recall for sure, but I think the building was a rare spec building as opposed to a large tenant leaving.  I wonder if some incentives and a shiny new available building could lure an out-of-state headquarters here.  Something additive would be great as opposed to Magellan, ONEGAS or somebody just changing addresses.     

That's my assumption is eventually it will even out for the most part. It at least won't be a dramatic downsizing in office space that some have predicted nationally.


That deal was mainly because they felt they could recruit better in the DC market. The LA market is challenging for professional businesses. That building also had a very desperate landlord (who I also worked for). They got a crazy deal on that space just so that developer could get an anchor tenant in the building, add in incentives from local and state and it made sense for them to relocate. The DC area at that time had several Class A trophy properties completely vacant that were built spec. They still have buildings in NOVA built spec over a decade ago that have never been occupied. After BRAC it really screwed the office market, particularly in NOVA. There was also a dramatic shift around that time to buildings along the metro and there's some submarkets that just will never recover.

But you do have a good point in that sometimes having an available building can be enough to pull in a surprise. I hope given the quality and location that we can snag someone new to the market. Part of Tulsa's problem too that I've seen in other markets is the lack of entitled sites. If you're looking for an HQ in Denver, Austin, Nashville, Salt Lake, Portland, etc. there's at least a dozen trophy buildings ready to break ground. In Tulsa that's not the case, and that's enough to get chopped off a list sometimes when they're looking in the 18 to 24 months range. A lot of companies don't want to risk going through the entitlement process and having to get a building designed, they'd rather just tweak plans that are shovel ready and are sure things when they are expanding into new markets or completely relocating.

I worked through several cycles of "office" and cubicle sizes.  Mostly the cubes were always a bit too small.  Do your 300 to 400 and 150 to 250 sq-ft/person include hallways, restrooms, conference rooms.....?  I think the biggest cube I ever had was 8' x 10' and that was when engineers were still dealing with E-size (34" x 44") paper blue-lines in the early to mid 1980s.  The drafting department took care of the originals.

I am retired now but my former employer converted some of the collaborative work areas back to individual cubes due to Covid.

Yeah, that includes the net rentable area so everything but stairwells, elevators, (bathrooms and hallways if the floorplate is broken up into multiple tenants) that kind of thing. The 300 to 400 sq. ft. per person was a pretty common metric in the 1990s to around mid to late 2000s. 2010 and on is when that decreased pretty rapidly. A lot of that had to do with that being around when the reubranization started really taking in most cities around the US too, and many employers were moving to urban areas and trying to figure out ways to decrease operating costs in the process from overhead like office space.   

Good thoughts. Thank you. Nestle thought they could recruit better in DC than Los Angeles - OK.  It would be easier in the packaged food industry to recruit in Chicago or Dallas or a handful of other cities where that industry and fast-moving consumer products HQs/ops are well represented over suburban DC.  That led me to believe the Nestle move was either to be closer to the DC power/regulation crowd --- or even more likely, they looked around and saw that great building which in opulence looks near the same in class as the Brand Blvd. building in Glendale.  If a similar building and deal existed in Chicago or Charlotte --- for example --- you think Nestle would still pick Arlington, VA? 

Great point! I hope they do increase the amount of sq ft per employee as my experience in the corporate world was "stack 'em deep and pay 'em cheap". We were piled desk next to desk next to desk to the point the noise level made phone calls difficult (a real problem in a call center) - good times.

I think some of it likely had to do with MARS being based in McLean too and Hersey is just up the road in PA, so there's companies in that region they can recruit from. Chicago and Dallas definitely would have made sense too, but my guess is some of the executives didn't want to live there. The bonus of being in the capital and being able to have more visibility in the lobbying community probably didn't hurt either. Nestle has a lot of ties to Europe and DC is easier to get to than LA, Chicago or Dallas too. International flights into the NE are generally cheaper than Chicago or Dallas given you can fly into a variety of cities even outside of DC and then take a train into DC if needed and a flight into DC instead of LA takes off hours of travel time as well. A lot of the execs had stronger ties to the NE than anywhere else - generally at the end of the day that is usually what it boils down to is where the execs want it to be and they'll justify it for whatever other reason they can figure out.

LA has been a challenging market for the more corporate world given it's more of an arts and entertainment focused region. Most of the big HQ's there have struggled for years finding and retaining good talent compared to places like NY, Boston, DC and even areas like Dallas, Chicago, etc. that are just different culture wise and attract different types of people to move to those areas than LA does.

I’m not sure why, but if you look at this space you will be told the top two floors are not available. 

Anyone know the answer why?

Hopefully that means they've already landed their first tenant. Although I'd rather a big company come in and buy the building whole, it was always far more likely that the building would be divided into suites/floors.

This may be for a different board or even website, ha!  - you're knowledge on this ---  I believe what you say about recruiting, etc.  Mars is HQd in McLean, but isn't it just a few in the c-suite & support--- maybe 30-40 people?  Aren't major ops in Hackettstown NJ, Chicago and Franklin, TN?   Isn't it sort of like Exxon HQs in Irving w/ massive ops in The Woodlands or Kimberly-Clark in Irving w/ main ops in Neenah, WI, etc.  I know Nestle has big ops outside of Cleveland (Stouffers/pizza/prepared meals), St. Louis (Purina), Seattle (Starbucks Partnership) but their Arlington space is also full of people running various U.S. packaged foods, beverages, coffee --- lots of marketers, operational stuff. Wonder if they'll leave Nature's Bounty where it is or consolidate in VA.  Hershey is one of my favorite places --- first book report in 5th or 6th grade was on Milton S. Hershey.  On a family road trip around the time I was 40, I had to decide for time sake for us to spend two days in Hershey or nearby Gettysburg and Amish area.  I'm not even ashamed to say which I picked!  

Mars does have a lot of operations everywhere, I think they're in the process or just finished a big corporate office expansion on the pet side in Nashville. The HQ in McLean has about 200-300 people working there. The Mars family is just very low key, not flashy people. Jacqueline Mars lives in Nova and about the only time you've ever seen her in the press was when she caused a car accident in 2013. The HQ doesn't look like much but it does have a good amount of corporate and execs working out of it. They also have a facility in Germantown MD in the northern suburbs.

Here's an article about the relocation I was able to find, gives some additional details on the amount of incentives and their reasoning. One thing in there they mentioned is that the vast majority of Nestle operations and facilities are all on the east coast and so DC being in the middle of the east coast probably helped too.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/nestle-to-move-us-headquarters-to-arlington-bringing-750-jobs-to-the-region/2017/02/01/0ff6ec34-e40c-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html

Nestle was one of the biggest economic development wins in that region to that date. The DC area had started getting really aggressive to try and diversify the economy away from government, after BRAC and especially sequestration that really hit the DC area hard. So they threw anything and everything at Nestle they could. Probably paid off, because after that you started to see other companies look at DC a bit different and now Amazon is obviously expanding there so the region has come a long way. It didn't always have the reputation is does now, DC really struggled as a region for a while especially as politics became more contentious and you'd see bursts of spending and expansion followed by dramatic consolidations through GSA and the CRE market there was like a yo-yo for a few decades.

I looked it up on Costar and it shows all the floors available still (they are slow to update stuff). Cushman's website for the OK offices doesn't have any of the listings looks like they are redoing the website so it's not very functional. Curious what source you saw that on? Would be interesting if it went the multi-tenant route, probably wouldn't be a bad thing to do that than sit and wait for a big tenant to take all or most of it. 

Thanks for the good info and the article link.

When folks from my office toured the WPX building, they were told by the leasing agent that the top 2 floors are not available.

5/15/21

Lots of windows going in already. Saw the brick mockup during mayfest. Looks like a darker, redder brick than the concept art, but looks good. No one likes yellow brick.

(https://imgur.com/BmayHHp.jpg)

(https://i.imgur.com/kxxlL7T.jpg)

Brick going up on the NE side... looks pretty good!

I wonder if they are planning on painting that brick black since it is shown as black material on the concept artwork. Or perhaps they have changed designs to use cheaper material. I'll withhold judgement until we see more...

So Cimarex is probably leaving town. Thank goodness they gave us a building void of any architectural style and plopping it on top of a parking garage, right across from our cities most visible event venue. Build and leave, gotta love Tulsa's O&G companies.

Do you really think Cimarex will be leaving?

Anytime a Tulsa company merges with a Houston company, history says they're gone.

Isn't Cimarex primarily a Denver company?

It just merged with Cabot (based in Houston) - my guess is either the Tulsa office or Denver office will close when they consolidate staff. Probably based on which lease expires the soonest. Maybe the fact that the office space in Tulsa is a lot cheaper than Denver will help keep them in Tulsa. Denver has seen a lot of O&G office closures as well lately. Cabot has a regional office in Pittsburgh and then just it's HQ in Houston I think. Given the assets under control, it'd make more sense for the Denver office to close since Cimarex has a big area in the Anadarko Basin in west Oklahoma but that's not always how things work. Cimarex's other big area is the Permian. Cabot I believe mostly only has operations in Pennsylvania. Cimarex lease is up in 2023 or early 2024 in Tulsa I think - if I remember correct it was a 10 year lease, and their lease in Denver looks to expire around 2026 and they occupy around 100,000 sq. ft.

Probably not. This is the opposite of the DVN-WPX merger because there’s no operational overlap between Cabot and Cimarex. Don’t forget that Cimarex in Tulsa is the spin-off E&P division of Helmerich Payne. Cabot likely has no ability to take over management of these assets. Current Cimarex CEO will also be the new entity’s CEO going forward. The only folks concerned at this moment should be the Cabot execs who just became redundant.

Weird merger though.

FIFY.  It's very likely a combination Cabot and Cimarex execs who will become redundant.  From an article about the merger:  "Dinges [CEO of Cabot] will serve as executive chair of the board of the newly combined business, while Cimarex CEO Thomas Jorden will lead the company as CEO. The remainder of the company's leadership team will include executives from both Cabot and Cimarex."  And the HQ is going to be in Houston (home of Cabot), not Denver (home of Cimarex).

Lord knows I don't want Cimarex to go, but if they do I hope they take that hideous building with them.  (just found out there are words they will not let you use here at TulsaNow.  I replaced "ugly-donkey" with hideous)

It's a weird merger for sure. Most of the sell-side analysts were pretty confused about it and there were some pretty pointed questions on the investor call the other day.

And yeah, the "synergies" will be from closing the Cimerex Denver HQ office since the new company HQ will be Houston. They specifically said in the call that they will maintain their regional offices, and Tulsa was actually specifically mentioned on the Cimerex side.

For those who don't know, Cabot is almost completely focused in Appalachia/Marcellus, while Cimerex is almost completely focused on Permian/Mid-Con.  So you don't really get any "operational" synergies at all (hence little-to-not impact to regional offices), which is one of the reasons the analysts were so confused by the deal.

Thanks - had it in my head they were keeping Denver not Houston. Either way seems Tulsa gets to stay. For now.

Thanks for that insight - glad they specifically mentioned Tulsa. It would be baffling if they closed this office, but I think we've all seen some pretty bizarre things happen after mergers.

Denver has lost most of its O&G HQ's and large regional offices with the exception of BP Lower 48, Encana (now Ovintiv) and DCP Midstream which is in the process of moving out of downtown to the Tech Center.  

(https://imgur.com/7y3A9wV.jpg)

^ That parking lot and its neighbor to the east are the two biggest holes remaining in the Arts District.  Redeveloping these lots into mixed-use housing would tie together all of the new projects along Archer which has become one of the more pedestrian-friendly streets downtown.  The TDA lot and LA King site at Cameron & Main are up there too. 

Nice development for Tulsa that will be filled with a reputable tenant.  Just wait and see.

I don't have any inside insight but it sounds like two relatively small companies merging to help bolster themselves in a shrinking market. I think we're going to be seeing a lot of consolidation in the oil/gas industry over the next 10 years.

Hope so but a disreputable tenant would be fine too. I'd be down with Blackbeard Looting & Pillaging Inc coming in there - some Jolly Rogers flying over downtown would be pretty nifty.  ;D

(https://imgur.com/vfKbtH9.jpg)
(https://imgur.com/WzvFwxK.jpg)

Thanks for the pics, I like the brick (hopefully it doesn't look different/cheaper in person) but it looks like they're using one's that have a more 'aged' look and should make the building fit in a bit better with the surrounding area.

I’ve noticed they have rebranded this project as 222 N Detroit

https://www.commercialoklahoma.com/properties/222-n-detroit-ave/

Not sure how much space is on each floor, but it doesn't appear that much has rented out yet.

I looked at it recently and was very happy with overall materials quality. I think this is going to be a very good looking building. Probably better than Vast Bank HQ, which is also a nice building. I just find the parking garage placement baffling. Oh well its far better than the desiccated corpse of Spaghetti Warehouse.

(https://imgur.com/JvKOZ0X.jpg)

Once the blue stuff is off the windows this will look a lot better.

(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/A86M0Z4ECMEr_tmQ84QaucxjQKjJEc5HBoSVrY9vKqPqW1y9cgfN2QEY6VWsHCnA-8wCiENcn7TqYgZet2eDq9IbGbLqf0KqPkXyPVu0PwAZxRB7qDh6wojVZec-U_13Ymxy-homUL0BhCdJOuvGnFa_TX20LvI9AiJmR-r2_hKark3WF_SvvGkTxmfYmp8Q4DjO_BDLYB4Te72ldlzJ-MOl50--pob95ShkRGtE4y-U8TT3e0NgusDW76G-640FRTAj197dtRHp7JBaSsUaswOuV2AGK1UCOtdJVWVP1dz5RVrm-pp2ZHHKk096EzG5Jk4xlZo5v_YibnM_Ca71yTNsYElbdUSmQRPIFrd1ZoSNGYRhBVxS6Qq20yHC_RcIDpXv6rMGoRW6GephJwIRqVAFhUnmHjQTCJqGbo9AOWK_R1-UhzMpexOUQ8TCtXl2AbwQ2tU4GmgeisNT2wdefPH9eR0uQ6LirffnC8NyyFFk-OwYAN8iNTvVTd0krMJxoIEXNGWSsfeIq4bXelVp3G5A8t3yXqNPLtiawdF06wxfBvRybDhtnoOER1b101b0sbFEIdUE812-_3mPx-eh9gHrpZMqPlFz-E3c_mBHtkuIzTFeMMOTtWS47AUF66oi9tefjZwc-Ab-NAh2RzFwfQRJ52956j3IG4ogCF-UtlpyFkkS3x1fgh3waA0dnU1Z4_OYAdQIR5J3CDElWQHfvxw=w595-h390-no?authuser=0)

(https://imgur.com/2Lfjr4t.jpg)

Coming along quickly now. Both this and the View have brick flying up.

Would love to see this cool old building just north of 222 renovated.  Anyone know what the current use is for this building?  On Detroit north of Cameron next to the Gypsy.  It would be a great office or live/work space

(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/O_QUVaPnA9ovpjAtQuU5685MYA_WHjUAG8jKB9g6LUgbWenCONr9pxegLfKsGPpHyXixQzQkyO7hdjZKg1KGhHMhKdjCl0cXmqwntLQRzUcpS2VEstCZzwUXS2jBz9bJk-gNT7ZfT-tPy-NJGgnBCYwt7_G00JTnZvt_0oxTuQj791qk-UFYHixME2gWHHJRsBSVY02BX8n67Z1QqwcBsLkqwkVmzsevtll-TWhHdd-Cd4ssi3ZoQqtxStQbeJPd-9Mok_SOoVzYOWu6Zu-oQEAnxgK1BhEqqTZqWoHz0NqQ6-r1gwke8QN96nH8fgHayVVSUvtMCdPEWI2yf9c-G_oTbG8sLeUsL2KUt-m4CEjkuVoIIOxheNW3vEVm4tWpsvFEUSR9IV3qElY8dm5A_L3dOu97VPcf9up-7GUQgE_73HzU5kbL9XDyte7pXh7wIeSfpUb4ewA-y0txZU1tHCfvDuD4F0ziiH0HkHvtHw0lS73MDa6rZc7ac8YhS20iV7gjyqLfzNIaMP9MLD1jwVs1JHYobM_GRBKRmOOjFetFypP3PKni-Wzx2HeesFI9Er6K1kEu4QCcTRmtxzuvu3Ih7PZ8_wqlrrzyUnFAjex1cVUiF0tMpn038ZWaUrY6nlnNG--k7IHmzsPLKjxkgjoH6oiR2uZdXUGjsM0diCpytmOBM0ZZ1RS2NJGVQ7BC8I6mugjCOrcnm61mlwaPG8s=w1492-h851-no?authuser=0)

I have heard that a renovation for that building is currently in the design phase.  I cannot recall what its proposed use is supposed to be.  But I recall the building will kind of have to stair step in order to accommodate Griffin Studio's satellite dishes.   

The view from Guthrie Green.  Any more news on tenants for this building?

(https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C4E22AQEDAPAWj2t85g/feedshare-shrink_2048_1536/0/1631629303834?e=1634774400&v=beta&t=ibYxtcICnvbncTF4iqBRf_hyYGhHlugYLnYWhKBoq8s)

(https://imgur.com/JWqWYIW.jpg)
(https://imgur.com/ejy9boq.jpg)

This thing is massive, and the more it gets covered in brick and finished the more massive it looks for some reason.

Good looking building, glad they were able to complete this project.

One of the best looking new office buildings I’ve seen built anywhere.  This would be a fantastic office for a company looking to expand in Tulsa.  I know offices aren’t fully back yet and may never be as strong as before with the popularity of WFH.

I've been waiting to pictures of it nearing exterior completion, and I really like the look of it. The multi pane window style is reminiscent of the windows from not only long gone buildings in more central DT, but also the windows on the warehouses that were dominant in the area. The canopy/overhang reminds me of some of the buildings that were near 3rd and Boulder or Cheyenne, as well as ones that were on Main before the Bartlett Square era.

It may be just me, but I see elements of several buildings from downtown in this building. 

Older aerial but shows how this fits into its surroundings

(https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C4E22AQFmv_MAMBgI8w/feedshare-shrink_1280/0/1638386703388?e=1641427200&v=beta&t=eEBGSiV7qXAJQyL80eRNh23kQOmuzqKuDAQrZ11eX2U)

(https://imgur.com/JAq8cWd.jpg)
(https://imgur.com/ycITBgS.jpg)

Still a hive of activity and a long ways to go on this one. They have been hard at work on the parking garage side finishing up the exteriors around there. I feel like we have been waiting forever for them to fill in the last gaps in the cladding on the east side.

(https://imgur.com/lPTlRAV.jpg)
(https://imgur.com/IqtDxhl.jpg)

Getting so close now. They are in the process of milling and overlaying the streets around this, so it seems they expect construction walls to come down within the next few weeks.

They've done about as well as one can with the oversized parking structure. The ones in the southern part of downtown, and in the Cimarex nightmare, are just sad.

Do people think they'll build out the floors, or wait until tenants are secured? Heard some rumors that they wouldn't finish the office space right away. I hope that doesn't delay the retail/restaurant space.

It is pretty standard to not build out the office space. That's considered a 'tenant improvement/TI' and that is negotiated with a tenants rental rate. Every office build out is custom to the tenant and you rarely will see spec office suites built out, especially in markets like Tulsa.

Same with the retail space, they will likely stay in white box form until a tenant signs a lease. I'm not sure if they have any preleases on the retail spaces but I'm sure given it's frontage to Guthrie Green they'll get retailers in there sooner than later until they are just super unrealistic about rental rates. Frankly, I haven't heard what they want for retail but the office rents they are wanting is not extreme for the quality/location of the building.

I've heard that 36 Degrees North is planning an expansion. It would make sense if they possibly leased a floor or two in this building. It's within walking distance to the other two locations in the Arts District. They are upping the Tulsa Remote program to 2,000 relocations this year and plan to keep going at that rate and part of the deal is a membership at 36 Degrees North so they are going to run out of space quickly.

Back sometime around '90/'91, my son's pediatrician was in the ORU City of Faith main tower. Even 10 years after completion most of the floors were never finished other than elevator and restroom areas on the vacant floors. The floor the doctor was on was partially finished, the elevator area and the dr's offices had actually been finished, but to get the restrooms you went through a door that led to the rest of the unfinished floor somewhere in the 30th floor area.

The law firm of Crowe & Dunlevy is moving from the Kennedy Building and is going to be taking up the entire 6th floor. No word if they'll be using Cocobolo desks or not.

https://tulsaworld.com/business/local/local-law-firm-first-to-plant-new-roots-in-new-downtown-building-formerly-wpx/article_09ab8716-84f4-11ec-96f8-db6747ac1c78.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1

Well, that's a start. Only one floor filled though in all this time. Wonder how hard they have been able to market it yet with it still being under construction. I suppose it will be easier to sell space once people can tour it.

That's actually a very healthy sign for the market, the building isn't even done yet. The hardest thing is to get the first tenant and then most project fill back in nicely. I'd expect this building to be full in about 24 months, which is a pretty decent lease up pace. Spec buildings, which is what this turned into, take time to lease up. 1-2 years usually. It's healthy for us to have top quality vacant space for companies to move around into, this was much needed in my opinion if we want to grow.

It's not uncommon for spec office buildings to sit vacant for 1-2 years before signing the first tenants. It happens in much bigger cities all the time (DC, Dallas, etc.) - our office vacancy rate is also lower than a lot of growing markets, like Dallas for example too. Getting some lease rates up into the $30 per sq. ft. range is going to be good for Tulsa. If some of these older buildings end up having tenants relocate, those can be repositioned to hotels, multifamily, etc. too down the road. 

Whats wrong with this picture?

During the recent English and Creative Writing Department’s Town Hall, faculty confirmed that the department will soon move out of Zink Hall. Like Oxley College of Health Sciences, the English and Creative Writing Department’s new building will be found off campus, where it will host classes and faculty offices. The rumors are true: the English and Creative Writing Department’s new home is now the deserted Spaghetti Warehouse in downtown Tulsa.
https://tucollegian.org/the-english-and-creative-writing-department-moves-buildings-to-downtown-tulsas-abandoned-spaghetti-warehouse/
 
Posted today.

It's a satire article, and not a particularly good one. Best I understand it, they are complaining about the conditions of the buildings their department uses. Nothing really to do with the new WPX building.

(https://imgur.com/S23XeXI.jpg)
(https://imgur.com/Ofu3D2Y.jpg)

So close to being done. Wish they could have had the ground level done for mayfest. This was taken Saturday and it looks like they are just about ready to take the fences down around the sidewalk. Of course they'll probably wait a few more weeks because Tulsa.

One of the few buildings that I think looks better in person/built than the renderings. I'm so glad they didn't cheapen the exterior finishes this will be a top quality asset for a long time.

I can't remember but any word if the parking garage will be open to public in the evenings/weekends? That would be really nice to have that for events.

From BBM's social media

(https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C5622AQHk6TOxPTu-uA/feedshare-shrink_1280/0/1652882544710?e=1655942400&v=beta&t=PwPrueorf2YPlMyAkmx1ZB5z7AEyHba5SWLjYWwSY7g)

Gonna be in town for Tulsa Tough this year, hoping to check out a good chunk of the new buildings in Tulsa. If I remember correctly, Saturday's race route goes by this project. Are folks going to be able to walk/use the sidewalk around this? Would be a great add for sure

I doubt they will remove them by then, probably too big of a legal liability on the contractor until the building is ready for occupancy.

Tulsa tough is three weeks from now. They are so close to getting all the little external bits finished. I wouldn't be surprised if the outside sidewalks are open by then. It may be awhile till the arch and courtyard are open. That last photo posted is old and my last photo is already a couple weeks old.

Good grief, when are they going to take the fences down? They've got landscaping, benches, etc. all in place. It's looked like they could have opened it up for weeks. I know they were still working on a few spots on the exterior, but even that looks to be complete at this point. It looks like there's already furniture in the lower level, so I feel like this building could open imminently.

They are definitely at the point of moving furniture in now and yet the fences are still up. It's starting to drive me nuts. The exterior has been done for weeks. They've even had benches and parking signage out all this time. I don't see any spots left on the exterior that they are still working on, and all the scaffolding and boom lifts have been removed. Absolutely no reason that the fences have been up this long except that no one from the city seems to care.

It's just aggravating having that much sidewalk unavailable. Not that it's a super high traffic area, but it's always been a pet peeve of mine that developments are able to close off sidewalks for ages with no regard to pedestrians.

Totally agree.  The 21Greenwood project was especially egregious shutting down Greenwood for over a year. 

Last time I was at Cain's, Davenport is still fenced up. It started earlier than OKPOP, is a smaller scale project, and POP already had the sidewalk open. I'm pretty sure WPX started later too, is much, much bigger in scale, and they seem on the verge of opening the sidewalk. The city should confiscate Davenport for that nonsense, in addition to the problem with its existence to begin with.

The Davenport building is CRAWLING... I can't believe they haven't wrapped it up yet. Some of the condos look like they still have significant work left.

Parts of Davenport are finished. They have at least one apartment that you can see fully furnished and it looks like the rooftop is done and has been used. The issue seems to be utilities? You can see where the gas/water meters have been dug up currently (or as of last weekend). In any case, the city needs to get a handle on all of these projects. Davenport especially since it affects foot traffic to Cain's.

I'm going by tomorrow, and if the fences are still up with no sign of progress I'm going to be a Karen and message someone at the city about it. I just want them to give some regard to pedestrians.

Email Brian Kurtz at the Downtown Tulsa Partnership.  brian@downtowntulsa.org

Drove by the WPX building today and it looks better than it did in the pics in the thread. Noticed that there were a dozen or so workers there today so maybe soon the fencing is gone.

I doubt Brian can do anything in that regard outside of be an advocate to the city to create rules in the future.

Really all they need is to establish a pedestrian walkway blocked off to make it safe. It's commonly done in other cities, if you have to close the sidewalk then there's a double barrier essentially that allows people safe passage without feeling like a car is going to run you over.

The people anyone should email is probably city council and ask they pass some ordinance or amend construction codes for what to do when a sidewalk is temporarily closed for construction.

StrongTowns article about this: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/1/26/the-sidewalk-mistake-our-cities-need-to-stop-making (https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/1/26/the-sidewalk-mistake-our-cities-need-to-stop-making)

Something like this is a pretty simple ask of developers to do and wouldn't exactly add much cost either:

(https://i.ibb.co/bdvjMxz/Pedestrian2.jpg)

Or they could just draw a little line in the street like they did with the bike lanes and hope for the best.  ;D

I'm here all week - try the veal!

(https://imgur.com/U5XWmbv.jpg)

They opened the sidewalks on the east and west sides... Still poking around with the building itself being roped off. I guess they are waiting for more tenants to really open it up? Hope they have some fish on the line in that regard because this place is ready to open.

Building is supposed to be fully open in November I believe, still working on interior stuff even though it looks ready. It'll be another month or two before the city issues a certificate of occupancy.

I'm surprised no one on here has commented on the fact that they've started the conversion of Detroit and Cincinnati to two way streets. I hope they don't just let it be at this one block for months before they start going up and down the corridors. At least do it all the way north through 244 sooner than later.

I've noticed the street changes. Seems like a positive step.

I haven't seen this building at night... is there any lighting near the top?

https://www.newson6.com/story/632494dcb10465243a335c8b/watch:-exclusive-look-inside-downtown-tulsas-new-highrise-

The building is finally done and ready to officially open in the next couple weeks. The law firm is still ready to move in and the building is now being heavily marketed to other companies. A new restaurant is interested in the commercial space on the bottom floors, and more details will be known by the end of the year.

The 700 garage spaces are about to open to the pubic too, which will help the area out immensely due to how hard parking can be to come by on certain nights.

I didn't know they re-used some of the Spaghetti Warehouse building bricks! Lots of interesting details in this building and I'm glad it is finally complete.

Two more floors are leased. Building is now about 40% leased. The corner retail spot is leased as well at Reconciliation and Detroit, leaves just two retail spaces open now - the one on Reconciliation closer to Guthrie Green and the one on the northeast corner.

Tried to pull up the permits and there's two requests for signs pending but couldn't get the PDF's to open. I'm assuming one is for the law firm and I'm betting the other is the other tenant. 4 total floors of the towers are fully leased.

I wonder where Canoo will office, assuming everything pans out for them?  Looks like they have 375 positions to fill in Tulsa (https://canoo.intulsa.com/).  Maybe they will occupy some of the floors in this building.  They could put their name on the building. 

I had forgot about Canoo's R&D office.

It was actually on FOX 23 tonight that it is Helmerich & Payne and will be taking up the top three floors and take up 80,000 sq ft and they will have signage on the building.

The H&P news is huge for this building. Not sure how well that company has been doing lately, but they are a Tulsa mainstay and will hopefully grow again in the near future. Good to have an oil company occupying a building that was built for that purpose. Does that pretty much fill up the remainder of this tower, or do you think that was included in the four floors that were already leased a few days ago?

Wonder what that means for their current space though... unfortunately this is kind of a lateral move for Tulsa office space that opens up another big hole in a worse building. Who knows though, it might be easier to fill the Boulder Towers space since it probably charges a lower rate.

Boulder Towers is one of the fugliest buildings in Tulsa.  A re-cladding would do wonders for it though and not only improve the energy efficiency but also its leasing prospects once its anchor tenant moves out (UMB Bank is also a large tenant there that is presumably staying).  Look at BankFirst Tower in OKC that is finishing up a re-cladding and also this impressive transformation in Denver: https://denverinfill.com/2019/02/new-project-930-15th-renovation.html (https://denverinfill.com/2019/02/new-project-930-15th-renovation.html)

At least lately it seems some of these lateral moves have really pushed some of the legacy Tulsa ownership groups to get serious about redevelopment. Cimarex was what broke Kanbar and got him to sell out to Price and now that tower is 90%+ occupied along with a lot of that portfolio redeveloped too. The main ownership of the Boulder Towers are the people behind Santa Fe Square's office building. I can't imagine they'll let that property just die - they'll either do some renovations or sell it to someone who will reposition it.

I think there is still about 100,000 sq ft of space left to lease in the WPX building - so it's about 40-50% leased now with H&P and the law firm. That's frankly pretty incredible to see for a market this size post Covid with this building, Santa Fe, and the Greenwood building all seeing substantial leasing so fast.

This long-term can be good for Tulsa because the existing building stock to convert into residential downtown is pretty much gone. Having some of these B-/B+ buildings have tenants leave can open the door to getting those repositioned into more hotel or residential. Boulder Towers really isn't set up well for modern office space, the floorplates are large and not contiguous which also makes it really difficult to break into small office suites too. Floor heights are too low, etc. and you see this too with the Kennedy building too which is going to be almost 100% vacant when Santa Fe Square opens. Baumgartner isn't the easiest to work with so it's possible that will sit vacant for a while. The Beacon building is another example of a B/B+ building that really is better served to be converted to residential and having some of these local tenants move into new Class A is going to eventually open the door to more repositioning opportunities. 

Boulder Towers is set up perfectly to be converted to a mixed-use residential and hotel. The dropoff area right off Boulder just north of 15th would be just what a good hotel would need for valet drop off, etc. and has the attached covered parking garage for residential tenants. One wing of the building could be a hotel, one wing could be residential. You could easily get a 100+ room hotel and a 200-300 apartments. The top floor along Boulder would make an awesome amenity space and rooftop restaurant/lounge space for a hotel with unimpeded views towards downtown, west, and south. Reclad the exterior or at least modernize it a bit and open up the street-level for ground floor retail, especially the part that faces 15th. It has a natural overhang from the building that would make great outdoor seating facing 15th. They also own a lot of those parking lots around the building that could be infill development too and would really change that neighborhood. They could easily pull the excess demand from Cherry Street a bit west with the right development and this area could be a stepping stone to pulling all that further north into the southern part of downtown too.

Boulder Towers is around 82% leased with H&P.  Total of 521k rsf.  Anyone know how much space they currently have leased in there?

I like the idea of pushing the office users to the newer buildings downtown and turn this into hotel/residential use.  Are the floor plates in the separate towers too large though for hotel rooms/apartment units?

The floorplates in Boulder Towers range from like 25k to 35k which are massive for tenants in Tulsa... but they are set up in a U shape with the elevator banks in the center of that U. So it'd be easy to divide one side into residential and one into a hotel. This would also keep the floorplates from being too large width wise for hotel/multifamily floorplans. Each tower wing is about 100 feet wide and modern multifamily is usually about 75-90 feet wide for urban properties (View and Edge are both about 75 ft to 80 ft wide on the parts with double sided units and interior corridor in the center). Really that's what helps make it perfect for a conversion from office. The U shape isn't ideal for modern office tenants - they like the bigger/wider box floorplans where they can maximize the space and have more 'collaboration' spaces as well.

H&P I think leased about 200k in the building and are downsizing to 80k in the WPX. Most of that is just due to how much more efficient modern office space is for users, so even though they are paying more per sq ft they likely aren't paying much more total and can get the same amount of people in the space.

The other big tenants are UMB, Mid-Continent Insurance, SGA Design, and CBRE. They all take up between 15k to 40k each. Then there's some smaller tenants as well.

I would like to see some of these older buildings converted to housing and downtown become more of a residential neighborhood in addition to office space. There is plenty of space for small and mid-scale commercial developments to cater to residents, ideally taking up some of the southern parking crater. I know it's a big ask for this town, but a boy can dream.

Not trying to be rude here,

But do you mean like the Arco Building, Reunion Building, Sinclair Building, Oil Capital Lofts, Adams Lofts, 111 Lofts, Jacobs Lofts, The Meridia, YMCA Lofts, Transok Lofts, East End Village, Harrington's Lofts, Vandever Lofts, Robinson Packer Lofts, Bedcheck Building, 420 Mayo, Mayo Hotel, Philtower Lofts, Tribune Building...



I mean, Tulsa is actually doing very well on this front.

I recently compiled a list of office-to-residential units in downtown Tulsa within the IDL, it includes most of the ones you listed:
111 Lofts - 69 units
Mayo 420 - 67 units
Mayo Apartments - 76 units
Philtower Lofts - 22 units
Reunion Building - 79 units
Oil Capital Lofts - 46 units
Adams Lofts - 65 units
Jacobs Lofts - 28 units
Meridia - 93 units
Y Lofts - 79 units
Transok Lofts - 37 units
East End Village - 84 units
Harrington Lofts - 34 units
Vandever Lofts - 40 units
Robinson Packer Lofts - 12 units
Tribune Lofts - 35 units
Total - 866 units

Under development
Sinclair Building - 60 units
ARCO Building - 80 units
Total - 140 units

This does not include the 800+ units of new construction apartments and condos within the IDL with another 450 under development

I saw the post by SXSW too but my question is, what is the threshold of downtown residents to support grocery stores, pharmacies, beverage stores.....?

We've been well over that for a while now. This site's closet competition would be the Reasor's on 15th which is awful - like legitimate gross. It's a shame they didn't just close that store and build a flagship downtown.

30,000 + daytime population inside the IDL. Downtown's population is at least 5,000 full time at this point plus hotel/visitors which is easily 1,000 + people staying downtown on a regular day.

Then you have Riverview that is over 5,000 population, Pearl District/Tracy Park another 2,500+, Greenwood/Heights/Owen Park/Crosbie Heights easily 5,000+. The immediate downtown/core neighborhoods was over 30,000 people five years ago so it's probably pushing 40,000 or more at this point. There's probably a lot of people on Cherry Street/North Maple Ridge areas too that'd go to a new Oasis store versus the Reasor's on 15th because downtown would still be closer than their nicer store in Brookside.

The density around downtown is always forgotten, but Tulsa has a very dense core area - the IDL is just such a huge physiological barrier and physical barrier for many people - downtown doesn't end at the IDL. It's been one of our bigger hold backs to downtown is the lack of educational awareness to people in the brokerage and economic development circles to not properly identify and market the urban core.

If you put a vital thing inside the IDL people in Owen Park, Riverview, etc. will all go to it. There's a reason that Home Depot on 11th is one of the highest grossing stores they have - it's a shame we've not marketed downtown well for so long. Downtown frankly is rip for larger scale retail development if anyone ever buildings some well designed urban big box developments. Like Columbia Heights in DC, Metropole in San Fran, etc. Target downtown somewhere on the ground floor of a mixed-use project would kill it. Everyone from Brookside and north would go to that store versus Tulsa Hills.

OKC and other cities have no issue marketing far flung neighborhoods as 'downtown' - they call Midtown in OKC as a downtown neighborhood. Which isn't any closer to the center of their CBD than Cherry Street is for Tulsa.

It would do wonders if the downtown coordinating council, etc. expanded the boundaries of downtown and didn't allow the IDL to define it.

Very very well - there really is very few under utilized or completely vacant buildings anymore inside the IDL. I think because rehabs are not as noticeable as new construction people don't realize how much residential has really been created downtown or how much redevelopment has occurred. You're talking millions of sq. ft. of former office space is now residential or hotel uses. Tulsa really is a model city on older building conversions, Dallas and other bigger cities have really struggled to get developers to do this. Frankly, what has allowed it here so easily is having no on-site parking requirements. That is such a massive hurdle for a lot of older buildings to overcome and the number of residential buildings downtown with no on site parking is really shocking for a southern city and isn't talked about much. Outside of Austin you don't really see that on this scale anywhere else. (Wish they would remove parking minimums for Cherry Street, Riverview, Pearl, Greenwood, etc.)

With ARCO and Sinclair being redeveloped, the only big building left is Philcade. It does have a big data center in the building and for security reasons that might be why Price hasn't tried to do something different with that building.

You have the Parker building and building next to it as the next biggest vacant buildings inside the IDL. Other than that not many buildings over 5 stories downtown are left that are mostly vacant and in disrepair.

The Beacon and Kennedy buildings are pushing towards being high vacancy properties that should be converted. I wouldn't really describe them as in disrepair though. So not a bad thing to see local tenants shuffling and moving into new Class A buildings - will provide some room in buildings like those two to become residential or hotels and would like to see that trend continue. Would be nice to see a few more brand new infill office buildings if it means opening up redevelopment/conversion opportunities in older towers downtown.   

^ I’ve heard the IBM building at 6th & Boston is targeted for conversion to apartments by PFP.  The Thompson Building at 5th & Boston and ONG Building at 7th & Boston would be good candidates too.

I agree the IDL is a physiological barrier.  It shouldn't be a physical barrier. I don't know how to fix that.  It's kind of like "the other side of the tracks".  Physically, a few under or overpasses shouldn't be that big a deal.  But, i know that it is.   i understand the concept of buying a day's worth of groceries vs. a week's worth of groceries but "Mr. Suburbia" here would rather do the later and have the place to store them.  A good, reliable public transit system (yes, I like rail) would help urban living but I also understand the chicken-egg problem.

Long story short... I grew up in suburban Philadelphia, PA.  We could get (almost) anything we wanted the same day with a quick trip to "downtown".  When our family moved to Bixby (1971), we could get almost anything we wanted... the next day from Dallas.  Amazon (etc) has changed a lot of that (at a shipping cost) but sometimes it's nice to actually see and feel what one is buying the same day.  OK, I still live in the 20th Century but not all change is progress.



Yep

Lol! Not to take this off-topic but are we talking design or health code violations - please elaborate.

That location runs a close second to the one at 41st & 109th E. Ave.

Like someone else said, enough that it meets whatever "critical mass" is required for whatever formula grocery stores, pharmacies, dry cleaners, etc. need, and enough to where you see people walking around at all different times of day, in different parts of downtown, and between them. We started from almost zero residential downtown less than 20 years ago, so listing them all is great, and needs to continue at a high pace for what I would like to see as a legit residential neighborhood.

100% building/design. Not too sure health code isn't an issue there either - it's not somewhere I'd buy anything from without looking at expiration dates I'll just say that. I'd make the trip to Brookside to go to the nicer one.

I can't imagine the 15th Street one won't be renovated sooner than later or they'll find another location for it. They just finished the reno's at 71st and Sheridan not too long ago and it's nice as well, so they're slowly doing them. Wouldn't be surprised if 15th is going to have something done after they finish the new store in BA at 121st/Creek. The area around the 15th store has changed dramatically in the last 5 years and has a ton of new higher income/college educated residents than it used too given the influx of people into Florence Park, TU area, Pearl District.

Developers have ran out of good/reasonable lots in midtown. I'm starting to see a lot more tear downs even East of TU and tear downs starting to happen southeast of I-44 and northwest of Woodland Hills. It's interesting to watch how that's slowly progressing out from the core of midtown the last 10 years. There's very little opportunity in Florence Park, etc. either so it's moving more and more east and north and then southeast. The area east of Southern Hills and north/west of Woodland Hills I think will be a huge tear down and rebuild market in the next 5-10 years. Could eventually lead to the revitalization of places like The Farm, etc. This has already been a hot area for apartment investors to buy up lower end complexes and renovate them so it's an area not many are talking about that I think is just at the beginning of a big wave of redevelopment. 

If you cut the front off that building and redid that it would likely be fine, the rest is just a box.

The interior still needs a considerable amount done - but that is essentially all they do to the stores is redo the facade and redo the flooring, lighting, and shelving inside. It is just a box so it's not that complicated to do on the interior a lot of it is just reconfiguration of the layouts - given the age of the building the mechanical systems likely need to be upgraded in the process too to support better freezes, refrigerators, deli/bakery, etc. I don't think Reasor's owns the 15th Street location so question is are the landlords up to negotiations to allow them to do it or will they have to find another location to move the store. Most retail landlords will do just about anything and everything to keep grocer tenants post Covid so my guess is they'll figure out a way to renovate that store at some point.

I get that, I was talking about your bad design comment, the entrance/front of store design of that building is the part this is so awful.

I frequent 15th and Lewis and it's fine, just not as fancy as Brookside. They've redone some things to make it better over the years, and I hope there is a plan to make it similar to the Brookside location. It seems like the footprint is much smaller, but could easily be expanded, it's not like there's a lack of room in the parking lot. It really should be equally as important as Brookside for a marque store.

Just as an example of the office shuffling being a net positive for downtown: Matrix Service Company just moved their headquarters from Meridian Tower at 51st and Skelly to the FirstPlace Tower. They're taking up 3 floors with about 125-150 people. The more the merrier downtown, business and residential are both great!   ;D

I wish they would renovate the 21st and Yale location - that one gets completely neglected. It seems when another location gets new fixtures or carts, the 21st and Yale store gets the hand-me-downs. The 15th one as a whole has it's pros and cons - I agree a better design is needed. It's just such a small store and the selection is terrible. The 21st and Yale is great for size and selection, but the building and design inside is barely a step above Warehouse Market. They can't even get the new Reasors logo on their signage.

I agree on the expiration dates - both those stores are terrible at it. I've found multiple things well out of date (3-6 months). You really have to watch the pricing too, especially the 21st and Yale location. I've gotten to the point of taking pictures of pricing in the aisles so when things start ringing up wrong, as they always do, I'm prepared and they can't argue it (or wait 10 minutes for someone to check it). They forced me to become "that" customer.

I'll now return this thread to it's normally scheduled topic.  ;D

Why does the Meridian Tower even exist (also - tower? what idiot named it that? that's not a tower by any definition of the word, not that it's a meridian either). It's such a random building in such a random location full of other disjointed random businesses without any synergy. Nothing about that area has ever made any sense since CMC closed down.

That area along Yale is Tulsa's second largest office corridor from 51st ish starting with Meridian/Case down to 91st. Definitely disjointed but if you need a cheaper office space or something 'south' there's not many options outside of the Yale corridor. Meridian is kind of a discount to Warren Place and the stuff at 91st and it has an advantage of being easily accessed from Midtown.

The only other 'big' cluster of office is around Corporate Woods, 169/BA but most of those are pretty dated and landlords have not done a good job at keeping those updated.

Meridian and the Case 'tower' just west on 51st have generally stayed pretty full. They're really more Class B+ but there's not a lot of options. Warren doesn't like chopping up floors so if you're a smaller tenant that can't take at least a full floor you're almost forced into places like Meridian, etc. A lot of these are seeing more of a medical user influx (plastic surgeons, dentists, etc. that don't need heavy medical office spaces/access to labs).

Tulsa is a very unique city that does not have much of a suburban office presence on the corporate side (non medical related). OKC has a huge cluster along the Kilpatrick, KC's in Overland Park/I-35, Indianapolis is primarily Carmel, St. Louis is in Clayton/I-64, Omaha along Dodge Rd, Des Moines in West Des Moines... etc etc.

While some of those are slightly smaller than the CBD's by total sq ft of office the Class A markets tend to be much bigger in the suburban clusters. Tulsa's only significant class A office is Warren Place and the CBD still dominates for HQ locations and Class A construction. Warren Place really isn't much nicer than say First Place Tower downtown and WPX, Vast Bank Building, Santa Fe Square, etc. are much much nicer buildings. Class A construction downtown has probably been easily 4 to 1 in the last decade (even places like Austin can't say that with significant suburbanization of office there in the Domain, Apple's campus, Charles Schwab campus, etc.). It's a very rare thing especially in sunbelt markets to have such a heavy concentration of tenured HQs and outpacing suburbs in new construction still. Pretty much all of the large relocations/expansions in Dallas are suburban in either Plano or Irving (Legacy West/Las Colinas) - Uptown is a strong market but it's still largely outpaces by the suburbs.

Prior to Devon Tower OKC's only Class A building downtown was Leadership Square which really isn't that nice - they've still had a fair amount of suburban Class A construction more so than Tulsa. With Chesapeake (even though no along the turnpike it's still suburban they've probably had more suburban Class A office built outside of the core in the past decade). Omaha has seen some balancing out as well and Mutual of Omaha is planning a new tower downtown but HDR and other major corporate office tenants there are still suburban and building new suburban offices. Since Citgo left and SemGroups implosion I don't think Tulsa has a suburban employer with a 'corporate' office with over 500 people and certainly not any that have built new. NGL is still HQed in Warren and they're Fortune 1000 but they don't have as significant corporate employment as many of the other O&G companies, I think their office is under 500 people - their total employment is less than 1,500 company wide.

^ QuikTrip is probably the largest company with a non-CBD corporate HQ but is still within Tulsa city limits.

In the back of my mind, I thought maybe QuikTrip might want to occupy this building. I know they have nice digs, but downtown would offer their employees so many nearby amenities compared to where they are now.

There would be a lot more choices for lunch.  Not being of a "Downtown Mindset", please enlighten me what all these amenities are.  I took my lunch from home when I was working (I'm retired now) so lunch choices were of limited value to me.

Parking is always an issue.  I remember my dad complaining about paying income tax on the value of the "free" parking he received when working downtown in the 70's and early 80's.  Everyone, myself included, wants to eliminate the huge expanses of surface parking but no one seems to be ready to step up to parking garages beyond a limited supply for new construction.  Where would you put the cars from QT headquarters employees?

https://goo.gl/maps/StRpz2m8iZa5W5td8

A usable regional public transit system would go a long way toward making working downtown attractive.

QT has built a nice corporate campus and even has free food and drinks available for their employees within the buildings (they test out new F&B concepts).  They've been there awhile so many of their employees likely live on the south and east sides of the metro.  I don't see them moving anywhere and if anything they would just expand their campus; they own the large property just to the east where they could effectively double the size of their campus.

I was mostly thinking of lunch options (I myself typically bring my lunch, so not a big deal for me), but there are lots of options close by (I did not even consider them providing food for their employees, but duh, that makes sense).  But there is also all of the activities one can do after work like baseball games, event at the PAC, event at the BOk, first Friday art crawl. . . things that are downtown.  Not that they can't do that now, just more convenient.  I did figure most of their employees live in BA and other suburbs, but so do "probably" the vast majority of all the other people who work downtown.  As for parking, I figured they would use the garage that comes with the building.  Not sure how many spots it has, but if they bought the building, that would be free. 

Of course this is all a moot point now isn't it  :)

A residential conversion at Boulder Towers would be a fantastic shot in the arm for the Riverview neighborhood.  You could probably park it within the existing garage/ground floor which would free up all of those surrounding surface lots for redevelopment. 

Legacy Bank leased an entire floor - this would be a big expansion for them in the Tulsa market. I don't think they have a lot of retail store locations here but they are a pretty big real estate lender, they are HQed out of Springfield MO.

Greenwood office building just signed a lease for a medical provider too. Downtown does really need more things like doctors, etc. to move in and really round out the neighborhood is self sustaining. Would be nice to see QT or someone open an urgent care downtown somewhere too and have a full 24/7 pharmacy like CVS/Walgreens move in as well somewhere.

To have well over 50% of the Class A space built during/after the pandemic leased is pretty crazy when you look at other markets. OKC is still struggling to fill the 'BOK plaza' tower or whatever it's called that Devon was supposed to occupy. If the state hadn't bought the former SandRidge tower their downtown market would just be in horrific space on the Class A side.

Wouldn't be surprised to see another office tower be in the works sometime soon. Even if it was just to pull tenants out of some of the older buildings downtown that just opens up more for residential conversions. Building these 50,000 - 250,000 sq. ft. buildings are a much better way to go than larger projects like the BOK plaza tower in OKC. Allows the market to absorb space without major impacts to vacancy rates if a tenant pulls out or something happens.

Also - OKC.... ick.

Great news! They are really trucking with getting that space filled. Seems like office space in general is doing well across Tulsa at the moment. Definitely still a lot of random half empty, low-effort buildings, but the buildings that are putting in work to be half way decent are finding tenants. Still too many landlords trying to charge top dollar for crappy space that they don't take care of - across all types of rental spaces. This building is really showing the potential of high class office space in this city.

Wish the Annex tower was still happening. Would love to see a big tower with office/hotel/residential all together come in.

The Annex is still an active proposal, they have until the end of June to close on the property.  If they don't close I'm sure another developer will pick up that property though the concept may be different.  Rooting for F&C since they have a track record of completing these types of projects in Indianapolis and Cincinnati.