Here is a great shot of the arena downotown and how it relates to the surrounding area.
The location does end up better than I had feared.
First, the best thing about the location is that it is less than three blocks from the Mayo to the arena. There are several parking garages within two or three blocks of the arena already and the Crowne Plaza Hotel is only three blocks away. Also, the newly redone Main St is only three blocks away. It is on the other side of main from the Blue Dome district but still is only five blocks from that area. Bad news is that the arena will be in a particularly ugly part of downtown. It’s going to take a lot of redevelopment to change that.
There are at least two sides of the site that are not likely to change any time soon. The federal building to the south covers both blocks and the buildings on the west don’t look like the kind that would sell out anytime soon. To the north there is some potential but eastern block of these two is the Sheriffs office and that’s not going anywhere. Maybe that will calm any fears of crime however. The other block to the north is warehouse space, but the block is so small and borders the rail lines so it’s not a very good redevelopment target either.
That leaves the two city blocks that border the arena to the east. These are both prime for redevelopment. The southern block has only two smaller buildings and is just mostly surface parking and is easily redeveloped. The other block is the BOK autobank and if I were a friendly bear, I would say that part two of the payoff to George Kaiser is the ability to sell this property for a profit to someone wanting to build a hotel or something. I’m not saying that, but that autobank is very old, not used very much from what I have seen and the land just became more valuable as something else. The block that corners to the arena site to the northeast is also a good redevelopment site. The block to the southeast also has some small sites for development but is mostly the downtown city bus terminal. Now that is good site location in relation to the arena if public transport in this town ever become widely used. There is no block to the northwest (rail lines) and the block to the southeast is a parking garage.
So there are three full city blocks next to the arena site that can be easily developed and parts of two others. That’s a lot of downtown land so that is good news. The last part of good news is that the best places for development are all on the same side as the Mayo, Blue Dome, Main St etc so any development there would help tie downtown together better. In fact, if someone attending an event downtown parked at the new garage on 2nd St they would be one block east of the arena, one block west of Main St, three blocks west of the Blue Dome area. The bad news being that on three sides, all of which have pretty unattractive developments, not much new development is likely anytime soon.
