5% is a lot of money. My dad's house today is about $250,000. In whole dollars, not accounting for inflation, that's 12,500. Enough to influence first home decisions. Your dad probably didn't move there for economics, but other people moved to the burbs for that 5% I assure you because I sold them some of their homes. I sold real estate after I left Cities Service up to 1980.
You add in the extra monthly savings in lower taxes that the burbs offered and it meant the ability to buy much more home in BA than you could in Tulsa. Of course there wasn't much in the way of schools but my buyer's didn't have children. There wasn't much in the way of entertainment either (couldn't buy a mixed drink in BA!) but that was always available in nearby sin city. There were no large employers in BA or Bixby either till Ford Glass moved in, but not to worry, Tulsa had employment at AA and....downtown.
No, I'm afraid there was very little benefit from the BA expressway to those of us who chose instead to buy existing housing and work to build up our hoods. Even its path was an obvious and expensive route. Rather than take an existing arterial such as 11th street, Admiral or 41st and simply widen and streamline them to reach east Tulsa quickly, then tie in to a 169 type highway, the planners slashed right across the heart of existing neighborhoods separating them and creating more havoc with exits and entrances. Saved us little time except when we were going to the lake for the weekend.
And, I agree that the outlying communities would have continued to grow because of the economic benefit, the fear of minorities and perceived crime in the city. That's not an idle statement. I know what was in their hearts when they asked me as a realtor to show them homes. They often told me bluntly. Geez. Even my parents eventually moved to Bixby for some of those same reasons. But I seriously wonder if we would now have better mass transit, including inner city rail and better maintained arterials had we not suckered in to the exprway rage.
The suckling from the Tulsa breast still continues today. The lady who manages Supercuts and cuts my hair lives in Sapulpa and commutes to Brookside. Several of my co-workers do too. They travel from BA, Bixby, Owasso and Sand Springs just to work here in midtown. How dismal must the employment picture be in those areas? It doesn't hurt Tulsa to receive the sales taxes on their lunches, their fuel or the revenue from their traffic tickets, but the rest of their income including groceries, rent, banking etc. goes to their hometowns. The truth is, housing is cheaper there. Tulsa is indeed self sufficient.
1969 Chevelle Malibu. 300hp 350v8. Turbo-hydramatic with 3:73 rear end. Nassau Blue with fawn interior. Burned rubber in all three gears! Bought it from a little old child nursery care owner. I miss that car.
The “only 5%” is mostly due the size of a 2800 ft^2 house vs a 1500 ft^2 house. As you noted, we are not really comparing similar houses. I agree that $1500 was a chunk of change then. Dad had to take a couple of deep breaths when mom spent $1000 on a washer, dryer, refrigerator, and freezer. My parents didn’t want a big (2800 ft^2) house. Neither mom nor dad enjoy(ed) house cleaning. Looking at Google maps, I wouldn’t really call 48th & Columbia the spirit of midtown that people here seem to wax philosophically over. I would call it the edge of suburban sprawl in its time but inside the COT limits. I think of Cherry St as midtown. I won’t argue with a definition though.
I won’t argue either that a lot of people going to the suburbs got more square feet of house for less money, probably at less quality on a smaller lot, than many midtown locations. I cannot see the cost of construction varying that much for a few miles except perhaps by city fees and regulations. Sometimes you may want a Lexus, can only afford a Corolla but you still need a car. Evidently Tulsa didn’t have enough Corollas. Not everyone is interested in a fixer-upper. Flight from crime etc, perceived or real, would make any place unattractive at any price.
The SE suburbs within Tulsa city limits are frequently declared to be undeserving of infrastructure improvements on general tax dollars. Do the houses south of say 71st St pay lower tax rates than other areas? Some of the new homes in SE Tulsa have price tags in the mid to upper 6 digit and lower 7 digit (all left of the decimal point) prices. The tax revenue from them should be significant. People with the amount of money required to buy such homes will probably spend more (generating sales tax revenue) than people with 5 digit incomes too.
It’s fashionable to hate everything that Woodland Hills Mall and the 71st St corridor stand for but it’s (mostly?) within the city limits and has to generate a lot of revenue. Want to donate it to Broken Arrow?
The BA Expy west of Sheridan runs for a good distance along the RR tracks. Did the tracks have grade crossings at every residential street before the BA? How close were the houses to the tracks? I don’t have an appropriately dated map to find that. RRs frequently separate neighborhoods. Running an expressway between already separated neighborhoods makes sense to me. I don’t know what the choices were where the BA heads west between 13th and 14th. I don’t remember much development in 1971 east of where the BA and the RR part company. Connection to the Muskogee Turnpike and I-40 is probably good for Tulsa’s businesses. Where should the Turnpike have ended? Memorial Drive? Where it does now but with only surface streets to connect to Tulsa? How many homes and businesses would have been disturbed by significantly widening one or more of the E-W arterials to be like today’s 71st St?
I-44 is for thru traffic. Exits at the major arterials present business opportunities. Maybe having interstate traffic go through downtown on 11th St was fine in 1950. I remember going through many towns between PA and FL on vacation in the 60s without doing anything except spending time helping to clog their streets. I-95 was wonderful. If we needed something in a town like dinner, we would go into town. We were not the type to stop by the roadside attractions that so many lament the passing of. We were going from point A to point B. If the trip is the object and not the destination, many of the old roads still exist.
Light rail probably would have been a better commuter choice than the BA Expy. Skelly was probably a good choice although I won’t argue for or against the exact route. Tulsa had a reasonable (real) trolley system until about the mid 30s. Then GM, Firestone, and Standard Oil set about to increase their sales by increasing the use of buses all over the US. The trolley systems frequently had their own problems and replacing them was not a hard sell in many cases.
A case could probably be made against any of the expressways. A case could probably be made against the entire Interstate system too. I’m sure the RRs would have liked for the Interstates to have never been made.
The surrounding towns have grown over the years. I see them as having similar services as Tulsa. In the surrounding communities we have police and fire protection. Good, better, worse than Tulsa? I don’t know. Schools have expanded with the population. Good, better, worse than Tulsa? I don’t know. We buy water from Tulsa. Thank you. I hope you are not losing money on the deal. Sewer/septic tank. Depends on the housing density and soil conditions. Is your dad’s house still on the septic system? (I have no problem with it if it is.) Jobs have developed all over the area, making light rail more difficult to plan or implement.
What does the COT offer anymore that is not available in the surrounding suburbs? There is the prestige of a Tulsa address. At one time a Sapulpa address was better. There are the quality of life things that typically any small town cannot support alone like the BOK center, the Fairgrounds, specialty businesses, the PAC, the ball park. The COT should be the collection point for these venues. Making them easily accessible to as many people as possible, including the suburbs, will help insure their success. You contend that Tulsa is self supporting. I say not so, based on the current financial crisis and the cry that the suburbs are draining the city and therefore must directly help support the city. The COT must find a way to provide more actual and perceived value for the dollar than the suburbs if it expects to grow at the suburbs expense. It must also be affordable to avoid the Lexus vs Corolla scenario.
