Vision 2025 Extension - Package Details

[DowntownDan]

Dallas had the same problem of apartments and hospitals and other businesses blowing up in rural areas with two lane roads.  The developments went up overnight and the roads took a decade to catch back up.  At least they were suburbs like Frisco and Plano that ended up paying for them.  They also got toll roads for highways because of the expense of building an entire network of roads from nothing. Maybe 3000 apartments and 3 hospitals should pay a big portion of the cost of new road infrastructure if they want to move in 15 miles from the city core which was rural when you starting buying up the land.  

The fight isn't just midtowners being arrogant, it's a shift happening nationwide pushed by young people and others who have studies the economics of cities and are astounded at how sprawl hurt cities so egregiously.  It should never have happened in the first place, but hopefully with new advocates it can be curtailed.  If you want to live far away from the city, that's fine, but be prepared to pay if your way of life requires infrastructure to be built from scratch.

This, of course, is just my opinion, but I think more and more people are starting to feel the same way.  I wish I could find the statistic, but a lot has been written about people now in their 20's and 30's who were raised in the suburbs vowing never to live there themselves.  I'm one of them.  It'll take time, but sprawl will cut back and city cores will become stronger.  Transit will be a big part of it.  Unfortunately, a bunch of us will be senior citizens before cities like Tulsa get there, and its possible that cities like Tulsa will fight it so hard they'll go the way of once great small towns that are now quickly dying.  We're already struggling to grow and we can choose as a city to change how we grow to compete with Dallas, Kansas City, and Denver, or accept going the way of small towns that were great 50 years ago and are now stuck with a Wal-mart and part time post office and nothing else.

[heironymouspasparagus]

The fight isn't just midtowners being arrogant, it's a shift happening nationwide pushed by young people and others who have studies the economics of cities and are astounded at how sprawl hurt cities so egregiously.  It should never have happened in the first place, but hopefully with new advocates it can be curtailed.  If you want to live far away from the city, that's fine, but be prepared to pay if your way of life requires infrastructure to be built from scratch.

This, of course, is just my opinion, but I think more and more people are starting to feel the same way.  I wish I could find the statistic, but a lot has been written about people now in their 20's and 30's who were raised in the suburbs vowing never to live there themselves.  I'm one of them.  It'll take time, but sprawl will cut back and city cores will become stronger.  Transit will be a big part of it.  Unfortunately, a bunch of us will be senior citizens before cities like Tulsa get there, and its possible that cities like Tulsa will fight it so hard they'll go the way of once great small towns that are now quickly dying.  We're already struggling to grow and we can choose as a city to change how we grow to compete with Dallas, Kansas City, and Denver, or accept going the way of small towns that were great 50 years ago and are now stuck with a Wal-mart and part time post office and nothing else.

A small vocal group of people my age have been talking about suburban sprawl since the 60's.  Got us nowhere so far.  That sprawl concept now seems to be getting a reaction from 'quality of life' issues, which pretty much go hand in hand with the environmental considerations.

[AquaMan]

Dan, I'm glad you posted that. Mike is not accurate that the southern reaches of the city, namely 81st and Mingo paid or pay for our infrastructure in midtown. He is accurate that we're special though! Because we paid property taxes, sales taxes, and special assessments for decades longer than the Mingo area has contributed to the city. We tolerated the city's support and emphasis on sprawl rather than improvement in our established hoods by using zoning against us. Thus McMansions and walled off enclaves sprouting like weeds.

I worked in that area about 5 years ago logging some 30k miles on its congested roads and freeways. I am astounded that they continued to build with a frenzy as people tried to escape minorities, decaying neighborhoods and infrastructure to live the suburban dream. Astounded because the city didn't plan well for that growth or even keep up with it. Waiting for tax dollars to arrive, years after development, to pay for any expansion of arterials meant two lane roads depositing thousands of new homeowners with an average of 2.5 cars per family into walled off neighborhoods. The homes are beautiful, the shopping is great, the Creek Expwy is convenient but the traffic is crazy bad. And...they have no interest in mass transit which might ameliorate their problems. Deal with it.

[Conan71]

Dan, I'm glad you posted that. Mike is not accurate that the southern reaches of the city, namely 81st and Mingo paid or pay for our infrastructure in midtown. He is accurate that we're special though! Because we paid property taxes, sales taxes, and special assessments for decades longer than the Mingo area has contributed to the city. We tolerated the city's support and emphasis on sprawl rather than improvement in our established hoods by using zoning against us. Thus McMansions and walled off enclaves sprouting like weeds.

I worked in that area about 5 years ago logging some 30k miles on its congested roads and freeways. I am astounded that they continued to build with a frenzy as people tried to escape minorities, decaying neighborhoods and infrastructure to live the suburban dream. Astounded because the city didn't plan well for that growth or even keep up with it. Waiting for tax dollars to arrive, years after development, to pay for any expansion of arterials meant two lane roads depositing thousands of new homeowners with an average of 2.5 cars per family into walled off neighborhoods. The homes are beautiful, the shopping is great, the Creek Expwy is convenient but the traffic is crazy bad. And...they have no interest in mass transit which might ameliorate their problems. Deal with it.

To my knowledge, Tulsa has never properly anticipated its growth by leading with infrastructure before development.  I’m pretty sure you would remember the “I’m a weary survivor of 51st & Harvard” bumper sticker from the mid-1970’s when they were trying to expand that intersection to keep up with growth which had spread as far south as 81st St. by that time along Harvard.  Our infrastructure growth outside the very core of the city has always been reactionary in nature.

Speaking to other posters, there’s a supply and demand issue when it comes to suburban roads.  The 3000 units of apartments would never had been built if there were no demand for them.  Cities need affordable multi-family housing.  People need a way to get to and from their home to work, shop, and play.  Not everyone wants to live in the urban core of a city nor should they be conscripted to do so just because many of us on here love the urban core and love living in or near it.

Let’s be realistic here:  South Tulsa is never going to be plowed under to make people move to the urban center and take transit.  It’s simply not going to happen.  We need to be able to provide transit services to people who want and need them.  We also need to be able to provide safe and efficient roads for those who center their lives around another geographic area of the city.

Just because many of us don’t live there doesn’t mean we should not help pay for expanding roads on S. Mingo.  I transit that intersection maybe once or twice a year.  I will never live out that way.  So why should I pay for widening Mingo? 

Why should my property taxes be paying to educate someone else’s child now that mine are grown and on their own? 
Why should I subsidize someone else’s ride on a Tulsa Transit bus, when I never use it?
Why should someone who doesn’t ride or walk the river trails subsidize that cost so my wife and I can enjoy the trails?
Why should my tax dollars go to put out someone else’s house fire?
Why should my tax dollars go to pay for the police to investigate a burglary around the block from me when I have my own alarm and surveillance system?
Why should my tax dollars support museums and a zoo I only visit on rare occasions?

It’s part of living in a city.  It’s part of being a participant in society.

Just to be clear, I hate sprawl and see the waste of money it is, but it is our reality.  I’m simply not one who can say: “You should have thought better before moving out south...”  Just because some of us believe transit is a better investment for us doesn’t mean everyone else places as high a priority on it.  Wide, efficient roads matter when EMSA is trying to get a critically injured or ill person to a hospital. 

This package gives long-overdue dedicated funding to public transit.  People who live out in south Tulsa are going to end up helping to pay for that outlay if the measure passes.  We will end up paying for an expansion on south Mingo, if not now, at some point.  It’s a part of living in a larger city.

[AquaMan]

I believe in supply and demand. I also support the V2025 even though it includes areas I will never use or profit from. I believe in the very socialist views you just expressed. I also believe in accountability.  In those areas, Trump and I have a lot in common.

That doesn't mean people should demand that all of us subsidize poor planning, shortsighted planning, encourage fleeing problems in the core of the city to find "better schools", "safer" areas and social homogeneity. Those decisions should be made with accountability in mind. You may not get the support of those you are fleeing.

Accountability is the thing being cast off in most discussions. Who actually forces this system of build now, pay for infrastructure later and thereby profits while others suffer. Both midtown and expansion area residents should demand that the reasons for such poor planning be identified and changed.

[RecycleMichael]

I do not disagree. This road is screwed up. Go see for yourself. Drive from 71st and Mingo to 91st and Mingo. The apartment complexes are huge. They extend for blocks from the road. There are new medical facilities everywhere.

Like it or not, this part of town is booming with new high paying jobs, new housing, and the fastest growing TCC branch. People who live and work here deserve the same considerations that other areas. I know of only one part of town that is demanding more transit and I shouldn't bag them. I was once a mid towner as well.

I apologize for my rants. I am willing to pay for your transit if you are willing to pay for one road that is desperately needed in south Tulsa. I just lose it when I see posters on this site and even leadership of TulsaNow making public comments about not one penny more for roads.

[AquaMan]

I'm just glad those giant apartments didn't materialize near my area. Everything is huge out there. Even the churches are oversized.

Its likely the growth in medical facilities, (clinics, hospitals, specialists) is driving a lot of the traffic. Then add in the concentration of young people who can't buy a house yet and work in the nearby 71st street corridor and you have congestion.

[TheArtist]

Just to be clear here.  Tulsa is not growing in population.  All we are doing is adding "new stuff" and more roads and infrastructure to have to maintain, plow, widen, police, light, etc.

It would be like me trying to run my store by buying things at wholesale for say $5, pricing them at $10, but then putting them on sale for $5, selling that and buying more items at $5 and spreading them out and saying I need to invest in more shelves (because we have a rule in place that won't allow new stuff to be displayed as efficiently "less product per square foot") and in the meantime the rent is going up...

And then people coming in and going "Wow look at all the new stuff you are getting and all the new shelves! You must be doing great!".  It might LOOK like it, but it wouldn't be at all true.  We would not be making money or growing our business.  All we would be doing is digging ourselves into a bigger hole and going further into debt.  No matter how painful it may be to admit it, we would have to stop sooner or later, cut our losses, quit what we had been doing and do something different.    

I am willing to bet we will see Tulsa's population decline this year, "possibly did last year" and jobs decline as well.  Though the joblessness rate may look decent as the population leaves faster than the jobs, another pleasant illusion of success.

We need to be urgently redoing our rules and development strategies which still favor sprawl and autos while unfairly hindering infill and hurting transit.  

[swake]

Just to be clear here.  Tulsa is not growing in population.  All we are doing is adding "new stuff" and more roads and infrastructure to have to maintain, plow, widen, police, light, etc.

It would be like me trying to run my store by buying things at wholesale for say $5, pricing them at $10, but then putting them on sale for $5, selling that and buying more items at $5 and spreading them out and saying I need to invest in more shelves (because we have a rule in place that won't allow new stuff to be displayed as efficiently "less product per square foot") and in the meantime the rent is going up...

And then people coming in and going "Wow look at all the new stuff you are getting and all the new shelves! You must be doing great!".  It might LOOK like it, but it wouldn't be at all true.  We would not be making money or growing our business.  All we would be doing is digging ourselves into a bigger hole and going further into debt.  No matter how painful it may be to admit it, we would have to stop sooner or later, cut our losses, quit what we had been doing and do something different.    

I am willing to bet we will see Tulsa's population decline this year, "possibly did last year" and jobs decline as well.  Though the joblessness rate may look decent as the population leaves faster than the jobs, another pleasant illusion of success.

We need to be urgently redoing our rules and development strategies which still favor sprawl and autos while unfairly hindering infill and hurting transit.  

The city of Tulsa grew from  2010 to 2014 by about 8,000 people, that's the last figures available. As for work force and unemployment, Tulsa's metro's unemployment peaked in 2014 at 4.5% but has fallen to 3.4% at the end of 2015 while at the same time the work force grew from 192k to 200k. This isn't great growth, but it is real and solid growth.

[Conan71]

Just to be clear here.  Tulsa is not growing in population.  All we are doing is adding "new stuff" and more roads and infrastructure to have to maintain, plow, widen, police, light, etc.

It would be like me trying to run my store by buying things at wholesale for say $5, pricing them at $10, but then putting them on sale for $5, selling that and buying more items at $5 and spreading them out and saying I need to invest in more shelves (because we have a rule in place that won't allow new stuff to be displayed as efficiently "less product per square foot") and in the meantime the rent is going up...

And then people coming in and going "Wow look at all the new stuff you are getting and all the new shelves! You must be doing great!".  It might LOOK like it, but it wouldn't be at all true.  We would not be making money or growing our business.  All we would be doing is digging ourselves into a bigger hole and going further into debt.  No matter how painful it may be to admit it, we would have to stop sooner or later, cut our losses, quit what we had been doing and do something different.    

I am willing to bet we will see Tulsa's population decline this year, "possibly did last year" and jobs decline as well.  Though the joblessness rate may look decent as the population leaves faster than the jobs, another pleasant illusion of success.

We need to be urgently redoing our rules and development strategies which still favor sprawl and autos while unfairly hindering infill and hurting transit.  

Agreed, sprawl is wasteful and costly.  Here’s the problem though: throughout our city’s history, tax payers have paid for the main arterial infrastructure for commercial and residential developers to be able to build and turn a profit.  From the very beginning, this has been the case.  Tulsa is one of the worst cities in North America about being 20-30 years behind on our infrastructure needs.  

We’ve built the streets for people who cannot depend on public transit and who do depend on those streets every day to get to work, to get kids to school, and to get their shopping done.  Since they are there and people depend on them, we need to do our best to maintain them.  Perhaps in the future, we might have leadership which might demand developers include the cost of road improvements in their development when they are building mega apartment complexes.  Perhaps we might demand some sort of special assessment area of all developers within a square mile to pay for improvements their projects need.

I’m going to have to disagree on your point about unfairly hindering infill and transit for the sake of sprawl.  We are getting great infill within the IDL now.  As we run out of space there, it will spill into the Pearl and hopefully north of I-244.  Finally, there is a transit package is on the ballot.  There are some tweaks that need to be made regarding minimum parking requirements to help get denser infill, but other than that, I’m really not seeing where infill is being hindered.  Please let me know what I’m missing here.

[TheArtist]

The city of Tulsa grew from  2010 to 2014 by about 8,000 people, that's the last figures available. As for work force and unemployment, Tulsa's metro's unemployment peaked in 2014 at 4.5% but has fallen to 3.4% at the end of 2015 while at the same time the work force grew from 192k to 200k. This isn't great growth, but it is real and solid growth.

I would really like to see where you got those statistics.  They are similar to the ones I found where they had the city growing by about 1,000-2000 per year during those years or about 1% growth.  Which is really slow but at least growing.  But when I looked at a demographic breakdown it showed that the white population was declining, the black population remained steady and pretty much the only growth was in the Hispanic community.  Then if I look at what has happened nationally in the last couple of years with the slowdown in Hispanic migration and locally with oil hitting the rocks... my guess would be that 2015 saw what growth we had go below 1% and would guess that this year might see us hit negative numbers again.   This is one instance where I would be super happy to be wrong however. 

[TheArtist]

Agreed, sprawl is wasteful and costly.  Here’s the problem though: throughout our city’s history, tax payers have paid for the main arterial infrastructure for commercial and residential developers to be able to build and turn a profit.  From the very beginning, this has been the case.  Tulsa is one of the worst cities in North America about being 20-30 years behind on our infrastructure needs.  

We’ve built the streets for people who cannot depend on public transit and who do depend on those streets every day to get to work, to get kids to school, and to get their shopping done.  Since they are there and people depend on them, we need to do our best to maintain them.  Perhaps in the future, we might have leadership which might demand developers include the cost of road improvements in their development when they are building mega apartment complexes.  Perhaps we might demand some sort of special assessment area of all developers within a square mile to pay for improvements their projects need.

I’m going to have to disagree on your point about unfairly hindering infill and transit for the sake of sprawl.  We are getting great infill within the IDL now.  As we run out of space there, it will spill into the Pearl and hopefully north of I-244.  Finally, there is a transit package is on the ballot.  There are some tweaks that need to be made regarding minimum parking requirements to help get denser infill, but other than that, I’m really not seeing where infill is being hindered.  Please let me know what I’m missing here.

Minimum parking requirements are indeed one of those things that hurts urban development (aka pedestrian friendly/transit friendly).  Set back requirements, mixed use being disallowed in most areas, are another couple of things that hurt.  But those rules do help make auto centric development work well and better.

And remember its not just what "forbidden" but whats not encouraged and not incentivized that also hurts.   If your encouraging one form of development, and not another, well that "another" is at a disadvantage.  And if your a developer or business looking at the numbers its likely that you will go with whats encouraged. 

We will require certain types of things like minimum parking requirements to make sure that cars work well, but we will not require that buildings be built up to the sidewalk and be permeable on the main arterials to encourage pedestrian friendly/transit friendly development. 

We are requiring car oriented development things.
We are not requiring pedestrian/transit friendly development things. 
Many of the required car oriented development "things" are actually ones that hurt pedestrian/transit friendly development.

There is a multiple negative hit against urban development and transit. 

And that push for the automobile gives whatever is built as suburban in style an economic advantage over what is built as urban.  This also has an effect on the culture and how its convenient for people to do things, to think about things, it creates a cascade of effects and habits that are hard to overcome.  Downtown for instance is an island in a sea of suburban car culture and that has a knock on effect on that island making it more difficult to build a true, high quality urban environment.  We have to constantly degrade that environment to make room for the auto.  You almost have to add parking to the housing for instance.  And the housing will likely already be more expensive for people, now add on to that that you have to have parking and that transit won't work well.  Added expense and inconvenience which gives suburban development an advantage. The market is being manipulated by the city to favor one over another, or to favor one and not also favor the other.

We encourage one type of development, and do not encourage the other.  As a matter of fact, the "other" has rules and situations that go against it.  Its actually quite amazing that we are getting what we are getting but that is because people really want it despite the obstacles.

Even downtown just "allows" urban development to happen.  There are no rules in place that will guarantee that we will get that.  I hope we do, but there is also just as much a chance that we will not get it, that we will just get "big/denser" suburban style development that will ultimately not be as desirable and not help us up our attractiveness and up our growth potential.  But again, we will sure as heck have rules, and funding, in place that will make sure suburban style development works as best it can. 

We will get the BRT going then everyone will look at the numbers and complain that it isn't doing as well as they had hoped.  It may well be "allowed" to work in certain areas now.  But auto centric development isn't just "allowed" to work.  Its MADE to work.
 

[Stanley1]

If you really agree x 1000 times you don’t seem to realize how myopic our current leadership is/was in trying to promote the REI and Turkey Mountain developments.  

Why would anyone think having a busy shopping center adjacent to an outdoor recreation area which is only growing in popularity amongst YP’s (actually all age groups) is a good idea?

Why would anyone think cheap-selling park land and subsidizing the construction for an REI plus other innocuous tenants is a boon for luring or retaining YP’s to Tulsa?  Guess who I usually see on the volleyball courts here?  Mostly under 40 people with all courts full when they are playing.

Those are both projects which would add incredibly little to our city coffers due to all the “gimme’s” the developers want to make them happen and mean nothing to young professionals who would either stay here or be attracted here.

I would hesitate to consider that land "park land".  The volleyball courts are nice.  Is there nowhere else in Tulsa where we can build some volleyball courts?  No room for it at the Gathering Place?  No room at Turkey Mountain?  No room anywhere else along the river?  How about just down the road where there is another park, or two, on Riverside?

[Red Arrow]

I would hesitate to consider that land "park land".  The volleyball courts are nice.  Is there nowhere else in Tulsa where we can build some volleyball courts?  No room for it at the Gathering Place?  No room at Turkey Mountain?  No room anywhere else along the river?  How about just down the road where there is another park, or two, on Riverside?

Is there no other place to put REI?  Is it really necessary to put a building of any kind (except maybe a restroom) there?

[Red Arrow]

People who live here:
https://goo.gl/maps/6oaeKgfMboF2

would consider almost all of Tulsa, including Midtown to be sprawl.