NORDAM has sold its former 11.5-acre headquarters complex in downtown Tulsa's East Village to Brickhugger, LLC for $7.1 million. Brickhugger plans to turn the 266,178 sq ft office-industrial complex into a mix of apartments, retail, office and restaurant space. More details on the Project Page (https://tulsanow.org/wp/index.php/large-new-mixed-use-development-in-east-village/).
Related Articles
3/30/2016: New Development Planned for East Village (http://www.tulsaworld.com/business/realestate/new-development-planned-for-east-village/article_970d1d27-0675-58c6-a976-3d221d9761c0.html) (Tulsa World)
3/30/2016: Development Planned For Former Downtown Tulsa NORDAM Site (http://www.newson6.com/story/31601748/brickhuggers-plans-development-on-11-acres-in-tulsas-east-village) (News on 6)
(http://i.imgur.com/3N6ruTKl.jpg)
Map thanks to cannon_fodder
(https://tulsanow.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/nordam-750x450.jpg)
We discussed on the downtown development thread, but probably a good idea for a new thread to discuss and criticize. A project this size will really help set the tempo for the rest of East Village and knowing the Snyders are behind it is fantastic. Local and organic growth!
Well. There goes my plans to redevelop this area after I win the lottery.
I'm so happy to see someone like Brickhuggers buy this property. I've seen way too many plans for this site by people that include knocking down the buildings and putting in a sea of parking lots with a strip style retail (there was a particular grocer who wanted this site that went down south instead) and if people remember Top Golf wanted this site very badly which would have been a sea of parking and closing off that street.
The Richards own that parking lot directly to the west, along with the former fire station, and former KOTV studios and I know they hope to eventually do some sort of large mixed-use development on those parcels so that in combination of the Nordam site would be huge.
Now if someone can talk First Baptist into selling the parking lot off Elgin/Detroit & 4th/5th and then get All Souls to either sell their 2 blocks or actually develop something this entire part of downtown will give Tulsa a pretty awesome urban core in a few years if Santa Fe Square, PAC lot proposal, and other infill projects all get done.
I remember 10 years ago on here, everyone was convinced there would be an urban Wal-Mart to anchor the East Village renaissance. Glad that never happened.
This is exciting but part of me hoped for NORDAM to keep their property and move their HQ downtown. With the downsizing at Williams and potentially other O&G companies downtown could use more non-O&G workers especially those working at a large company HQ office.
Whose to say Nordam can't move their HQ downtown anyway, if they wanted to. That would be a nice move, but I doubt it happens.
This will likely result in the East Village continuing the growth of urban and walk able neighborhoods downtown. The Hodges Bend/Blue Dome area is amazing at the moment. If Santa Fe goes down, wow.
I anticipate Brickhugger saving the brick buildings (no pun intended), and the rest go away. Not a lot you can do with 50 year old tin industrial buildings. There are things of course, but not that many. I won't consider that a universal loss anyway.
I would anticipate lots of partners.
Very excited.
I know it says they are looking at doing a mixture of residential, retail, office, and restaurants, but I really hope this becomes primarily dense residential. I would love to see a mixture of mid-rise and low rise apartments/condos with some townhouses sprinkled in. Some fist floor retail and/or office with residential above would also be great. I would prefer not so see an attempt to create yet another entertainment district downtown. All the entertainment downtown (and the Pearl) is very walkable from this area, so make it a true downtown residential neighborhood.
Was a perfect spot for a soccer stadium.
Quote from: davideinstein on March 31, 2016, 10:10:50 PM
Was a perfect spot for a soccer stadium.
Home Depot is even better.
Quote from: SXSW on March 31, 2016, 11:41:07 PM
Home Depot is even better.
Gotta think biger. If you're going to seize property and kick out functioning businesses, might as well aim for the moon...
How would a soccer stadium look at 3rd and boston?
Quote from: saintnicster on April 01, 2016, 04:18:10 PM
Gotta think biger. If you're going to seize property and kick out functioning businesses, might as well aim for the moon...
How would a soccer stadium look at 3rd and boston?
The Home Depot site is actually the perfect location for a soccer stadium downtown. It's the only viable site you could put a stadium with expansion potential to MLS size that
would NOT require closing parts of the street grid. Saying Home Depot and Williams Tower is ridiculous, get real. Home Depot is a big box retail tenant, they relocate ALL the time - multiple Fortune 1000 HQ's in the same building? Not so much. I've said before on here as well that it would not be difficult to incorporate Home Depot into a new mixed-use development downtown. Having a soccer stadium on the Home Depot site and offering Home Depot incentive to relocate into a development below next to the stadium would really help ignite development in the southern part of downtown and help establish that urban retail can be done correct and successful in Tulsa.
(http://zbrella.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/homedepothacked.jpg)
(https://757hamptonroads.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/cambiest1.jpg)
Interesting to me that the Home Depot site was originally the home of Tulsa's minor league baseball team back in the day.
Quote from: dsjeffries on March 30, 2016, 04:26:27 PM
My new office is the beige building in the background. I am excited for new neighbors.
(https://tulsanow.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/nordam-750x450.jpg)
I catch so much grief for my Williams thread, ha. I just like connectivity. Going beyond these sites, we could just get rid of the east side of the IDL as well.
Capping the east or south sides of the IDL is a wet dream of mine. It would just take extraordinary political courage and amazing timing to pull it off.
Capping a highway that's below grade is about $200/sf (it is much, much more expensive if you have to bring an at-grade highway down). That means to make capping the southern leg of the IDL work we need to have big, big development nearby or a huge public subsidy. I just don't see either of those scenarios happening. But I really hope I'm wrong.
Perhaps it would be easier to convert the eastern leg into a boulevard. A bunch of cities like Milwaukee, SF, and New Haven have taken down major highways and converted them into city streets. It reconnects the grid and opens all that land to development. And unlike straight highway removal (which is awesome), the boulevard is still open to lots of vehicular traffic which makes it more palatable to DOT officials and the suburban-parking-loving-SUV-driving general public.
Quote from: davideinstein on April 01, 2016, 11:41:41 PM
I catch so much grief for my Williams thread, ha. I just like connectivity. Going beyond these sites, we could just get rid of the east side of the IDL as well.
I didn't read most of the William thread, but from what I saw people were pretty critical of the idea. (Not to drift this thread) but I don't think re-doing that block is necessarily a bad idea either. It's not the tower that is the problem, it is the old Forum space that is now the Williams Resource Center. If Williams does leave town, I would like to see whoever buys the tower knock the resource center down. You could extend Main Street to 2nd street then and would do wonders in reconnecting the Brady with the CBD. What people don't realize is a huge chuck of office space Williams occupy's is in the Resource Center, so redeveloping that and the parking lot to the west into a mixed-use development if vacated would stabilize the office market downtown tremendously too.
Quote from: johrasephoenix on April 02, 2016, 12:15:19 AM
Capping the east or south sides of the IDL is a wet dream of mine. It would just take extraordinary political courage and amazing timing to pull it off.
Capping a highway that's below grade is about $200/sf (it is much, much more expensive if you have to bring an at-grade highway down). That means to make capping the southern leg of the IDL work we need to have big, big development nearby or a huge public subsidy. I just don't see either of those scenarios happening. But I really hope I'm wrong.
Perhaps it would be easier to convert the eastern leg into a boulevard. A bunch of cities like Milwaukee, SF, and New Haven have taken down major highways and converted them into city streets. It reconnects the grid and opens all that land to development. And unlike straight highway removal (which is awesome), the boulevard is still open to lots of vehicular traffic which makes it more palatable to DOT officials and the suburban-parking-loving-SUV-driving general public.
You are right about the expense to cap the freeways. $200 sq. ft. is about the cost it took for both the park in Dallas and some of the small infill/capping projects I've looked at in places like Columbus. That makes any type of development in Tulsa at this point unprofitable, unless we shoveled subsidies into it through waiving property and sales taxes for a long time on any development over the freeways. The East leg really does need to be demolished and rebuilt as an at-grade boulevard.
Right now you have this site (Nordam) that would directly benefit from it. You also have Jackson Shaw out of Dallas who is working on plans to re-develop the FinTube site that would directly benefit from this as well. Add if we re-developed the Home Depot site with a soccer stadium and mixed-use development... that's the type of game changing infrastructure investment that would elevate Tulsa nationally.
If you all haven't seen the project I had proposed for Vision, check it out: www.infrastructuretulsa.org
Hey - wow - that's awesome. Did you ever get a chance to talk with any elected official? I'm curious if our most forward thinking officials like GT or Blake but would be receptive to that.
But seriously, it would be a complete game changer. Downtown is densely built all around the southern and eastern edge of the IDL. Inside the IDL is grass because the highways have choked it to death. This would let downtown breath and completely change the experience of being downtown. It would re-set the natural progression of little buildings gradually becoming bigger buildings until you hit the CBD.
I used to live in Chicago so can speak to it's downtown... it has highways cutting off downtown on two of its three sides. The two sides with interstates fell into disrepair with grass lots, brownfields and surface parking the shadow of skyscrapers. The one side that was interstate free boomed into River North, the Midwest's premier urban space (Magnificent Mile, Navy Pier, Gold Coast etc).
Also - nice work in sketchup! I've never actually been able to get my sketchup model to neatly slide into an aerial photo like that.
Whoa - just now reading your report. This is great stuff. I'm an urban planning grad student moving back to Tulsa for a summer internship (first time living back in OK in 10 years). We should snag a drink or something and brainstorm highway removal.
Quote from: LandArchPoke on April 02, 2016, 09:40:29 AM
I didn't read most of the William thread, but from what I saw people were pretty critical of the idea. (Not to drift this thread) but I don't think re-doing that block is necessarily a bad idea either. It's not the tower that is the problem, it is the old Forum space that is now the Williams Resource Center. If Williams does leave town, I would like to see whoever buys the tower knock the resource center down. You could extend Main Street to 2nd street then and would do wonders in reconnecting the Brady with the CBD. What people don't realize is a huge chuck of office space Williams occupy's is in the Resource Center, so redeveloping that and the parking lot to the west into a mixed-use development if vacated would stabilize the office market downtown tremendously too.
You are right about the expense to cap the freeways. $200 sq. ft. is about the cost it took for both the park in Dallas and some of the small infill/capping projects I've looked at in places like Columbus. That makes any type of development in Tulsa at this point unprofitable, unless we shoveled subsidies into it through waiving property and sales taxes for a long time on any development over the freeways. The East leg really does need to be demolished and rebuilt as an at-grade boulevard.
Right now you have this site (Nordam) that would directly benefit from it. You also have Jackson Shaw out of Dallas who is working on plans to re-develop the FinTube site that would directly benefit from this as well. Add if we re-developed the Home Depot site with a soccer stadium and mixed-use development... that's the type of game changing infrastructure investment that would elevate Tulsa nationally.
If you all haven't seen the project I had proposed for Vision, check it out: www.infrastructuretulsa.org
It was by far the best Vision proposal.
QuoteIt's not the tower that is the problem, it is the old Forum space that is now the Williams Resource Center. If Williams does leave town, I would like to see whoever buys the tower knock the resource center down. You could extend Main Street to 2nd street then and would do wonders in reconnecting the Brady with the CBD.
I could see this idea gaining some traction if/when the downtown transit hub is planned in that area. Get Main to 2nd and then figure out a way to reconfigure the Hyatt to get it to 3rd and you would have a complete connection. Continue the streetscape already in place from 6th to 3rd all the way to the bridge and over into Brady.
Chain link fence has been installed around much of the Nordam Facility including closing off Lansing Ave.
Quote from: davideinstein on April 03, 2016, 01:28:47 PM
It was by far the best Vision proposal.
This was my proposal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cpZbGX5F2Y
Quote from: AdamsHall on April 05, 2016, 10:26:43 AM
Chain link fence has been installed around much of the Nordam Facility including closing off Lansing Ave.
I saw that. In the back of my head I thought it was preparation for OK EQ Pride, but their calendar says that isn't until June. So it can't be that.
City of Tulsa doesn't show a permit to close the road on their website:
https://www.cityoftulsa.org/road-closure-map/map.aspx
Another story was posted on News on 6 yesterday, but no real details. Nordam sold it. Brickhugger bought it. The thought is to use it for mix-redevelopment, but no actual plans and no timeline. If there is no timeline for developing it, why block it off? Even though they bought most of the property through there, they didn't buy the streets. Curious.
http://www.newson6.com/story/31632469/former-nordam-building-to-help-transform-tulsas-east-village-buyers-say
Quote from: cannon_fodder on April 05, 2016, 01:19:14 PM
I saw that. In the back of my head I thought it was preparation for OK EQ Pride, but their calendar says that isn't until June. So it can't be that.
City of Tulsa doesn't show a permit to close the road on their website:
https://www.cityoftulsa.org/road-closure-map/map.aspx
Another story was posted on News on 6 yesterday, but no real details. Nordam sold it. Brickhugger bought it. The thought is to use it for mix-redevelopment, but no actual plans and no timeline. If there is no timeline for developing it, why block it off? Even though they bought most of the property through there, they didn't buy the streets. Curious.
http://www.newson6.com/story/31632469/former-nordam-building-to-help-transform-tulsas-east-village-buyers-say
Is it a public street? Could Nordam have taken possession of it at some point over the years?
It does seem seriously fast to close up the property.
Blue whale.
I want a penquin!!
Oh, yeah...get rid of the praying hands!!
Quote from: swake on April 05, 2016, 01:48:17 PM
Is it a public street?
No
Quote from: swake on April 05, 2016, 01:48:17 PM
Could Nordam have taken possession of it at some point over the years?
Yes, long ago.
Quote from: swake on April 05, 2016, 01:48:17 PM
It does seem seriously fast to close up the property.
Not fast. Kenosha, Lansing, 5th St, and 5th Pl have been private property for many years.
Quote from: Bamboo World on April 05, 2016, 10:27:27 PM
No
Yes, long ago.
Not fast. Kenosha, Lansing, 5th St, and 5th Pl have been private property for many years.
I mean fast to close off the property. It seems that plans are already developed.
Quote from: RecycleMichael on April 05, 2016, 10:33:15 AM
This was my proposal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cpZbGX5F2Y
I saw it! A lot of times I'm at these meetings in the back just listening.
Quote from: Bamboo World on April 05, 2016, 10:27:27 PM
Not fast. Kenosha, Lansing, 5th St, and 5th Pl have been private property for many years.
That appears to be the case after a closer look on the Tulsa County Assessor website. It is really 5 "super blocks" with no public access. Which makes sense, driving through there always seemed like Nordam just used everything like they owned it... well, they do (did). Strange that they never put up the blue/private street signs.
The road ownership creates even more potential, it also creates the risk of a "private" neighborhood behind gates so suburbanites can live downtown and still "feel safe." Brickhugger doesn't seem like the kind of group for such a task though. More like an opportunity.
Quote from: cannon_fodder on April 06, 2016, 08:17:39 AM
That appears to be the case after a closer look on the Tulsa County Assessor website. It is really 5 "super blocks" with no public access. Which makes sense, driving through there always seemed like Nordam just used everything like they owned it... well, they do (did). Strange that they never put up the blue/private street signs.
The road ownership creates even more potential, it also creates the risk of a "private" neighborhood behind gates so suburbanites can live downtown and still "feel safe." Brickhugger doesn't seem like the kind of group for such a task though. More like an opportunity.
There are red street signs up on Kenosha and Lansing on 6th street at 6th. Also one on Kenosha on the southish side of 4th, but looks like they missed Lansing's extra sign on 4th