I don't know what it takes to get a critical mass to have a self-sustaining environment, but I am inclined say that focusing entirely on what lies inside the boundaries of downtown will not work. I base that on the empty ex-Safeway/Homeland building at 11th & Denver. That was rather close to most of the downtown area apartments and the residential area to the south, but could not stay in business. And everybody buys groceries.

While I have been constantly condescending about downtown development efforts, I have admit one fallicy in that position. If not downtown, where will the memories be or those in the future? we are connected to our city through memories. That's what makes us want to stay and sacrifice for it.

71st and Memorial? It's sterile, crowded, and fluid. Restaurants come and go regularly. All of our memories are of more stable places to stop in downtown or elsewhere.

We will only "recreate" downtown with families. Should they all be rich? Terrible idea. Then the feeder businesses would be unaffordable by the city at large.

Maybe the Walmart and Target aren't a bad idea after all. But we do have to get more employment in downtown. That's why it was Tulsa's center in its heyday.

As a Tulsa resident since 1960, and a Mid Town (Maple Ridge) occupant since 1967, I feel qualified to speak on the downtown area.

I think that it is dead in the water, and it will never return to the early days. It is almost strictly a geographical oddity: the downtown area is in the far, far, northwest area of the city. It is, in fact, too far out of the "loop" to ever be anything but a secondary commercial district. We have killed it off politically. Here is the jail. There is the area frequented by the bums, drunks and panhandlers (aka the Homeless, a PC euphemism for people who, for the most part, should be in an institution of some sort and not wandering the streets). Building foolishly in downtown; the Bus Whatever, and, of course the big White Elephant Arena, and moving City Hall, are just ways the High Roller "Technicians At City Hall", i.e. the bureaucrats who run our city, while spending our dollars and increasing their salaries, and driving around in City vehicles, filled with City gasoline. And we gullibly elect people like Lobeck/Taylor/Frame or whatever, and they connive with the World and their like to create new ways to extract money from us when they should be hard at work fixing the streets and the exploding crime situation.

In other words, we should leave downtown alone, and hope that private interests can rebuild and revitalize it. But let us not waste any more money trying to take it back fifty years.

downtowns are for the most part relics of the past. but what do you with them? letting them turn in to eyesores does no one any good. i agree that tulsa has gone overboard with its spending on downtown. by the time you add up all hesupport spending (subsidize hotels, new city hall to make room for a hotel, fix the streets, relocate cops to protect event patrons, etc) we have more 500 mill invested in this dowtwon project. how long will it take to get that investment paid back?

maybe that money would have been better invested in attracting high paying jobs to replace the ones that got a way. i know, lets start an economic development committee. :)

I have been in Tulsa since 1987.

I live near the Fairgrounds
I attend church at FUMC (11th and main)
I take my kids to the Central library on occasion.
I take my wife to the PAC on occassion

and I consider downtown a barren wasteland. It is a place I have to go to pay a ticket; paying for the privilege of parking in a dark dank cavern and searching for the right door in the right wall.

My kid's memories will be of summer fireworks at Driller's stadium (til they move), Bells (til they were kicked out), events at the Riverparks (til more things were happening near a sandbar in Jenks).

I took my daughter for a walk downtown one weekend. We only saw two people in forty-five minutes; one bum and David Arnett.

I don't play downtown.
I don't work downtown.
I surely can't park downtown.

I don't want to go downtown. Ever.

mega dittoes.

i live on the edge of downtown and have done so for over a year. i am 19 female and live alone. i feel safe walking on the streets pretty much any time of day. i find all areas here to be well patroled by "tulsa's finest" who do not, unlike larger's cities cops, unecessarily harrass bums. other residents of my area and i live happily and in harmony with the homeless around and have little to no problem on a daily basis with the diversity of income. this supposed "DOWNTOWN REVITALIZATION PROBLEM" is an imaginary urban (haha!) legend. most everyone knows and believes it to be true that there is "nothing going on" downtown, but this is the same "most everyone" that can't ever get their heads out of 71st and memorial (which though i do often visit call the drainpipe, or toilet if you will, of suburbia) to find some actual CULTURE. CULTURE, like people, travels in circles and it takes one to know one. The dam holding back development anywhere is a lack of motivation and awareness from the populace. There are many of us who care. But we need numbers! The cure for apathy towards government can not be an apathetic government. Of course, a naturally middle to low income young generation (18-32) has neither the power, influence, nor voice to spread a hand alone. The cards needed to play the game of government are those held by the old money, the rare new money who is still grappling for a sense of permanency, and by the government itself. In other words, for something to happen, it takes a bright light, a spark, and a broadspread excitement about LIFE among citizens.

There is no other way.