General: August 2005 Archives

I have a pile of interesting local stuff to write about, and I am dealing with the pressure by writing about anything but.

I know this is smarmy, but I have to share it with you, my valued readers.

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That's about all the self-promotion I can manage. I need a rest.

We arrived back at the house at about 11:30 last night after 11 days in Florida. We spent the first week with my in-laws in a timeshare condo on Fort Lauderdale's beach, snorkeled in Key Largo, paid a brief visit to Everglades National Park, then spent two packed days in Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom.

This morning was the first morning I slept in since the first day of the vacation. My wife grew up taking beach vacations in Delaware, and it was her family's tradition to go to the beach in the morning before it gets too hot, napping in the afternoon, then going back in the early evening. So we were up by 7:30 nearly every morning, and while everyone else napped, I caught up on work assignments. After bedtime, it was back to work to get daily reports done and try to get some blogging done. The Disney days eliminated nearly all time and energy for blogging.

I might have live-blogged the vacation, but I don't like advertising the fact that I'm out of town. Perhaps decreased frequency of blogging is the modern equivalent of letting newspapers pile up on your porch. I did write a few entries to be posted when I came home.

It was a good vacation. We didn't get much rest, but we made a lot of memories. I hope to share some of those memories with you, mixed in with the backlog of the stuff I normally blog about.

Shut out again yesterday on blog time. When I have time to tell you what I've been up to, you'll understand. I expect to return to a normal blogging routine tomorrow. In the meantime, be sure to visit the many fine bloggers on my blogroll, to the right.

I've received a few comments on my earlier entry about trust funds and their impact on Tulsa's economic development in general and downtown redevelopment in particular.

What I wrote was conjecture -- just me thinking out loud -- and so I'm happy to hear from people with experience in these matters to fill in the sizeable gaps in my knowledge on this subject. I'll add that I may have misunderstood or mischaracterized what I was initially told on the subject.

I certainly did not wish to belittle -- as one reader seemed to think I did -- what Brady Village property owners have already done to try to create an arts, entertainment, and loft district. I do think it's fair to point out that the area hasn't yet reached critical mass, and it's worth asking what the obstacles are. The whole point of what I wrote was that it may not be the fault of the property owners that more isn't happening, that they may be constrained by the terms of the trusts that own the property. Likewise the lack of available venture capital may not be because Tulsa's wealthy are risk-averse, but because they don't have full discretion in the use of their wealth.

I should elaborate on the point about a trust only taking a paper loss if they should sell downtown property at market value. An accountant friend said such a transaction would be a real economic loss. As the situation was explained to me, some of these properties came into the trusts as the result of bankruptcies during the early '80s when downtown property values were much higher than they are now, perhaps much higher than they are ever likely to be. Under those circumstances, an individual owner might decide that the market value is unlikely to approach the book value in the forseeable future, and it's worth having the cash to be rid of the property. The impression I have is that a trust is often not free to make the same trade-off.

I continue to welcome more input on this, and I especially appreciate the leads to more information, which I'll pursue as I have opportunity.

P.S. Real life has intruded on available blogging time in a big way -- but not in a bad way -- during a week when I thought I'd have more time than normal to write. Thus the lighter than usual blogging, which is likely to continue for a while.