UTW Column Archive: May 2009 Archives
An edited version of this column was published in the May 28 - June 4, 2009, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. This was my final column for UTW, for reasons I explained in a blog entry at that time. The final paragraph was cut by the editor. The published version is available on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Posted October 25, 2022.
Cityscope
By Michael D. Bates
Notebook
Tulsa Police Chief Ronald Palmer has proposed imposing a security fee of 75 cents to a dollar per ticket to cover the overtime costs for extra police officers patrolling downtown during major BOK Center events. It's the least that the BOK Center can do to offset its impact on the city budget.
It's argued that such a fee would upset the promoters who book shows at the arena, putting Tulsa at a competitive disadvantage. If someone is willing to buy that ticket for a dollar more than previously, that's a dollar that could have gone to the promoter instead of the city. The argument goes that the BOK Center is generating sales tax revenue, and we shouldn't balance the city budget on the backs of these promoters.
In reality, the voters chose to subsidize those promoters to the tune of $178 million, and it will take at least a century for the arena to generate the same amount of local tax dollars that we put into it.
Here's the math: The BOK Center has remitted over $1.2 million in city and county sales tax revenues in the eight months since it opened. It's impossible to know exactly how much of that revenue came from Tulsans reallocating their disposable income from other entertainment and dining options, although it's reasonable to think that the vast majority of the revenue is coming from local residents.
In the six months reported by the Oklahoma Tax Commission since the arena held its first paid event last September, sales tax receipts in Tulsa County increased by 4.7% over the year before. But statewide, sales tax receipts for the same period increased by 5.5% over the year before, suggesting that the BOK Center didn't provide an added boost to Tulsa over and above the improvement to the general state economy.
But for the sake of argument, let's assume that all of the sales tax paid by the BOK Center represents new money. At that rate it would only take about 100 years for local taxpayers to recoup in city and county tax revenues the $178 million (not including interest on the bonds) that we put into the facility.
Former Councilor Chris Medlock, in his May 19 medblogged.com podcast, took debt service into account and calculated 122 years before the arena will generate as much local sales tax as was spent to build it.
My calculation and Medlock's figures both optimistically assume that the BOK Center will continue to bring in big acts and draw the same big crowds as it has during what Bolton has called a "honeymoon period," although Bolton himself has warned Tulsans not to expect that to happen.
No one can know for sure whether the BOK Center has increased local tax receipts over what they would otherwise have been. What we can say for sure is that popular music venues like Cain's Ballroom, the Marquee, and the Mercury Lounge haven't been subsidized by taxpayers to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. The owners of those venues paid to rent or buy and to renovate their facilities. Those costs are passed on in the price of each ticket.
BOK Center management and show promoters should be overflowing with gratitude to the taxpayers of Tulsa County for giving them, at no cost to them, a brand new, state-of-the-art venue where they can put on their shows and make big profits. They shouldn't try to dump even more of their operating cost onto city taxpayers.
# # #
Anytime I hear about a downtown church expanding, I cringe. For many years, that has meant that another historic commercial building will fall to make way for more parking.
It's wonderful that our downtown churches, with their historic and beautiful buildings, have survived and continue to thrive, drawing congregants from all over the metropolitan area, but their hunger for surface parking makes them a mixed blessing.
First Presbyterian Church's approach to expansion, however, deserves praise and warrants emulation.
Rather than tear down the old Masonic Temple across Boston Ave., Tulsa's oldest congregation renovated it for use as church classroom and event space and offices for non-profit organizations. Now called the Bernsen Community Life Center, it serves not only the church but the whole community. Barthelmes Conservatory, for example, has its office there and holds its public concerts in the center's various performance spaces.
In the same spirit, First Pres is about to eliminate some surface parking and put something beautiful in its place. A new worship center and reception hall, welcome center, and educational building will fill up the half-block west of Cincinnati Ave between 7th and 8th Streets. The new additions will be in the same Gothic Revival style as the 1925 sanctuary. The buildings will form a U around a courtyard, reminiscent of a cathedral cloister.
The church has also acquired the Power House gym at 8th and Detroit, which served many years as Chick Norton (later Jim Norton) Buick - one of the few downtown auto dealership buildings still standing. Power House is the new home for the church's youth ministries, and it is already under renovation.
The congregation has pledged over $14 million toward a goal of $18 million, to be matched dollar-for-dollar by Charlie Stephenson, a co-founder of Vintage Petroleum, and his wife Peggy.
There was something else on the drawings that I found especially encouraging: A new parking garage on the southeast corner of 7th and Main, directly to the west of the Bernsen Center, taking the place of an existing surface lot. It's not clear whether this is part of the current fundraising drive or something for the future.
A parking garage would set a great example for other downtown churches, by accommodating more cars in a smaller area. It would be even more exciting if the garage included street-fronting retail spaces, which would help rebuild a pedestrian-friendly connection between the downtown office core and TCC and the south downtown churches.
# # #
I'm told that, after the first week of the PLANiTULSA survey, ranking four scenarios for future growth, only about 600 had been collected or submitted online at planitulsa.org. Planners are hoping for 20 to 30 times that number by the June 18 deadline.
Please take time to submit a survey: The more Tulsans participate, the harder it will be for city officials to ignore the results.
As it's my 194th and final weekly column for Urban Tulsa Weekly, here are three parting observations about PLANiTULSA:
1. PLANiTULSA is finally delivering what Bill LaFortune promised with his July 2002 "vision summit." 1100 Tulsans gathered to express their dreams for the city's future, but instead of the process leading to a comprehensive strategy and plan for Tulsa's future development, the result was a grab-bag of disconnected projects scattered around the county.
With the PLANiTULSA process, Tulsans are finally putting together a vision of the sort defined by futurist Glenn Heimstra at the 2002 summit: "A compelling description of your preferred future."
2. The results of the PLANiTULSA citywide workshops, represented by Scenario B, and to a lesser extent by C and D, vindicate the "Gang of Four" - Councilors Jack Henderson, Jim Mautino, Chris Medlock, and Roscoe Turner, who served together from 2004 to 2006 - as genuine advocates for the City of Tulsa's growth.
The four took a lot of flak from the development industry, which pushed the unsuccessful 2005 attempt to recall Mautino and Medlock. They were tarred as opponents of growth, but the quartet's real offense was working to focus Tulsa's resources on encouraging new, high quality, compatible growth within Tulsa city limits rather than fueling suburban expansion at Tulsa's expense.
Those efforts began in 2003, when Medlock and then-Councilor Joe Williams proposed a future growth task force to address the stagnation of the city's sales tax base as new retail followed residents to the suburbs.
The task force was put on the back burner by Mayor Bill LaFortune, but in 2004, the coalition won funding for a study potential big-box retail sites in Tulsa. The Buxton study identified US 75 at 71st St a prime location to capture retail dollars from customers in upscale suburban subdivisions. Medlock won approval of a Tax Increment Finance district for the area, which made possible the development of the Tulsa Hills shopping district.
The four, along with Sam Roop (for a time), held up the reappointment of two members of the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority, the city's water board, over concerns that the TMUA's long-term water deals with the suburbs benefited suburban growth to the City of Tulsa's detriment.
This same coalition began pushing for a new comprehensive plan in 2005 and included funding for the process we now call PLANiTULSA in the 2006 Third Penny package.
Assuming survey responses reflect the same preferences on display at last fall's workshops, it will confirm that Tulsans share the desire that motivated these often-vilified councilors: to see new development in the City of Tulsa that respects existing neighborhood character, brings more people into the city, stimulates new retail development, and generates more tax revenue to fund basic city services.
3. In my very first UTW column, back in September 2005, I wrote of the importance of walkable neighborhoods for Tulsans who don't have the option of driving a car.
"Most of Tulsa is designed for the private automobile, but there ought to be at least a part of our city where those who can't drive, those who'd rather not drive, and those who'd like to get by with just one car can still lead an independent existence. At least one section of our city ought to be truly urban."
PLANiTULSA scenarios B and D would get us closer to making that goal a reality.
As you fill out your PLANiTULSA survey, by all means think about which scenario comes closest to the kind of city that would best serve your needs. But take a moment to consider which of the four scenarios would best serve those who by reason of age, infirmity, or poverty are unable to drive.
And with that I'll say goodbye for now. I'm grateful for the opportunity to have been part of the UTW team for almost four years. Many thanks to the UTW readers who took time to read my words, who wrote in with praise and with criticism, and who voted my blog, batesline.com, Absolute Best of Tulsa two years in a row. Best wishes for continued success to the staff, management, and advertisers of Urban Tulsa Weekly.
An edited version of this column was published in the May 21-27, 2009, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is available on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Here's my blog entry linking to the article. The date of the PLANiTULSA scenario rollout was May 12, 2009, not March 13. Posted October 25, 2022.
Cityscope
By Michael D. Bates
Which scenario is rosiest?
About 500 Tulsans were present at Cain's Ballroom on Tuesday, March 13 [May 12], to see the unveiling of four scenarios for Tulsa's future growth and development. A short presentation was followed by dozens of spirited conversations that spilled out on to Main Street and down the hill into Soundpony and Lola's and other Brady Arts District establishments.
The event launched a survey called "Which Way, Tulsa?" It's the latest step in the PLANiTULSA process of developing a new comprehensive plan for our city.
Four different directions have been offered for the public's consideration:
Scenario A, "Trends Continue": Continue along our current path, with most new development and population growth in the suburbs.
Scenario B, "Main Streets": New growth in and near downtown and along street and transit corridors. These corridors become like Main Streets, centers of activity for the surrounding neighborhoods.
Scenario C, "New Centers": New growth is concentrated in and around new hubs of activity with significant concentrations along N. Peoria; along 21st & 145th East Ave. in east Tulsa, and along US 75 south of I-44 in southwest Tulsa.
Scenario D, "Centered City": New growth is focused on downtown and surrounding areas and along transit corridors; the lion's share of transportation dollars goes to mass transit instead of roads.
Scenarios B, C, and D all represent a significant departure from the trend. Although the three differ in emphasis, you can find elements of each in the other two. All three involve medium- to high-density development in downtown. "Main Streets" has new centers (albeit less concentrated) along the BA at Memorial and Garnett, and around 71st and US 75. "New Centers" and "Centered City" have Main Street development along 11th St., Peoria, and elsewhere.
Between now and June 18th, Tulsans can express their preference by filling out the survey in the back of the glossy "Which Way, Tulsa?" brochure or rating the scenarios online at planitulsa.org.
In the days since the launch, I've heard a number of anxieties expressed about the survey and how the results will be used. Let me try to respond to the concerns.
First, it's important to understand that we're not voting on a final comprehensive plan. The maps may create the impression that, by voting for a particular scenario, you'd be voting to redevelop or up-zone a specific piece of land as depicted on the scenario map. That's not the case.
The general direction and preferences expressed in the survey results will be used to guide the planning team in creating a draft comprehensive plan.
But there are specifics - a lot of them - backing up each scenario. The Fregonese team placed specific types of development at specific locations, in line with each scenario's general approach, and fed those specifics into their computer models to calculate selected indicators, such as population growth, housing mix, job growth, commute time, land consumption, and emissions.
The indicators that were deemed to be of general interest were published in the Which Way, Tulsa booklet; more can be found on the planitulsa.org website.
The survey at the back of the booklet (and online) allows you to choose the preferred scenario according to each of seven different criteria and then to pick an overall favorite and second favorite scenario.
The planning team will tabulate the survey results and create a draft comprehensive plan. What that plan looks like will depend on whether one scenario is a strong favorite or multiple scenarios have strong support. If a favored scenario is weak for a specific criterion, the draft plan would be tweaked accordingly to address the shortcoming.
The draft plan, which will be detailed and specific, should be released sometime this fall. Public feedback will be used to refine the draft comprehensive plan before it goes to the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission (TMAPC) and the City Council for adoption.
But there's much more to be done once the plan is adopted. City officials will have to decide if and when to fund new roads and transit. Scenarios B, C, and D all assume the use of new mixed-use development types that are either illegal or not economically feasible under Tulsa's zoning code and development standards. The city's ordinances will need to be amended if we want to depart significantly from our current development trend.
Even then, it will still be up to private developers and investors to turn development concepts in the plan into real buildings and neighborhoods.
Another frequently voiced worry goes like this: "There's a pink or purple blob right over my house! I like this scenario in general, but I don't want ugly infill development in my neighborhood."
The colors on the scenario maps, ranging from light pink to dark purple, show where new development would go and how dense it would be; the darker the color, the higher the density. The blobby shapes on the map aren't meant to be precise: "The four scenarios present generalized concepts of how the City can grow."
The guiding principles for the PLANiTULSA process, adopted in February by the citizens' advisory committee, affirm a commitment to protecting the history and character of our neighborhoods:
"Future development should protect historic buildings, area neighborhoods and natural resources while also enhancing urban areas and creating new mixed-use centers where people can find everything they need in vibrant communities. It's vitally important that the look and feel of new construction complement and enhance existing neighborhoods, rather than simply being added on."
Carrying out this principle, the PLANiTULSA team created a map showing areas of change and stability, accompanied by a statement which shows that the planners get the difference between good infill and bad (see sidebar). The areas of stability include "environmental areas such as rivers, creeks, floodplains, parks and open space; single family neighborhoods; and historic districts." In stable neighborhoods, compatibility would be the foremost criterion when building on a vacant lot or replacing a dilapidated structure.
Even if we treat areas of stability as off-limits for new development, there's plenty of room to accommodate more people and jobs within the Tulsa city limits. Scenarios B, C, and D would see Tulsa grow by 72,000, 101,000, and 102,000 new residents respectively, three to four times the 28,000 new residents we can expect if the current trends continue.
How we house all those extra people is where C differs significantly from B and D.
Under scenario C, two-thirds of additional housing over the next two decades would be single-family. That's consistent with current ratios.
Under scenario B, only a third of new housing would be single-family. Half would be multi-family and the remaining sixth would be townhouses.
Scenario D drops the single-family share down to 19 percent. Two-thirds would be multi-family, and 14 percent would be townhouses.
Despite the big differences in the mix of types for new housing, the total housing mix (old plus new) would remain majority single-family under each scenario.
For one of my friends, a resident of a suburban Tulsa subdivision, the lowest proportion of multi-family housing was reason enough to pick scenario C. But don't dismiss B and D, just because you don't like the way Tulsa has traditionally built apartments.
For many Tulsans, the phrase "multi-family housing" carries connotations of transience and impermanence, terms that could apply to the buildings and to the people who live in them. An apartment, the thinking goes, is where you live when you're just out of college or when you can't afford to own a home.
For suburbanites, multi-family calls to mind sprawling apartment complexes. Midtowners may think of the up-zoning of Riverview and Kendall-Whittier about 40 years ago from single- to multi-family, as one craftsman bungalow after another was torn down and replaced with a flat-roofed, four-unit apartment building on the same lot.
But multi-family can also mean luxury condo towers or the sort of sturdy, brick, three-story apartment buildings that coexist harmoniously with single-family homes in the Swan Lake historic district.
By lumping all types of multi-family housing together in a single percentage, the "Which Way, Tulsa?" material fails to paint a clear picture for the citizen weighing each scenario's pros and cons.
The detailed indicators (which you can find at planitulsa.org/agendas under the April 14, 2009, meeting) show that the bulk of multi-family housing for scenarios B and D would be in mixed-use developments combining residences with retail and office space. Only 15 percent of new housing units would be apartments in strictly residential developments.
It's my sense that many Tulsans would prefer not to have the hassle and expense of maintaining their own home and would opt for multi-family housing if a greater variety of living situations were available, particularly if it meant being able to live near jobs, shopping, entertainment, and transit.
I'm still mulling it over, but at the moment I'm leaning toward scenario B. The "Main Streets" concept seems to make the best use of existing infrastructure, while reconnecting Tulsa's urban fabric and improving walkability for more neighborhoods, helping to create the kind of city I'd like for myself and my children.
Whatever your preference for Tulsa's future growth, be sure to express it by filling out the "Which Way, Tulsa?" survey.
# # #
SIDEBAR
The four scenarios present generalized concepts of how the City can grow. As we move forward with the plan, we will refine desired growth patterns to target areas that Tulsans have told us will benefit from new investment and revitalization, such as undeveloped land, struggling commercial corridors, vacant lots or vacant and underutilized nonresidential sites. We will also respect areas of stability and historic significance, such as single-family neighborhoods.The term "infill" can have a negative connotation. It is often used to describe huge houses or apartment complexes out-of-scale with existing neighborhoods. PLANiTULSA intends to differentiate good infill from bad infill. Good infill should add appropriate development that a neighborhood has been missing. Good infill is the right use and scale and adds to the overall neighborhood.
Good infill often takes place at the edge of an existing neighborhood that could benefit from a new cafe or small grocery store. Reinvestment in a dilapidated home or building a townhome on an empty lot can help improve property values. Infill development can and should be considered a community benefit when done appropriately and sensitively.
The following maps show areas where change is quite possible and other areas that should remain stable in their current form. The areas of potential change could experience new investment in the form of infill, new development and construction. In areas of stability, the focus is on programs to protect and enhance existing neighborhoods.Mapped areas of stability include environmental areas such as rivers, creeks, floodplains, parks and open space; single family neighborhoods; and historic districts.
While the areas of potential change and areas of stability map is not a parcel by parcel map, it is intended to show overall how different areas of the city will be treated in the Comprehensive Plan. This differentiation in types of areas will be carried through into policies that treat areas of change (for example an abandoned industrial site) different than areas of stability (an existing single family neighborhood.)
An edited version of this column was published in the May 14 - 20, 2009, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is available on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Posted October 25, 2022.
Cityscope
By Michael D. Bates
Downtown Tulsa Unlamented
The departing head of Downtown Tulsa Unlimited (DTU) reflected with satisfaction on his 20 years of service. He told the business reporter:
"Our downtown is destined to be one of the outstanding downtowns. No other downtown association got into the nitty gritty. All our programs have been successful....
"We're no longer trying to save downtown....
"We needed to get the cheap joints out. We formed the old urban renewal authority and it has been effective. We cleared out the old, obsolete areas...."
Those words came from L. A. "Bud" Blust, Jr., who served as DTU's head from shortly after its inception in 1956 until 1977.
As his fourth successor, Jim Norton, leaves DTU this month after his own two-decade stint, it's a fitting time to look back at the downtown organization's history and its future, if any. DTU's policy successes ultimately led to the very result the group was formed to prevent: The collapse of downtown retail.
DTU was founded by downtown retailers concerned about growing competition from new suburban shopping centers, although from the beginning its membership included other downtown businesses and organizations.
In 1951, Froug's opened a branch in the new Eastgate Center at Admiral and Memorial. Utica Square debuted in 1952 as a middle-class shopping center, complete with a bowling alley and T. G. & Y. (For you young whipper-snappers, T. G. & Y. was a chain of five-and-dime stores, sort of like a Walgreens minus the pharmacy and food, plus fabric and patterns.)
In 1956, Sears Roebuck decided to move from 5th and Boulder to 21st and Yale, near new edge-of-town subdivisions like Lortondale and Mayo Meadow.
DTU deserves much of the credit - or blame - for what happened to downtown over the next half-century. The 1959 "Plan for Central Tulsa," initiated by DTU and developed by planners from California, introduced the notion of a Main Street Pedestrian Mall, closed to traffic, and a superblock office/retail complex, called Tul-Center, to replace several blocks of old retail buildings around 1st and Main.
The same plan endorsed earlier proposals to clear a mixed residential and business area west of Denver Ave. for a multi-block civic center and to create a loop of expressways around downtown to make it easy for drivers to come in from the suburbs.
DTU lobbied very effectively to get the city to use federal highway and urban renewal dollars to accomplish these "progressive" plans, although it took until 1981 to complete all the projects. By the time Tulsa finished, other cities had already begun to rethink and remove inner city expressways, pedestrian malls, and superblock developments.
A Sept. 23, 1984, Oklahoman story celebrated the state of downtown Tulsa, which seemed to remain healthy despite the oil bust that had begun two years earlier.
The expressway system made it easy for people to live in the suburbs and commute to work and church in downtown. But creating the IDL wiped out apartments and homes and blighted nearby neighborhoods. More people coming from further away meant greater demand for parking.
As new skyscrapers went up and as downtown churches drew members from all over the metro area, one- to three-story buildings came down to make way for surface parking lots. These are the same sort of old buildings that have served as affordable venues for unique new businesses in Cherry Street, the Brady District, the Blue Dome District, Brookside, and 18th and Boston.
Retail followed the commuters and their families out to the edge of the city and ultimately into the suburbs. Office workers were in their offices, working, not out shopping.
One by one, downtown stores closed. An indoor mall, the Williams Center Forum, lingered for a bit longer, before being converted to office space in the early 1990s.
In 1977, Bud Blust was happy to be rid of the "cheap joints" (a description that evidently included ornate downtown movie palaces like the Ritz, Orpheum, and Majestic). But those old buildings, however seedy their occupants, had the kind of character that new construction in the suburbs could never duplicate.
In trying to imitate suburbia, DTU failed to win back customers who still found it easier to shop Southroads or Woodland Hills than to navigate the confusion of a street grid that had been hacked to pieces by downtown "improvements." At the same time DTU discarded the uniqueness that made going downtown worth the extra trouble.
You might think that a downtown merchants' association would close down once most of the merchants were gone, but DTU stayed alive, thanks to the business improvement district (BID) that was put in place in 1981. The City contracted with DTU's subsidiary, Tul-Center, Inc., to maintain the Main Mall and downtown plazas and sidewalks, funded by an assessment on properties within the BID. (DTU's executive committee serves as Tul-Center's board of directors.) Tul-Center, in turn, contracted with other providers and with DTU to do the actual work. (That at least was the arrangement early on, according to news accounts of the time.)
As retail faded away, DTU seems to have into an office-building owners association. Critics say that DTU represents the interests of only a small number of downtown property owners, but city officials continued to treat it as if it were the sole spokesman for downtown.
The same critics note that most of the entrepreneurial initiative has come not in the center, where DTU's attention has been focused, but on the edge of downtown, in places that DTU either overlooked or hoped at some point to wipe out.
In 1981, planners hired by DTU recommended clearing the area we now call the Brady Arts District to make way for an "urban campus." One of the planners was quoted in an April 7, 1981, news story as saying, "There's not really much character left in the Old Townsite, so we see no reason to restore it, as some cities have done to their original site." Thank goodness they never found the money to make it happen.
If Tulsa voters had followed DTU's advice and approved the "Tulsa Project" sales tax in 1997, Hodge's Bend--the area around 3rd and Kenosha, home to Tiny Lounge, Divine Barbering, and Micha Alexander's Virginia Lofts, featured on the cover of UTW a few weeks ago--would have been bulldozed for a soccer stadium.
It angers and amuses me to hear anyone claim that downtown's problem is government neglect and lack of public investment. Quite the opposite: Downtown Tulsa has been nearly loved to death.
A report on Tulsa's downtown issued earlier this year by an advisory panel from the International Downtown Association (IDA) enumerates the many ways in which the planning fads of earlier years hurt downtown's vitality.
When the panel of four visited downtown last November--just before the Tulsa Run--it concluded that "Downtown Tulsa is stuck in a time warp":
"A first-time visitor to downtown Tulsa may be somewhat mystified. Streets and sidewalks are clean and well-lighted. A collection of handsome, even extraordinary art deco buildings adorn the office core. A strikingly designed arena stands dramatically on the edge of downtown, complemented by perhaps the most attractive new City Hall in America. Here and there, a café or coffee house lights the street. And yet... where are the people? ...
"There are few street level establishments of a retail nature. Windows facing the street are far too often dark. The hustle and bustle that today characterizes many downtowns across North America is simply absent."
We wish DTU President Jim Norton well as he moves on to his new position in North Carolina. I served with him on a couple of task forces and always found him to be courteous and congenial, despite our differences. To his credit, he has been an effective advocate for public funding for downtown infrastructure and incentives for residential development.
One could fault him for his opposition to modest historic preservation and urban design measures--the sort that most other cities our size, including Oklahoma City, have had for many years--but it's important to remember that he was merely representing the interests of those who control DTU, those who hired him and who had the power to fire him, and not necessarily the best interests of downtown as a historic urban center.
DTU's days may be numbered. Rather than continue the 28-year exclusive arrangement with DTU's Tul-Center subsidiary, the City is seeking competitive bids to take over public property maintenance services for the new Tulsa Stadium Improvement District, which will also fund the Tulsa Drillers' new stadium. Bids are due to the City Clerk's office by 5 p.m. on May 20. (You can find the invitation to bid and the detailed requirements for the contract at cityoftulsapurchasing.org. The bid number is TAC 843.)
Tul-Center is competing for the contract. If they lose, DTU could theoretically continue to exist, but that may not be feasible. According to the IDA report, "DTU relies on the BID assessment for its very existence. BID revenues constitute about 9 out of every 11 dollars passing through DTU each year."
In my opinion, DTU's time has long since passed, and, contrary to the recommendations of the IDA, there's no justification for giving it pride of place in a new "Downtown Coordinating Council."
A single organization representing everything within the Inner Dispersal Loop is at once too broad and too narrow. Within the IDL there are condo owners, small retailers, nightclubs, old apartment buildings, art galleries, and office buildings. No one group can adequately represent such a diverse collection of interests.
But if there is to be an umbrella organization to represent common concerns of those diverse groups, its coverage should extend beyond the IDL to include the surrounding neighborhoods. The revival of central Tulsa requires regenerating the connections that were severed when the expressways were built.
Let the winning bidder for the public property maintenance contract stick to providing exactly those services and nothing more. The City should not accord the winning bidder status as de facto spokesman for downtown. Instead, the City planning department should take the lead role, even-handedly weighing input from central Tulsa stakeholders-neighborhoods, associations, institutions--as they implement a new comprehensive plan.
DTU failed to serve its original purpose, and no longer serves any public purpose at all. Let it go on independently if it will, but fifty-three years of taxpayer-subsidized failure is enough.
An edited version of this column was published in the May 7 - 13, 2009, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. Here is the blog entry I wrote at the time, linking to the column, and a blog entry reporting on the rollout. The published version is not available online. Posted October 25, 2022.
Cityscope
By Michael D. Bates
PLANiTULSA scenario launch
In just under a week, PLANiTULSA will launch a public survey, asking Tulsans to rate four scenarios for our city's future growth and development. The survey is expected to draw the most participation of any step in the year-and-a-half-long process of developing Tulsa's first new comprehensive plan in a generation.
It's also the final significant opportunity for public input, so it's important for you to understand what the scenarios are, whence they emerged, and what will be done with the feedback you provide.
So pay attention! This is important. This material will be on the test.
The kickoff event for the PLANiTULSA survey will be at Cain's Ballroom on Tuesday, May 12, 2009, from 6 to 7 p.m. Described as "part pep rally, part social event," the party will be catered by Eloté Café (renowned for fresh Mexican food), with music by Little Chairs, a local roots rock band in the "Tulsa Sound" tradition.
Beyond the food and music, the goal of the kickoff is two-fold. In addition to giving citizens a chance to see scenario details and ask questions of the planning team, the aim is to generate enough buzz to get thousands of Tulsans to respond to the survey.
Planners are hoping for about 15,000 responses. That would be a very strong level of involvement compared to similar surveys that Fregonese Associates, lead planners for the PLANiTULSA process, have done for comprehensive plans in cities and regions around the country. There's hope that the enthusiasm that led to an overflow for last fall's citywide workshops will carry over to these surveys.
The six-county Grand Traverse region of northern Michigan went through the same process last October and November. 11,603 surveys were submitted, representing just under 6% of the region's population. (Visit thegrandvision.org to see their results.) A proportional response for Tulsa would be around 22,000 surveys.
The Fregonese team has put together four growth scenarios based on the input received during the citywide workshops last fall, each representing a different approach to new growth. One scenario represents continuing on with our current growth pattern; the other three represent frequently recurring patterns in the maps developed by workshop participants.
The Tulsa metropolitan area is projected to grow by 164,000 people and to add 53,000 jobs over the next two decades. The scenarios provide different answers to the questions that are at the heart of a comprehensive plan: How much of that growth do we want the City of Tulsa to capture? What do we want that growth to look like? Where in the city would we like it to go?
There's a related question Tulsans need to answer: How much of the roughly $2 billion that will be spent on new transportation infrastructure over the next 20 years should go to street and highway widening and how much toward various forms of mass transit?
How we answer those questions and the development policies we adopt as a result will influence the kind of city our children and grandchildren will experience.
Today's Tulsans are living with the impact of planning decisions made over 50 years ago, when our expressway network was mapped out and a development pattern for new neighborhoods was established. That pattern of single-use development, segregating where we live from where we work, shop, worship, study, and play, was enshrined in our vintage 1970 zoning code.
The Fregonese team has run each scenario through their modeling software to estimate the scenario's impact on population, jobs, commuting time, and demand for new infrastructure, among other key measurements.
I'll be able to provide a more definitive analysis once the final versions of the scenarios and the survey have been released. For now, here's a summary of the four scenarios, based on drafts that have been shown to the PLANiTULSA citizens' team, of which I'm a member.
As you read these descriptions, keep in mind that the planners have already taken out of play those areas which would be unlikely or controversial to redevelop. These "masked out" areas include single-family neighborhoods, historic preservation districts, parks, and floodplains.
Remember too that these descriptions are necessarily oversimplified. Maps showing new development, shaded to represent density, will be in the survey literature. I'm hoping that the website will provide more detailed information, showing the locations of different types of development and transportation as separate map layers.
Scenario A represents the current trend, which could also be called "business as usual," with the bulk of new development occurring in the suburbs, dominated by single-family housing. Under this scenario, only 17% of metro area population growth would take place within the Tulsa city limits. (The other three scenarios have Tulsa capturing 44% to 62% of metro area population growth.)
Scenario B is modeled after the aggregate of the more than 100 maps created by participants in last fall's citywide workshops. Workshop participants showed a strong preference for high-density, mixed-use development that brings together homes, jobs, shopping, and entertainment, as evidenced by the "chips" (representing various types of development) they selected and placed on their maps.
Scenario B, subtitled "Main Street Redevelopment," reflects this preference, putting the highest density development downtown and in nearby neighborhoods that want redevelopment, such as the Pearl District and Crutchfield.
While 62% of Tulsa's households are in single-family homes, only 33% of new development under Scenario B would be for single-family; the remainder would be multi-family and townhouses. (The resulting housing mix would still be 57% single-family, a shift, but not a massive one.)
Arterials that already have something of a Main Street character would see that character reinforced and extended, with mixed-use pedestrian friendly development replacing auto-oriented commercial development. For example, you might see a modern version of Brookside-type development further south along Peoria toward 71st, and along North Peoria as well.
Other opportunities for increasing density exist in other parts of the city, where underused retail centers and their vast, underused parking lots could be replaced with a mixture of apartments, townhomes, shopping, and offices.
Scenario B imagines turning industrial areas along highways and railroad lines into transit-oriented mixed-use development - for example, along the old MK&T tracks near 11th & Lewis, 41st and Memorial, and 51st and US 169.
Scenario C and D represent development approaches are variations that were each embraced by a substantial minority of workshop participants.
Scenario C, "New Centers," is similar to B in that it puts growth downtown and along key arteries. But it puts more emphasis on single-family housing, and it would create new centers of development in places like 21st St. & 145th East Ave., North Peoria, and near 71st St. & U. S. 75. These new centers would have housing, jobs, shopping, and services all in close proximity and would be linked by transit to one another and downtown.
Scenario D, "Central City," is the sustainable development option, with most of the growth downtown and near downtown. This option is the most effective at putting residents near parks and open space. It also consumes the least amount of vacant land.
Scenario D is the most transit-focused option, putting 73% of future transportation capital dollars to transit. Scenarios B and C are split 59% for road improvements and 41% for transit improvements. (The trend is 99% for roads, 1% for transit.)
I was surprised to see that, according to the Fregonese models, Scenario D's significantly higher transit investment only boosted the percentage of regular transit riders, pedestrians, and cyclists by two percentage points, from 15% for B and C to 17% for D.
(All three were significant improvements over the 5% transit/pedestrian share for Scenario A, the current trend.)
So now that the planners have put together these four potential growth scenarios, they're asking Tulsans for feedback. There will be a booklet showing each of the scenarios and how they compare on key indicators.
A survey on the back page will ask you to rank the scenarios on how well each fits your needs and desires for housing, transportation, and job options, and how they match the kind of city you want to live in. You can mail, fax, or drop off the survey.
You'll be able to answer the same questions online (via planitulsa.org).
The planners will use the survey results to put together a detailed comprehensive plan, which will be presented to the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission (TMAPC) for consideration. The final draft may be a blend of scenarios, reflecting the likes and dislikes expressed in the survey.
Adopting the plan is a legislative act, so the final decision is with the City Council. As with any ordinance, the mayor could choose to sign or veto, and the Council could override a veto with a two-thirds vote.
The exact timing of the final steps is still up in the air. It would be ideal to have the draft plan presented to the TMAPC sometime in late summer, so that whether to adopt or not would be the central issue of this fall's city elections.
A big turnout at Cain's next Tuesday, May 12, would be a great way to launch this important public input process. I hope to see you there, but whether or not you can make it, please take time over the next few weeks to fill out a PLANiTULSA survey and let planners know how you want Tulsa to grow.
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