I'll add another recent anecdote for the thread:

There is a sales guy that calls on me about 5 times a year from Dallas. Our company has been one of his clients for years, but we had never really done anything when he visited. He usually stayed out by the airport and never explored the city.

Well, the last few times he came I took him out at night. We've eaten at the Paseo and Soliel and went out in bricktown. I showed him what's going on in Midtown and some of the housing developments north of bricktown. I made the comment that "Oklahoma City is really starting to change and downtown is becoming a place to be". And he said "starting? You guys have more to do downtown right now than Dallas does".

And I guess he's right, with the demise of the West End and Deep Ellum, Oklahoma City's downtown has actually gotten a little more active than even Dallas's downtown. Obviously, the Dallas Metroplex offers 10 times what Oklahoma City does, but really, we have developed a little niche and possibly even one of the better urban experiences in the region.

And this is all before any kind of critical mass of residents have moved into downtown. If we can keep growing that, then downtown Oklahoma City has the potential to be one of the best small/medium market urban destination in the country. This could easily snowball into being a great value for tourists, conventioneers, and start-ups, especially for the immediate region.