Thread: Devon Tower
View Single Post
  #689 (permalink)  
Old 11-21-2008, 10:12 AM
metro metro is offline
VIP Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
Total Posts: 11,567
Default Re: Devon Tower

The article from the JR seems a little more informative with details:

Devon plans auditorium at world headquarters
by Kelley Chambers
The Journal Record November 21, 2008

OKLAHOMA CITY – Devon Energy Corp. is tweaking and refining its plans for a world headquarters now set for completion in 2013.

Initial plans released by the company in March called for several structures on a piece of Urban Renewal land.

In August Larry Nichols, CEO of Devon, unveiled plans for a 54-story skyscraper, an additional 400,000-square-foot office building connected to the tower by a glass rotunda, and park space on the southwest side of the site.

One new addition presented to the Downtown Design Review Committee on Thursday included an auditorium nestled in the park space at the corner of Hudson and Sheridan avenues.

Jon Pickard, principal with the architecture firm Pickard Chilton, said the auditorium will be similar to the Times Center, a 378-seat auditorium built by the New York Times in Manhattan.

The Devon auditorium will likely seat about 250.
Pickard called the auditorium the “jewel of the park,” and said the company wants it to be available for community use.

“As we developed the design and we started to better analyze the needs of Devon for meeting facilities it seemed to be that an auditorium would help support the Devon corporate mission,” he said.

“It was always there as a thought, we just hadn’t developed it.”
Pickard said the auditorium is still a concept at this point and the exact size and cost have not been determined.

The second floor of the office building, dubbed The Podium, will also be a conference center.

Plans for parking were also discussed.

John Wood, vice president with Hines, and project officer for the Devon site, said plans are in the works for Devon to acquire the west side of the City Center Garage and add five floors exclusively for the company’s use.

Wood said the company would like to start work on expanding the garage upwards, and to the west toward Hudson Avenue, in the first quarter of 2009 and it should take 21 months to complete.

Plans for the tower call for demo work on the site beginning next year and the foundation for the tower could be in the ground by November.
The current timeline for the project calls for completion in early to mid-2013.