Convention Center

[Plutonic Panda]

Why?

I'll explain a little later today, but like I said, it won't be a huge post, just a paragraph or two.

[catch22]

you don't even know why or what exactly I disagree with, but alright. I'll expand a little later. Not going to get too into it because I know most here are anti-large highway, anti six-lane roads, and pretty much anti-anything that doesn't doesn't give people walking around the first priority.

In our core.. Yes very anti-anti-walkable features. There's no excuse for Oklahoma... The land of tough cowboys and huge manly monster trucks... To not be able to tolerate conditions that doesn't prohibit people from walking in Minneapolis or Chicago, or Phoenix or Vegas.

The Underground needs to be closed.

Memorial road is just fine being a super-auto corridor. I don't like that style, but it's not out of place up there. (For the record I conduct business about 4-5 times a week on memorial. So I don't "not drive" or have an anti-car bias.)

[Plutonic Panda]

In our core.. Yes very anti-anti-walkable features. There's no excuse for Oklahoma... The land of tough cowboys and huge manly monster trucks... To not be able to tolerate conditions that doesn't prohibit people from walking in Minneapolis or Chicago, or Phoenix or Vegas.

The Underground needs to be closed.

Memorial road is just fine being a super-auto corridor. I don't like that style, but it's not out of place up there. (For the record I conduct business about 4-5 times a week on memorial. So I don't "not drive" or have an anti-car bias.)

Not talking about the core. If that was the discussion was about, then that is laughable claiming our streets downtown are too wide. What a joke. Even Kansas City has wider streets downtown then we do.

Oh, and the underground should be expanded. I understand where you are coming from, but I'm all about giving people freedom, and that includes the freedom to choose to walk in a series of tunnels underground. We shouldn't force people to walk above ground just because you want to them to. If people want to look at retail, they will walk on the street, if they are going to a certain destination, then they will take the underground to avoid the elements.

[BoulderSooner]

The underground is great for connecting parking and buildings and will continue to be important for downtown growth

[catch22]

I agree it will support growth. But the wrong kind of growth. We need growth in street level activity and street level offerings.

[Pete]

I understand and generally agree with the concerns around the Underground but support limited applications of bridging parking structures on the perimeter to more centralized office buildings.

There is presently a big problem without a solution: Many buildings in the middle of the CBD do not have enough parking. When you consider we have a lot of space that will filling up (Century Center, Braniff Building, Parkside Building, Dowell Center, First National Center and Chase Tower) it begs the question: Where the heck are they going to park when all current garages are over 100% occupied?

Remember, they had to even scrap the addition to the Century Center, so there will be no new parking in the CBD for the foreseeable future. And where would you put it anyway? The convention center is going to bring a whole new level of concern.

So, parking will be have to be added several blocks away and as much as we love to mock the anti-walk mentality, there are many, many days in Oklahoma when it is dumping down rain, freezing arse cold, scorching hot or any number of awful things to experience while walking completely exposed for blocks at at time. And being forced to do so... Not having the option of merely staying home when the weather is horrific.

Also, most the parking studies show big garages to the west, several blocks from the proposed streetcar route.


I worked at Leadership Square for 7 years and almost always walked outside to and from my car, but there were a bunch of times I was darn grateful for having the Underground as an option.

And also keep in mind that not everyone arrives and departs once a day. I used to come and go several times a day for meetings -- every day. And again, if the weather turned bad at any of those times as it often did, it would have been miserable to slog the several blocks over and over again.

[catch22]

I just think it's a mistake to continue to expand it. I would prefer it be closed permanently, but I know that won't happen.

Pete how do they do it in virtually every other city in America? They walk outside. In Denver, a lot of people pack a light rain jacket with their work bag. And if it is raining cats and dogs, they go and hide inside of a store for a moment until it clears.

I just don't get our obsession with air condition comfort (or even dependence) with not being able to tolerate weather that is experienced in every other part of the globe.

[soonerguru]

I just think it's a mistake to continue to expand it. I would prefer it be closed permanently, but I know that won't happen.

Pete how do they do it in virtually every other city in America? They walk outside. In Denver, a lot of people pack a light rain jacket with their work bag. And if it is raining cats and dogs, they go and hide inside of a store for a moment until it clears.

I just don't get our obsession with air condition comfort (or even dependence) with not being able to tolerate weather that is experienced in every other part of the globe.

We're fat and lazy, and we aren't quick to embrace change.

I worked downtown for years and there were days the tunnel was a godsend. That said, I would sooner fill it in with cement and have a city that doesn't resemble a post-nuclear ghost town most days of the week.

[Teo9969]

Why is the assumption always that we will maintain a huge parking problem when the paradigm is in the middle of a massive shift where people who work downtown also live downtown. This is a relatively new phenomenon for OKC, and is only going to continue to drastically change. If just 150 people with positions downtown move downtown in the next year and a half, that helps alleviate some of the parking issues.

All of these large scaled apartments come with parking garages to help alleviate the problem. I don't know the numbers, but if right now, for example, we need 1.65 parking spots for every downtown employee, as more housing is built, we'll likely shift to only needing something like 1.25 spots for every employee.

I'm not saying that we don't need to expand parking, but we will be making a massive mistake if we project our future needs through the lens of where we are today.

[Pete]

As it stands today, we have way more demand for parking downtown than we do spaces and the problem is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

It's harming the growth of our downtown -- there is absolutely no question about that.

I'm saying a short-term solution -- until people shift their ways and/or we tear down the Myriad -- is to link garages several blocks away with buildings.


As for other cities, OKC is somewhat unique in a pretty compact CBD with a lot of super blocks that don't provide enough parking for the existing building stock. And of course, we have virtually zero mass transit and a very tiny percentage of people who work downtown who don't come to work every day in their own car. That will change but not in a timeframe that is going to resolve the current parking crisis that is strangling our downtown.


On the other hand, I do completely understand the desire not to expand the Underground. But keep in mind the mind that the man who absolutely insisted on hundreds of millions be spent on streetscape and sidewalks before he built his new skyscraper (Larry Nichols) also demanded some of that same TIF money be used to connect his building to the Underground system. And of course, all Devon employees can walk from their cars directly into the Devon complex without going outside.

[Teo9969]

Sincere questions:

How badly is it harming downtown? What are we missing out on because of lack of parking?

Can we wait just two years to see if the addition of essentially 2,000 apartment units (and climbing) with dedicated parking alleviates this issue in any way?

[Pete]

It's harming downtown the point we can't add another significant employer without building more parking.

I also know of a couple of companies who are looking to move out due to this problem.

[Urbanized]

I'm torn on The Underground. I too use it and appreciate it when I do, and yet I know at the same time that it violates some good urban planning rules that exist for a reason. It was mentioned earlier that it gave users the choice of visiting street-level retail or walking below ground, but the reality is for downtown retail operations to succeed we need to route as many walkers as possible past them.

That said, the thing that most robs downtown of vibrancy is a lack of vibrancy, if that makes sense. Sure The Underground is a minor culprit, but the best fix is simply more people and more activity, which we are seeing every day.

[Pete]

It would be interesting to know the percentage of walking trips that happen in the Underground.

I would guess it would be a shockingly small amount, when you consider all the people that work downtown.

I know when I worked down there and had occasion to use it, it was never super busy even on the lousiest days.

And I walked through most of it a couple of years ago to see the renovation, and it was pretty empty.


Again, I'm not necessarily advocating an expansion but I really don't think it has a big impact on the CBD's street life.

[betts]

It's nice to have during a tornado. I picked up a drink at the Skirvin and went into the underground to watch the news with the big tornado last spring. Otherwise, I forget it exists and would never choose to walk there when I can walk outside.

[soonerguru]

It would be interesting to know the percentage of walking trips that happen in the Underground.

I would guess it would be a shockingly small amount, when you consider all the people that work downtown.

I know when I worked down there and had occasion to use it, it was never super busy even on the lousiest days.

And I walked through most of it a couple of years ago to see the renovation, and it was pretty empty.


Again, I'm not necessarily advocating an expansion but I really don't think it has a big impact on the CBD's street life.

What street life?

[ljbab728]

What street life?

You're certainly in a cantankerous mood tonight.

[soonerguru]

You're certainly in a cantankerous mood tonight.

I was actually chuckling when I wrote that. But our CBD doesn't have any observable "street life."

I tend to side with Urbanized on the tunnel discussion. It's not necessarily the tunnel that is causing the dearth of street life, it's more likely the near complete lack of street-level retail in the CBD. Given the choice, people would walk on the streets if there were something to walk to -- or past.

[PhiAlpha]

I was actually chuckling when I wrote that. But our CBD doesn't have any observable "street life."

I tend to side with Urbanized on the tunnel discussion. It's not necessarily the tunnel that is causing the dearth of street life, it's more likely the near complete lack of street-level retail in the CBD. Given the choice, people would walk on the streets if there were something to walk to -- or past.

While we don't have the most vibrant street life in the CBD, everyone always talks about how awesome Tulsa's downtown is and I've been surprised that it has virtually zero street life. During the week I generally see a pretty decent amount of people on the streets in the OKC CBD, I've been in Tulsa at 5 pm and even when people should be getting off work and walking to their cars, it's a complete ghost town. I think that the more housing we add close to the CBD and AA, the more street life there will be, which will also make retail more viable.


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[Urban Pioneer]

It's harming downtown the point we can't add another significant employer without building more parking.

I also know of a couple of companies who are looking to move out due to this problem.

Two words- commuter rail.

Build parking garages where land is cheap and inconsequential, bring people in, and distribute them by streetcar.

Building more parking garages is a temporary solution. Obviously the density is forcing these garages to the current periphery of downtown anyway.

[betts]

Two words- commuter rail.

Build parking garages where land is cheap and inconsequential, bring people in, and distribute them by streetcar.

Building more parking garages is a temporary solution. Obviously the density is forcing these garages to the current periphery of downtown anyway.

Agree. We need to be looking seriously at commuter rail. Traffic on the Broadway Extension is at the point where I think people would be happy to get out of their cars. The streetcar will make moving through the CBD without a car painless.

[Pete]

^

Yes, and if you can step off the train at Santa Fe Station and either hop on the streetcar or merely walk a couple of blocks to the huge majority of office buildings, hotels and reastaurants downtown, that will be another huge inducement.

Both Broadway Extension and I-35 south are getting somewhat congested so running service from downtown Edmond and Norman is starting to make sense.


And I mentioned this before... Since downtown parking is so constrained and starting to get expensive, employers could easily work with COTPA and provide incentives to take mass transit.

When I worked in downtown L.A. almost all companies would pay for your train tickets, even if you didn't get paid parking as a perk of your job.

[catch22]

^

Yes, and if you can step off the train at Santa Fe Station and either hop on the streetcar or merely walk a couple of blocks to the huge majority of office buildings, hotels and reastaurants downtown, that will be another huge inducement.

Both Broadway Extension and I-35 south are getting somewhat congested so running service from downtown Edmond and Norman is starting to make sense.


And I mentioned this before... Since downtown parking is so constrained and starting to get expensive, employers could easily work with COTPA and provide incentives to take mass transit.

When I worked in downtown L.A. almost all companies would pay for your train tickets, even if you didn't get paid parking as a perk of your job.

I believe my employer offers the option: paid parking or transit passes (one or the other) for the headquarters employees in Chicago. It's a monthly credit, based on 20 round trips per month, and is paid out at the end of the month along with non-smoker health wellness credits.

[mburlison]

Agreed, when I worked downtown; I sure appreciated the tunnel. There were many reasons to take it instead of walking to the parking garage at street level - but that's another thread entirely...

[Plutonic Panda]

Agreed, when I worked downtown; I sure appreciated the tunnel. There were many reasons to take it instead of walking to the parking garage at street level - but that's another thread entirely...

I thought we had a thread on the underground. I couldn't find it. :/