Dowell Garage

[Pete]

[template=]
development
|category1=Parking
|category2=Midtown
|category3=
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|project=
|address= 4th & Harvey
|status= expansion underway
|owner= Rick Dowell
|cost=
|architect=
|start= Summer 2013
|finish=
|contractor=
|height=
|sq. feet=
|acerage=
|other=
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|image=
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[/template]

Information & Latest News

Gallery

[lasomeday]

Hey is one of the few developers downtown that has improved the area and stuck around. I really love his little area of town. The creative reuse should be done more to downtown. If only Sandridge would have talked to him about the buildings they destroyed.

[UnFrSaKn]

You know what, a few weeks ago I was doing video right in front of the Legacy apartments and saw this building. I had never noticed it before and never mentioned it to Steve. It looked old, but I couldn't tell if the structure on top was original. I know now it was recently added. I do like the art deco look to it.

That's also a handy map of downtown buildings.

[USG'60]

I feared for years that oneday I would drive by there and see it had ben bulldosed and the ornamental parts were all crushed in the rubble. Seeing this is a relief.

[Spartan]

Hey is one of the few developers downtown that has improved the area and stuck around. I really love his little area of town. The creative reuse should be done more to downtown. If only Sandridge would have talked to him about the buildings they destroyed.

Rick Dowell is very good at some of the things he does, and that does include preservation.

[Urbanized]

I wouldn't characterize that as great HP. The cool midcentury facade of the old FJ Lincoln-Mercury dealership was chopped up and re-configured as some sort of weird thing with Roman columns in the parapets, and the beautiful casement windows on the Caddilac store were needlessly torn out and replaced with aluminum, tinted windows. To see what good external preservation looks like on nearly identical buildings, check out the Midtown Renaissance projects going on at 10th and Broadway, and north of 10th on Robinson.

That said, Rick is an incredibly bright guy who is very good at adaptive re-use and breathing life back into old buildings. He definitely marches to the beat of his own drummer, but I suspect that the west edge of downtown would still be in very tough shape if he hadn't started stepping up more than a decade ago.

[lasomeday]

Rick Dowell is very good at some of the things he does, and that does include preservation.

No, but he does do reuse. Reuse to me is just as good as preservation if it saves a building and the urban environment from the wrecking ball.

[Pete]

Plans to expand parking structure at 4th & Harvey before the Downtown Design Review Committee:

[Architect2010]

But I'm sure we can all agree that what RD does not do well is this parking garage. What an even bigger piece of crap.

[Pete]

I can't believe they let them do this in the first place (it was a renovation) and are now allowing him to double the size with the same design.

It's basically just bare concrete block:

[Urban Pioneer]

Not saying that it is good, it isn't, but does anyone have a picture of it before the facade when the Federal Building was around. If you think this is bad, that was apparently horrible.

[Pete]

I remember it was a horrible old steel structure -- they just put up the concrete blocks over the front.


But this is supposed to be a new era where the taxpayers are investing heavily into the city center, Project 180 is completely re-doing the streets, sidewalks and everything else around this property... And we allow something like this?

It's hard to imagine anything much worse.

[Urban Pioneer]

No doubt. I don't disagree. This might be an opportunity to correct a "wrong" from the past.

If you look at the picture, it doesn't look as if this split block and mortar joints have "aged well."

But the problem the committee will probably have is that it was approved the first go-around. And my guess is that the facade meets even current exterior material mandates.

The question is, should a committee dictate the appearance or simply enforce what meets code?

Does this have staff approval on the application?

[dankrutka]

Does anyone have any ideas of something reasonably priced (without tearing the whole thing down and starting over) that could be done to make it more aesthetically pleasing?

[Urban Pioneer]

Cool metal panel cladding with LED lighting. My friend Jame Ellison was looking into it for a St. Anthony's parking garage.

Now getting Dowell to do something modern.... crickets

[Pete]

Synthetic stucco (EIFS) is easily applied to concrete block.

The good news is it would be super easy to finish the exterior, but that is clearly not the plan. If Dowell ever was going to do it, surely it would be as a part of this expansion.


Also, I'm not sure there were design review standards when that garage was renovated in the late 90's or early 00's.

[Just the facts]

Does anyone have any ideas of something reasonably priced (without tearing the whole thing down and starting over) that could be done to make it more aesthetically pleasing?

Ivy? It doesn't have to cover the whole building but could be done in a pattern or design. Just get a bucket truck and prune it back a couple of times per year.

[metro]

Guerilla ivy campaign........

[Just the facts]

Guerilla ivy campaign........

It is pretty easy to do. Just attach some metal to create the design outline, install a wire grid for the ivy to cling to, and then prune it back when it grows outside the lines. Nature will do the rest.

[dankrutka]

Or during the playoffs the whole thing can be covered with Thunder banners. Lol.

Seriously, any of these suggestions would be preferable. It does look terribly cheap.

[Spartan]

I'm going to seriously hope this doesn't come to pass..

[SkyWestOKC]

U

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[Spartan]

It's actually not bad at all when you consider some of the garages which are painful to look at around this city. It's just that I'd hate to see this thing just kill an entire block of Harvey. We shouldn't be filling up entire blocks with huge, empty, terrible looking parking garages. We should be smarter than that. Dowell just views this site as the back yard of his Midtown Plaza project, but in reality, this is smack in the middle of downtown, and Harvey could be a beautiful street.

[mcca7596]

and Harvey could be a beautiful street.

Yeah, I honestly like the streetwall view looking south down Harvey at 4th street better than the Park Avenue streetwall.

[Architect2010]

It actually is bad, compared to anything else in the downtown area. It's not just the aesthetics on the exterior, but the interior looks like complete crap. And I mean in more than just a bare-boned garage sort of way. Granted, I don't think the original building is Dowell's fault. Yeah there are some that are worse off, but rest assured they are just company for the Dowell Garage in the eye-sore category.