Quote Originally Posted by Urbanized View Post
The convention center functions poorly in the south of Chesapeake location. By necessity the front door would be on the west side (loading docks on Shields). Additionally the convention hotel on the north end of the site would place the front door even further away from the CBD and the amenities that make it possible for OKC to over-perform as a convention market. The closest the front door of the convention center would be from Sheridan and Oklahoma (considered the zero corner) is 3/4 of a mile. That might not seem that far, but it would take close to 15 minutes EACH way by foot to get there, making lunches in Bricktown during conferences and conventions difficult if not impossible. It would also require convention-goers to cross major, high-speed and traffic corridors including the new boulevard, Reno and EK Gaylord to get into Bricktown, which is the amenity the CVB HAS to use to lure convention business to our little burg.

The convention business has a hard and fast rule; anything that exceeds a ten minute walk basically doesn't count. That is, all of the dining and entertainment amenities plus the recently-added hotel rooms in and around Bricktown really wouldn't be a factor when booking a convention, making OKC a MUCH weaker market for convention bookings and effectively wasting much of the effort we are putting into building a new convention center. Much has been discussed here about the various successes and failures of new convention centers and hotels in other cities, but one factor tends to unite the failures: poor location related to the respective city's amenities and hotel rooms.

Before someone brings up the streetcar as the solution, please keep in mind that we are talking about equipment that can move a hundred or so people at a time (vs. thousands that can be in attendance at a convention) on reasonably long headways, on a line that isn't even currently planned to touch the area immediately adjacent to the site in question.

As a marginal market from a national image perspective anyway, OKC needs to play to its strengths, which is a surprisingly dense and walkable variety of hotel rooms and entertainment options within a ten minute walk of the CC. Putting it in a place where it will encounter legitimate sales objections based on proximity would be a complete boondoggle from the word go. THIS is why the CC committee intervened when the assumption was being made that it would be in the south-of-Chesapeake location. The convention center BY FAR is more location-sensitive than any other MAPs 3 Project. Location is critical to its success. Talk about the lumberyard or east of ballpark (though it appears this has development activity) or wherever else you want, but I wish people would stop trying to shove the CC to a backwater location just because it isn't sexy enough for their tastes. Please drop the south of 'Peake location. It doesn't work for this project.
I was pretty firm on preferring the south of the Chesapeake location until I read this. Still not crazy about the selected site, but my alternative certainly appears to have a couple of drawbacks. But if past MAPS projects are any indication, this will turn out pretty good after all the fussing is over and construction is complete.