This is just an FYI that I found on teh City of Lawton website...

City of Lawton Oklahoma Downtown Revitalization Plan (http://www.cityof.lawton.ok.us/DowntownRev.htm)

I like the area and I have left my car at the mall and walked. I haven't even been to the mall in two years. If I'm driving, I'll drive all the way to OKC or DFW. I've been to Lawton once, after two years. I live out in the country and there's little in Lawton, for me.

If you don't care about Lawton then why bother posting anything at all about the town?

Muppetkiller, I'm not directing the following comments at you specifically, so I hope you won't take them personally or get offended by them at all. But I just have to rant in general about negativity in Lawton.

There's a difference between making a specific, constructive complaint of an issue in Lawton and making a broad yet whiny "Lawton sucks" kind of comment. I have been hearing the latter for years and I'm pretty sick of it.

If someone loves a town like Norman, Moore, Duncan or wherever, by all means be happy about it. Talk about the great things about those places. But don't dump on some other place as a means of elevating the place one likes. That's just tacky.

The biggest problem Lawton has is the pointless negativity spouting from people's mouths both inside and outside of the community. Those comments and attitudes contribute to the city's problems. They don't help.

What does help is complaints that come with ideas for solutions, or better yet: action. If someone simply hates living in Lawton they're not being held prisoner there either. Move to a more desirable town or take steps to improve the town where you're stuck. But don't just stew and complain. That doesn't do anyone any good.

Honestly, I believe certain members of the "good old boy's network" perpetuate the negativity for their own ends. Some people don't want Lawton to grow, particularly certain people living outside of Lawton in Comanche County. They don't want more national retailers, service businesses and more coming into the area and competing with their businesses. Some have been getting by for decades with the "barely good enough" standard of ethics. With outsiders coming into the area they'll have to work harder to stay in business. They also don't want the area growing because that means property values will go upward -which also equals paying more in property taxes.

That's one factor I always think about when someone attempts to do something good in Lawton and others just immediately crap on it. I immediately get suspicious of the motives behind those negative comments. And then there's others who just want to complain because complaining is a form of entertainment to them. Something to do. Some people have to have something to gripe about.

Back to the topic of the thread...

Progress is slowly being made on the downtown revitalization project. Currently 12 city blocks of property is being acquired in the "Phase 1A" zone for a new "lifestyle center" type of shopping center featuring some big box retailers and other national businesses. Hopefully ground breaking for the shopping center will happen sometime in 2008, with completion set for late 2009 or sometime in 2010.

I don't think muppetkiller was being negative about Lawton. I think his/her description of Lawton is correct beit positive or negative. I think the point is that Lawton, beit currently positive or negative, might have a very positive development happening in the future. Only time will tell concerning downtown?

First, Muppetkiller's comments were off topic. This isn't a thread of "do you like or hate Lawton?" It is about the downtown development project. The typical poo poo whiney "I hate Lawton" barbs serve no other purpose in this thread other than trying to be negative in hopes the project will fail so all the neg-heads can take even more negative pleasure in crapping on something.

Second, the only other impression I got from Muppetkiller's comment was that it probably doesn't make any difference what anyone tries to do in Lawton to make things better. He/she still has no use for the place.

Lawton Sucks.

I'm a big fan of the surrounding countryside. Lawton's in a very beautiful part of Oklahoma.