These are the plans submitted with their rezoning request, which will be heard 4/11.
Rendering:
I was stopping myself from making a 'looks like a high school' joke.
Only on OKC talk could you find a critique of a perfectly fine looking jail because it looks too much like a high school? Really? Do you want it to look like a medieval dungeon, Alcatraz, The Tower of London? Cooldown and dry the sweat from under your manboobs and take a little perspective on what you are criticizing right now.
It doesn't come without some mode of insight and experience. Some of our high schools deserve facelifts, but don't get them and they just sit in a school that looks more like a jail than an institution for learning. I can give you one prominent example, a school off of Kelley Ave in the northeast quadrant of the city. I believe the school is currently called Classen SAS (School of Advanced Studies) High School at Northeast, their mascot: The Comets. But before that, it was a school that I spent my freshman and sophomore years in known as Northeast Academy of Health Science and Engineering, their mascot: The Vikings. We would get roasted so bad that they called our school a literal prison, and we couldn't refute that with as many breaker bars and metal screens they placed over the lower floor windows. Then the matter was further exasperated by the fact that the metal screens were black, the windows old, and then they have some screens still on the second floor. May not be the case now, but that look is still evident on such an old building. I'm sure that a redo of the windows would pretty much breathe new life into the complex, not to mention a rebuild of their football stadium that's currently wasting away in the back that could easily be repurposed for track, soccer, etc.
I just think it's funny that some of the schools older than the downtown prison can't get a facelift to dispose of some long-standing stigmas, and a local prison gets so much of a visual upgrade that it looks like a respectable establishment not housing the derelicts of society. Again, it's an opinion of mine, not a full-blown rebuke of what this intends to do. I just wish that some of our older institutions purposed for fostering an environment of adolescent social and educational growth can get this much of a visual overhaul in contrast to the lack thereof, that it would take as much priority.
Maybe the cars belong to the attorneys.
The Oklahoman reporting the new jail will cost $610MM, not $260MM like originally stated:
Oklahoma County doesn't have near the money it needs to build a new county jail, according to cost estimates revealed Tuesday.
While elected county commissioners told voters in 2022 a new jail could be built for $260 million, Tuesday's estimates put its cost today at anywhere from $610 million for a jail with 1,800 beds to $677 million for one with 2,248 beds.
https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news...w/73429601007/
In a positive way, it looks more like a suburban office park, than a jail. I'm not disappointed that it doesn't look like a traditional jail.
As for schools, one of the challenges they face that they never used to, was how do you secure the facility from bad actors, without making it feel like a jail? Badge access goes a long way, but ensuring travel is all indoors and doesn't require outside walking, costs money. Do you put fences up and make it feel even more like a jail? Someone has to open and close them too, more expense. A lot of schools are simply going windowless. Can't say i'm a fan of not being able to get sunlight, but it does make the building more secure.
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