Bright signs, big QT

This week in Urban Tulsa Weekly, I review the controversy over the digital billboard ordinance, approved last week by the Tulsa City Council and look ahead to next Wednesday's hearing before the TMAPC on plans for an expanded QuikTrip convenience store at 21st & Harvard.

Here is a link to the case report on the QuikTrip rezoning. Here is a description from the case report of the proposed screening along Gary Place:

An 8 foot high, brick screening wall will be constructed along the South Gary Place frontage, angled at the northwest corner of the property and extending east to the front set-back of the residence to the north. The screening wall will be constructed of brick to match the wall color of the brick on the west wall of the store. The wall will be set-back 13 feet from S. Gary Place right of way and approximately 25 feet from the east curb of the street. The height of the wall will drop from 8 feet to 3 feet, 41-feet north of the southwest corner of the property to permit acceptable visibility of traffic leaving the store on East 21 st Street and for traffic entering East 21 st Street from South Gary Place. The location of the screening wall is shown on Exhibit A, Site Plan and the design on Exhibit C, Landscape Details and is subject to detail site plan review.

The second element of the screening plan is a combination of 12 feet high at planting pyramidal Leland Cypress evergreen trees and 12 feet high semi-evergreen Wax Myrtle trees as shown on Exhibit C, Landscape Details.

Landscape features accent planting areas at the northwest angle of the 8-foot high wall and at the south end of the screening wall. Chinese Pistache trees 12 feet high and Crepe Myrtles will be planted on the interior of the wall to add to visual buffer as indicated on attached Exhibit C, Landscape Details. Additional shrubs will be installed as shown on Exhibit C, Landscape Details. The remainder of the landscaped area outside the tree and shrub areas will be Bermuda sod.

Beyond the screening wall would be a second parking lot for the new QuikTrip, so this would be a two-entrance store; it just wouldn't have the back entrance on Gary Pl., as I'd suggested in my column. The new QT would be larger than the existing building and just to its west, roughly where the Lassiter & Shoemaker Photography building and the backyards of the residences being removed.

Last month I took some photos of the 21st & Harvard intersection, since there are major changes proposed for the northwest and southwest corners.