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Fox 23 investigation: Tulsa fair board planning skyride demolition since 2019
Tulsa County Public Facilities Authority, also known as the Fair Board, has been discussing demolition of the historic Expo Square skyride since 2019, according to open-records research by Fox 23 reporter Spencer Humphrey, presented in a report on the July 7, 2022, newscast. (The text version of the story is...
Tulsa City Council preview, 2021/05/05: 36th & MLK TIF
AFTER-ACTION REVIEW: All items on the regular council meeting agenda were approved without dissent. There was only one controversy: Gary Brinkner, vice chairman of the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce, objected to special event application for the Black Wall Street Legacy Festival, which would block off Greenwood and Archer for three...
Preserve the Midland Valley Pedestrian Bridge
Tulsa's Midland Valley Pedestrian Bridge and Zink Lake Dam viewed from the west bank, south of the bridge and dam, February 14, 2016 Resistance is gathering to the plan to demolish the Midland Valley Pedestrian Bridge across the Arkansas River. Although an engineering analysis from 2015 shows that the 110-year-old...
OKC Spaghetti Warehouse, Bricktown pioneer, closes; Tulsa store remains open
Spaghetti Warehouse, one of the catalysts for transforming a neglected neighborhood of warehouses into Oklahoma City's Bricktown entertainment district, closed its doors today after 26 years of business, a victim of the surrounding district's success. The restaurant opened for business, with space for 425 diners, on November 12, 1989, at...
East Village Second Saturday street festival
The East Village District Association, on the eastern edge of downtown Tulsa, is holding its second Second Saturday street festival this Saturday, May 10, 2014, from 11 am to 4 pm, at the corner of 3rd and Lansing. The event will feature local music, art, vendors, and food trucks. The...
Downtown Tulsa needs demolition limits, regulatory and tax relief
Route 66 "planter" and "nature band-aid" attempt to distract from ugliness of Tulsa Community College surface parking lot. UPDATE 2019/11/29: I'm revisiting this entry years later, as Strong Towns uses Black Friday to call attention to parking minimums, zoning laws that require a minimum number of parking spaces based...
Bill Leighty on historic preservation
Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission chairman Bill Leighty has an excellent op-ed in the latest issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly about the importance of historical preservation to Tulsa's future. I'm tempted to quote the whole thing. The heart of the article is an account of a recent Preservation Leadership Training...
What will become of Wilson Middle School? Public meeting Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Tulsa Public Schools is holding a public forum on Tuesday, July 12, 2011, 6 to 7 pm, regarding the sale of Wilson Middle School, one of 14 school buildings closed at the end of the last school year as part of the district's cost-cutting plan. The forum will be held...
PLANiTULSA up for approval; stealth charter amendments return
UPDATE: G. T. Bynum tweets, regarding the charter amendments on the 6 p.m. agenda: @BatesLine Staff error. Will be delayed yet another week for amdts to be online plenty of time. This is a crazy-busy time in Tulsa politics. You'd think the City Hall folks would have the courtesy to...
Carless couple profiled in <em>Tulsa Business Journal</em>
Kristin and Nathan Pickard, the Brady Heights couple whose 30-day experiment in commuting through Tulsa by bicycle is nearing its end, were profiled by Holly Wall in the latest (February 1, 2010) issue of Tulsa Business Journal. If you haven't visited their blog in a while, you'll want to get...
My mayoral manifesto
An edited version of this column appeared in the April 1, 2009, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is no longer available online. Posted online June 15, 2016. Election Day 2009 is a mere seven months away, and a credible opponent to Mayor Kathy Taylor's bid for re-election...
Google Time Machine
Blair Humphreys has downloaded the latest version of Google Earth, 5.0, and reports a feature that will delight urban historian types: The ability to go back in time to earlier images. The coolest new feature of the program is that it allows you to search historical aerials. With Oklahoma City,...
Max Campbell building to be restored; will Coburn help?
Just found this, from Tulsa Business Journal's October 27 edition: The Max Campbell building, with its distinctive roof of multicolored clay tiles, is going to be restored as a hotel and retail space. That's the original function of this 1926, block-long building on 11th Street between Birmingham and Columbia. Aaron...
It's Miller's time -- to go
In this week's UTW, I review the record of Tulsa County District 2 Commissioner Randi Miller and endorse Sally Bell as her replacement. Since writing that piece, fired Expo Square CEO Rick Bjorklund has been pointing the finger at Miller regarding the decision to hold the Big Splash rent check....
Lax design standard enforcement deters investment
It happened in Bartlesville, but the lesson applies everywhere: You can't expect people to adapt and reuse your historic buildings or build high quality new construction which fits in a historic area if you allow someone to throw up a metal building in the midst of it: In November 2007,...
"The good times never end when you're in Busytown"
A few days ago, Jon Swerens posted an entry at The Good City called "Politics can't save urbanism." Jon's point, in a nutshell, was that we can't use legislation and regulation to impose high-density urban living on a populace that believes it to be undesirable. The culture has to change....
A Tale of Two Texas River Cities
An edited version of this column appeared in the April 2, 2008, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is available on the Internet Archive. Posted on August 4, 2018. A Tale of Two Texas River Cities By Michael D. Bates On a recent business trip to San Antonio,...
Form over function
Reflecting on the decline of the standalone video rental storefront, Steve Patterson directs our attention to the importance of building form over any given use: It is interesting to see all these changes in the video market, something that didn't exist 30 years ago. Many storefronts, often built for these...
Tax Increment Financing (TIF): The Basics
An edited version of this column appeared in the October 31, 2007, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is available online courtesy of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Posted online September 9, 2017. Infrequently Asked Questions about Tax Increment Financing: The Basics By Michael D. Bates What's all...
Notes from a visit to west Texas
My wife's dad's folks are all cotton farmers from west Texas, specifically the area around Stamford, which is just a bit north of Abilene. We drove down and spent fall break there. What follows are some disjointed notes from the trip down and back: We stopped at the Rock Cafe...
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