This is, or at least was intended to be, just a comment on MAPS 3 and the canal extension.  In fact, it wasn’t supposed to be posted here, but was originally going to be a quick three sentence contribution to a sinuous discussion over at OKC Central.  For better or for worse,  I am really amped up about all things OKC and MAPS 3.  I actually laid awake in bed last night thinking through it all until the sun came up this morning.  Though this post started as a response to NaptownEd’s  comment below, the combination of a lot of thinking, sincere passion, and nervous enthusiasm spilled over into something much longer than intended…

NaptownEd said:

Here is an example that OKC can possibly replicate. Click on link to the Indy canal that is align with various development: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=874282

Here are a few of the pictures to give you a sense of the Indy Canal Walk that Ed is referencing:

MY COMMENT(ARY):

That is a very nice canal. I like the variation in form and scale.

However, the execution of the urban fabric that borders the canal is very poor. Heavy facades, a lack of transparency on sides and entrances of buildings, concrete retaining walls, and vastly over-sized setbacks, create a place that is ill suited for an urban environment and offers very little utility for anything other than glorified recreational paths.  I think the results speak for themselves.

Downtown Oklahoma City’s two most glaring weaknesses are the lack of pedestrians and lack of retail storefronts. The two go hand-in-hand; you cannot sustain one without the other. The City does not manage retail stores, but it has the power and the obligation when it comes to providing a public realm that attracts pedestrians.

A canal connection is a sad substitute for a well-designed street. I don’t mean this as a rebuke of the proposed canal extension, but am, affably I hope, calling into question the process(es) and underlying logic of many proposed MAPS 3 projects.  In fact, as we move down the list you see that pedestrian concerns continue to take a back burner.  A convention center will certainly detract from the pedestrian’s experience of the Central Park.  This super-block structure will significantly damage the pedestrian realm, so it very important that it is placed accordingly.  The boulevard, as designed, will, ironically enough, actually hinder pedestrian’s ability to walk from the Core to the Shore.  Further, all boulevards, especially wide boulevards, are not well suited for retail and can can only hope to sustain retail in the very densest cities that have the ability to fill wider than average sidewalks with pedestrians.* These projects are not strategically focused on enhancing Oklahoma City’s quality of life.

But what if we wanted to strike at the heart of Downtown and Bricktown’s problems? MAPS 3 could employ a thoughtful strategy of interventions ALL intended to improve the pedestrian experience: adding streetcars, improving public spaces, planting street trees, widening sidewalks, and more.   MAPS 3  could boost both Downtown and Bricktown by increasing the number of pedestrians and unleash a number of opportunities for retail currently lying dormant within the fabric of the city.  Joining with the MAPS 3 investments, we could step up efforts to build out undeveloped and surface parking lots, which would contribute greatly to the pedestrian experience while increasing density.  Activating the city we have today with people and retail would do more to enhance the city than any project or combination of projects that has been proposed to date.

*This is due to the fact that a narrower street allows for shoppers to connect visually with stores on both sides of the street, and cross back and forth relatively quickly.  The distance and visual disconnectedness of a wide boulevard makes it necessary for stores to rely on the foot traffic supplied by only one side of the street, possible only if the sidewalks carry substantial pedestrian traffic.

It is a good week for music and the entire creative scene in Oklahoma City. There is a great article about Wayne Coyne in the New York Times that highlights, among other things, his house and his love of duct tape. Be sure and read the article and you can also check out Coyne’s tour of Oklahoma City posted a couple weeks back. Then take time to consider how much Coyne and the Flaming Lips have contributed to the creative culture of our city, a city which seems to have a growing reputation as a “cool” place to be.

NEW OKC SCHOOL OF MUSIC

And beyond the vibe, concerts, parades, and alley names that they have contributed to the city already, the news today that UCO has partnered with Britain’s Academy of Contemporary Music to create a school of music in Bricktown should also be attributed in some part to the Flaming Lips’ and their commitment to our city. This project was helped by the Lips’ manager Scotty Booker who was said to be instrumental in the process of introducing the parties and bringing together the partnership. The school is a significant addition to not only Bricktown, but the city as a whole, and the long-term impact of this on the city’s cultural vitality should not be underestimated.

So a big thank you to Wayne Coyne and the Flaming Lips who have stayed loyal to their hometown and done so much to help us create a creative cultural in OKC!

This article ran in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago and I have been meaning to post it. It is nice to see Oklahoma City getting positive attention for the great things that have been going on.

I really like where the author Finn-Olaf Jones attempts to explain where Oklahoma City is located regionally. I always say that Oklahoma and Texas are similar with a mix of old south, midwest, and southwest – but Okies lack the Texas ego. Finn-Olaf comes to a similar conclusion, but with vivid descriptions as to why:

Newcomers to Oklahoma City might at first have a hard time guessing what part of the United States they’re in. A generally flat cityscape and the Chicago-style Art Deco architecture downtown, coupled with the friendly-but-not-too-friendly nods and hellos, hint at the Midwest. Jazz, blues bars and ubiquitous barbecue joints suggest the South. But the wide vistas, blast-furnace winds from the surrounding red-dirt prairie and preponderance of American Indian shops (Oklahoma has 38 sovereign tribes), pickups and cowboy hats indicate that you are indeed in the West.

Check out the full article here and think of all the reason you have to love Oklahoma!

Bricktown has a parking problem. I am apparently very lucky, as I have never had to deal with this problem myself, but people have now talked about this “problem” or “perception of a problem” for so long that it really must be true. According to Steve Lackmeyer, the city is now considering “fixing” the problem by purchasing the Power Alley parking garage and offering free or reduced-price parking spaces. Before we talk more about the garage, lets check out the current parking situation in Downtown.

DOWNTOWN PARKING

Downtown OKC, Inc. has tried to ameliorate the parking issues by distributing information on the amount and location of parking in Downtown and Bricktown. On their website they provide this map showing all of the parking spaces in Downtown along with the route of the downtown trolley.

As you can see there is actually a ton of parking available in Downtown – over 20,000 spaces! Bricktown itself has over 4,000 and that is without including the 750 spaces located on the north lots. It appears the point of contention is not the availability of spots but the cost. “Wal-mart has free parking, so why not Bricktown?” This may explain why people continue to proclaim a lack of parking, while the consultant hired to study the issue stated that even during peak hours 1 out of every 3 parking spaces is available, with over 1,000 total available spaces (it appears my good fortune wasn’t luck afterall). So the idea of purchasing the Power Alley garage and subsidizing the parking costs ostensibly tackles the problem head on – we don’t need more parking, we just need cheaper parking…or better yet free parking!

FIXING THE PROBLEM

The Power Alley parking garage (located on Sheridan, just north of the Bricktown Ballpark) has 538 parking spaces (according to the Bricktown Association website).

The owner of the garage is Marsh Pitman. And while Marsh is actually a good friend of mine, I haven’t asked him about anything related to this deal, so I don’t know how much the City would spend to acquire Power Alley from him. Still, we can probably estimate the price pretty close ourselves. According to the County Assessor’s website the property is worth approximately $4.2 million. Typically you would want to price a structured parking garage in terms of the cost per space or with an operating garage you could cap the operating income. I don’t have any clue what the income is on the garage, but we do know the number of spaces. If you take the $4.2 million figure and divide by the 538 spaces, it works out to around $7,800 per parking space without including the cost of land. Generally, new structured parking spaces cannot be built today for less than $12,000 per space, and that is the minimum. So we can definitely throw out the assessor’s number as being far too low. My best guess is that the City could not buy the Power Alley garage for less than $16,000 per space total – so we are talking about approximately $8.6 million.

So spending $8.6 million for the Power Alley garage, and providing 538 more subsidized parking spaces in Bricktown, is one option for the City. But I beleive there is another – better – option that will take care of the parking problem while providing some added benefits to the entire Downtown area.

THE GREEN LINE

As you likely already know, I am a huge proponent of improving and expanding our transportation options in Oklahoma City. I think the rubber-tired trolleys are great, but we can all agree that they have always been more of a novelty than something you can actually depend on to regularly get around Downtown. Knowing what we know now, we probably would have scraped together enough money to get the MAPS streetcar system up and running even without support from Washington. Well this is our opportunity to right the wrong and fix our parking troubles in the process.

The proposed Green Line consists of a modern fixed-rail streetcar system running straight along Sheridan for three-quarters of a mile from N. Stiles Ave. on the east end of Bricktown to Hudson Ave. in Downtown. Four stops are proposed, spaced approximately one-quarter mile apart, putting most of Downtown and Bricktown within a five minute walk. The short route and limited stops will allow for consistent and expedited service – likely less than five minutes between trains during peak periods. And the straight-line route and bi-directional service would make navigation a breeze for locals and tourists alike.

Perhaps the best thing about the Green Line is that is will solve all of our parking troubles as well. As we saw before there are a ton of parking spaces in the Downtown area and the Green Line will provide easy access to some of the largest parking structures. Instead of adding 538 spaces we can provide access to the 1,696 spaces at the Galleria garage – not to mention the other garages that are also close to the route. And almost all of these spaces are likely empty most nights and weekends during Bricktown’s peak business hours.

PAYING FOR IT

These are the most current figures being used by the City of Albuquerque:

The cost to construct a Streetcar is approximately $28 million / mile. That cost includes all aspects, including steel rail, concrete, pedestrian friendly stops, traffic signals, maintenance facility, power source, utility reconstruction, roadway reconstruction, and vehicles.

So our three-quarter mile system would cost approximately $21 million. If we used this option instead of purchasing the Power Alley garage, then we would save that $8.6 million, bringing the total extra cost down to $12.4 million. For this bargain amount we would really be solving Bricktown’s parking “problems” while laying the foundation for an urban transportation system that would greatly benefit both Downtown and Bricktown into the future. This is a senseable and relatively inexpensive way to get public transit off the ground OKC! It will mesh perfectly with the forthcoming Devon Tower; lighten the parking demand in Bricktown, allowing for some of Bricktown’s surface lots to be developed; and the energy created would serve as an impetus to make something happen with the Stewart Metal buildings on the east end of Bricktown. This is just the start, when the time is right the line could be easily expanded to provide service to the fledging Film District or even the American Indian Cultural Center. We could sit here and name the benefits of this all day, but instead we should just do it!

I came across this article by Jan Gehl – an urban design rock star – in which he discusses the importance of the design of the first-floor of urban buildings in attracting pedestrians and creating active streets. Downtown Oklahoma City has made tremendous gains since MAPS, but we still have very few streets with the restaurants, shopping, and (above all) people most often found in a pedestrian-friendly urban environment. In the article Close Encounters with Building (note: downloads as a .pdf), Gehl explains the importance of the first ten feet of a building and how it can either help to create a street or public space that pedestrians want to visit or conversely, create a place that pedestrians will avoid.

Gehl has done a ton of research, often using teams of researchers to observe 100m sections of street and record measurements such as the number of pedestrians, pedestrian speed, number of stops, number of times they entered/exited a building, etc. Through this he has been able to identify a handful of design attributes that can either attract or deter pedestrians by creating what he calls the ‘urban scene at eye level’. Here is what Gehl has to say about the design attributes he has identified and how they can lead to creating a good or bad ‘urban scene at eye level’.

THE URBAN SCENE AT EYE LEVEL

Scale and Rhythm

Pedestrians experience the urban scene at maximum three mph, with plenty of time to enjoy the surroundings. Small units provide a wide range of experiences, and a large number of doors provide many points of exchange between outside and inside. A scale of three mph is compact and rich in sensory experience. A scale of 35 mph also features qualities worthy of sharing, but rarely are they meaningful to pedestrians.

Transparency

The opportunity to be on the inside looking out – and on the outside looking in – significantly broadens the range of experiences in the buildings themselves and in urban space. If we walk through the city close to the facades, the various display windows and opportunities to share what is happening in the buildings enrich our experience considerably. And people inside the buildings can follow what is happening in the surrounding urban space. Life inside and outside the buildings can thus interact for the benefit of both.

Appeals to Many Senses

We can draw on all our senses when we are close to buildings, and we have sufficient time to look, listen, smell and touch the good things on offer. A wealth of sensory impressions and shopping opportunities awaits. In contrast, a string of orange posters is a poor substitute.

Texture

Good materials and fine details are an attraction for people strolling through the city. There is ample opportunity to reach out and touch the buildings and examine the smallest detail. Attractive ground-level facades offer texture, good materials and carefully crafted details.

Mix of Functions

The functions inside buildings have a major impact on the activity and attractiveness of the spaces outside. The desire for narrow units and many doors in the facade can be echoed in a desire for wide functional variation inside. The outcome is many units, many points of exchange between outside and inside, and a wealth of many different events and experiences. The department store with its ten large display windows is far less interesting than the ten different functions in the street scene opposite.

Vertical Facade Rhythm

Walking along a ground floor fac?ade with primarily vertical rhythms makes the walk much more interesting and eye-catching. We move from ‘column to column’, which makes the walk seem shorter. Facades with primarily horizontal articulation intensify the feeling of distance – a long tiring prospect at eye height.

FACADE MAPS

With these attributes in hand, he creates a map of a city showing the “problem facades” that interrupt pedestrian paths and lower the overall quality of the pedestrian experience. For instance, this diagram compares the street facades of (a) Stockholm to those of (b) Copenhagen. The difference between the two maps speaks to a dramatic difference for pedestrians.

Look at the open plazas and squares in (b) Copenhagen, almost all of which are surrounded by pedestrian friendly (light facades). Whereas (a) Stockholm has block after block of poor facades with few pedestrian-friendly plazas or squares (the exception being the one shown on the lower left side. After creating these maps, Gehl has been able to work with cities in creating urban design guidelines that address the problems and has successfully attracted increased numbers of pedestrians in cities around the world.

FACADES IN OKC?

So here is the question, where do we have examples of each of these facade types in Oklahoma City? It would be great if we could create our own facade map of Downtown Oklahoma City & Bricktown and determine which areas are pro-pedestrian and anti-pedestrian according to the attribute listed above.

Here is what I think might work. Everyone could take some time to assess a street (or seven) – based on memory, by actually visiting, or using streetview- and add their assessment to our very own Google map — creating a Pedestrian Friendliness Map of Oklahoma City!

Here is an example of a green (green = pedestrian friendly) push pin I added for the Bricktown Canal as it approaches Mickey Mantle – click to enlarge.

While this is an example of a red (red = bad for pedestrians) push pin I added for Robert S. Kerr St. just west of EK Gaylord.

Give it a shot. Just use the descriptions mentioned above to assess each of the attributes. Here is the form info I used that you can paste into the pushpin description window:

Good for Pedestrians? (Yes, No or Maybe)

Scale and Rhythm: Yes
Transparency: No
Appeals to many Senses: Maybe
Texture: Yes
Mix of Functions: No
Vertical Facade Rhythm: Yes

Trust your gut as to whether it deserves a or a . It is easy to do so give it a shot!

Here is what you do:

1. click on the link below
2. click the ‘Save to My Maps’ link on the upper-left side
3. then click the button on the left side of the screen

CLICK HERE TO START ADDING TO THE MAP

Here is what our efforts have produced so far:


View Larger Map