Thought you might enjoy seeing the new video of The Flatiron project being developed by Humphreys Company. In case you didn’t already know, the Humphreys Company is headed up by my brother Grant and father Kirk. They are working on some really exciting developments including the adaptive re-use of this historic flatiron building. I have also posted an email sent out by Grant (with his permission) letting you know how the economy is affecting the development schedule and how you can help get this project going. Check it out and if you are interested then follow the link to their site and find out more.
From: Grant Humphreys Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2009 5:03 PM Subject: THE FLATIRON – A SYMBOL OF RESILIENCE – of our downtown, of our city, of our Oklahoma spirit
Across the nation, the economic crisis has forced many development projects to be put on hold or brought to an end. Yet Oklahoma City, despite some very real economic downturns, continues to prove itself as one of the most resilient markets in America.
After almost three years of design and due diligence, our project known as ‘The Flatiron’ is poised to become a reality. When the construction of this project begins at the gateway of downtown OKC, The Flatiron will deliver the message that Oklahoma City is still in the game. Watching this new 5-story mixed-use project be built will boost confidence in our market and help maintain or increase property values as well. No doubt the Devon Tower will deliver this same message around the world, but we’re the small business version that is ready to go. But we need YOUR help.
We need YOUR help to meet our pre-leasing hurdle. The Flatiron will create more than 73,000 RSF of Class ‘A’ office and retail space ideally located at the gateway to downtown, Bricktown and the Oklahoma Health Center. Our asking rates are $22/RSF (gross) for loft office and $22/RSF (net) for street level retail (with CPI bumps). We need credit tenants willing to sign a 5-year lease. Local tenants are great. Once we’ve pre-leased 50% of this space, we will move towards an exciting groundbreaking event. We want to work with brokers. So bring me a deal. With your help, we can meet this goal . . . and you’ll be the first invited to the party!
All the information you need is available online at www.flatironokc.com. You can find floor plans, marketing brochures and a video of the project. Make a point to watch the video. It’s awesome.
Dave Ortloff, our Director of Marketing, is handling the broker relations. He’s here for you. If you’d like to arrange a tour or receive more information about this exciting project, just call Dave at (405) 228-1000 (ext 4). His contact information is also on the website referenced above.
Let’s work together to show everyone that, despite the rest of the nation, the real estate market in Oklahoma City is alive and well. I appreciate your help!
Thanks,
Grant
Find out more by visiting their website at: FlatironOkc.com!
Google Earth 5.0 has been released and it is a very worthy upgrade! The coolest new feature of the program is that it allows you to search historical aerials. With Oklahoma City, there are approx. 10 different aerial sets dating back to 1991, though only a few are from before 2002. Still, it is great to have access to a tool that records urban transformation. For instance, check out the clips I took of Bricktown over the last 15 years:
1995
2003
2007
Google Earth 5.0 is available to download completely free of charge. Google Earth Pro adds some valuable features, including large format image exports, but costs $400 – making it almost exclusively for commercial users. Regardless, the free version is great and is only getting better. I can’t wait to see how this is used in the future as the time between aerials decreases and the recorded length in the database increases. Imagine a future in 2050 where you could watch – like a movie – the changes that occurred in an area following some type of intervention – like the introduction of a new transit line! Certainly something I look forward to watching happen in OKC!
In the course of my thesis research I have tracked down a copy of the 1910 plan prepared for the Oklahoma City Parks Commission by W.H. Dunn, a landscape architect from Kansas City. The book entitled: Oklahoma City: A report on its plan for an Outer Parkway and a plan for an Interior System of parks and boulevards (the complete report is available in .pdf – see below). This may very well be the first formal plan prepared for Oklahoma City, though there were previous planning efforts for individual developments like Classen’s streetcar neighborhoods or some of I.M. Putnam’s developments. I don’t have time to get into all of the details of the this plan and my thoughts right now, but I figured I could make a bunch of information I have discovered available and allow you to read and discuss. Please let me know if you have any insights or see any connections that you think are worth pursuing. Looking through this plan that contains some of the earliest ideas that helped shape Oklahoma City has certainly been a pleasure for me and I hope you enjoy them as well.
OUTER PARKWAY GENERAL PLAN
This actually represents one of the earliest and most complete maps of Oklahoma City. I have tracked down a couple maps that predate this one, but this is definitely the most complete and absolutely beautifully done. Keep in mind that this map is a combination of what existed and what was proposed – not all of the ideas came to fruition.
For a higher-resolution image of the map, download the .pdf at the bottom of the page.
GRAND BOULEVARD
CLASSEN BOULEVARD
DETAILED PLANS FOR NEW PARKS
Northeast Park – what became Lincoln Park
Southeast Park – what became Trosper Park
Southwest Park – what became Woodson Park
DOWNLOAD COMPLETE PLAN
These resources are all made available in .pdf. These files are quite large (please use right-click Save as…).
Complete 1910 Dunn Report and Plan in b/w .pdf, 7.5mb – (click here)
Large general plan color map, 8.9mb – (click here)
Also, I have full-size 300dpi scans of all images available and will consider sharing them – please email me if you are interested.
RELATED RESOURCES
These articles are from journals available for free through google books that reference this planning effort around the time it was carried out. They are helpful in completing the picture, though you have to take it with a grain of salt as early Oklahoma Citians were always hard at work selling their beloved city. I downloaded each journals complete .pdf and saved only the portion that contains the relevant article.
So, one of things I am required to do to graduate from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) is write a thesis. Typically the thesis research takes up some of your 3rd semester and almost all of your final semester. Finished papers are between 50-150pg and the finished product is intended to be a complete work carried out on a fairly high level. The first thing you have to do is pick the topic and for me that time has come. I have been keeping track of thesis ideas for the past year and have a nice little list from which to choose. Here they are with my thoughts on each.
MY THESIS TOPIC IDEAS
1. Distributed urban college education
Basically I am curious what opportunities there are for higher-education to be distributed across residual space in urban setting, utilizing the facilities and expertise of existing firms to enhance the education, while providing a cheap and enthusiastic labor force. Still interested in this, but decided that it was not the best option.
2. Effects of 21st century retail on urban form
What is urban form affected by new types of retail (i.e. internet)? This topic is already receiving quite a bit of attention and is difficult to study.
3. Examine impact of agricultural idling incentives on city form
So we pay the carrying costs on land even as it accrues value for later development? Surely this policy has a dramatic impact on urban form, especially in cities like OKC – I will have to wait to find out, because this topic is a little too boring to study for an entire semester.
4. Analyze potential for handheld gps enabled phones to measure pedestrian movement in a city
New cell phones – like the GPS enabled 3G iPhone – provide a new opportunity to understand the ways pedestrians move through cities. Obviously there are privacy issues, but certainly a system could be anonymized. This is a relatively new area of research and something I think would be really cool to study. The SenseABLE City Lab here at MIT has done some similar work with cell phone data, but the new embedded GPS systems provide an extra level of detail that makes the system work at the pedestrian movement level. I remain intrigued by this, but ended up deciding against it.
5. Power and politics of urban design in Oklahoma City
Hmm…this would be really interesting! BUT, I decided for various reasons (e.g. my future job prospects) to leave this one alone.
6. Assess public places not by design, but focus especially on the surrounding urban design that supports the public place (i.e. library, retail, density of residents, density of office, density of lunch places, etc)
I love public spaces and this seemed like an area that hadn’t been looked at. Interesting questions like, what are the best uses to have around a park? Is a library good, like Bryant Park? What about office buildings? Concrete convention centers? Fun stuff, maybe later.
7. Value based property taxes – taxing a property based on the building allowed by zoning; should combat land speculators that blight urban landscape.
Do you ever get tired of seeing surface parking lots in the middle of downtown? Part of the problem is that our tax system enables these lots to be profitable, even though they often do not provide the same level of benefit to society as a developed project. There have been other tax systems utilized that tax property relative to the residual land value sans improvements. So an office building and a parking lot taking up the same amount of land would be taxed the same. This was an idea pushed by Henry George, an economist and NYC mayoral candidate in the late 1800s. Ultimately, this idea was politically infeasible and probably still is…which is why I am not doing it.
[correction 11/6 - Joshua (see comments) enlightened me to the fact that land value taxation, or LVT, is being successfully implemented in a number of communities throughout the United State; you can find out more at urbantools.org]
8. City organizational structure and its impact on urban form – Vienna has a combined planning & public works department, whereas Oklahoma City has separated the planning and implementation functions.
I am curious what the pros/cons are to having planning & public works combined into a single department versus the system currently in place in Oklahoma City. In reality, street projects have an as great or greater affect on the form of our city than planning. Not sure what the benefits of the current configuration are, but I will have to wait to find out.
9. Studying the ideas of Hans Mondermann on naked streets
The late Hans Monderman has shown how streets with fewer signs, fewer road lines, etc are actually safer. Seems unintuitive, but has been proven true under a variety of conditions. Obviously, highways are not a good candidate for such a system – as Kramer showed us:
10. Assessing the environmental impact of transportation infrastructure in a world of cheap, pollution free cars!
Even if we get to pollution free cars, we still have to look at the sustainability of the built form we use to support an auto-dominated transportation system. I think we can probably do a better job in planning for a future that continues to see cars as the predominate mode of transportation.
THE WINNING TOPIC
Ultimately I decided that I wanted to write a thesis on something I enjoy studying, and I really enjoy studying Oklahoma City. Some of the possibilities above have to do with OKC either directly or indirectly, but with any OKC related question I always come back to my lack of understanding – and the lack of available research – on the history of planning and development that created the city we see today. Steve and others have done some good stuff on the post 1960 period and on various isolated elements of the early 20th century, but this early period has not received much attention through a purely planning, urban design, and development related focus. So my thesis topic is:
The early planning tradition and development forces that shaped Oklahoma City
I am starting pre-landrun and will study as far as I can, but probably won’t get past 1950 – which thankfully will allow me to avoid the Pei Plan and the gloominess it brings.
NEED YOUR HELP
Well, if you have anything that you think will give me some insight into the early planning history of Oklahoma City, please let me know. I, in return, will try to post some of the resources I come across and share what I find out. In fact, I have already found some cool stuff that I will try to get posted later this week.
