Quote:
Originally Posted by photolitherland
If you really want to see a totally decimated downtown, you dont have to look much further than Tulsa, OK.
With all the progress our cities have made in the past decade, they are still a mess and have a long long ways to go, its no more clear than by looking at these. You Canadians are lightyears ahead of us, you guys are lucky.
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Sad but true. Tulsa's once had one of the densest populations west of the Mississippi and had more buildings of 10 stories or more than any other city its size in the US. We tore down half of our Art Deco buildings, HALF of them. We had the Art Deco Congress in Tulsa a few years ago and its said that one of the people from Europe said that our downtown looked like Potsdam after the war... except that we did it to ourselves.
Garrison Keillor was in town doing a show a couple years ago and said something to the effect... "You all have some beautiful buildings in your downtown. Its interesting how you have it set up now so that you can enjoy looking at each one individually."
But not all is lost. We do still have some magnificent treasures left and the last decade has seen a lot of them turned into new lofts, hotels, retail, restaurants, etc. Several new adaptive reuse projects are currently underway. And now we are finally seeing new construction beginning again. The corner has turned and downtown is on its way back. Hopefully we will not lose any more buildings. Though one beauty in particular, the Art Deco, Tulsa Club Building is in dire straits and could be in danger of being lost.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/artic...0_Afrsrg698010
To update the map a bit.
There is a large church expansion currently going in between 7&8th behind the Presbyterian church off Boston Ave. Both the wings and the courtyard are new additions now under construction.
There are several projects underway in the Brady Arts District, (to the left side in that map of downtown)
Under construction now at the corner of Brady and Archer is the Tribune Lofts II
Just to the "left" of that is an area that is currently being turned into a new park.
Underneath the park is going to be a Geothermal field which will help heat and cool several new nearby arts projects. One that just broke ground last month is the a new Visual Arts Center on the N E Corner of Boston and Archer.
Just down the street across from the new ballpark are some new lofts that will start soon at 2nd and Greenwood. And there are several other new loft projects in the area that are due to start soon as well.
Then one of the bigger projects that supposed to break ground late summer or early fall is the 20 story Cimarex Tower and a new Northwest Mutual Life building, both on the same lot right across from the BOK Arena. This is an old concept rendering before the recent news of the addition of more floors to the taller Cimarex building. The building in front of it is going to be the Northwest Mutual building.
But anyway, things have turned around and we are finally starting to get rid of some of those danged parking lots.
Oh, and the large patches to the far left of the map, those areas were once blighted homes that have been torn down and most of that is now owned by OSU Tulsa and hopefully the University will continue their expansion plans into those areas.