The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

or so says this joke of "news" story

http://www.newson6.com/story/24735421/south-tulsa-retail-development-aims

But but but it is going to be like Utica square.  Except surrounded by other retail. Lacking walk ability. And build in the faux Tuscan style with massive fronted parking lots.

Otherwise, exactly the same.

Then why did "you" move to this part of town?

My parents chose this area precisely because all that crap was NOT here.

Man, if South Tulsa was not under served, would there be room for houses in it?

(http://www.quickmeme.com/img/c3/c3a0377352a37567cd67fbb91bb1f2d26589ee2802b7f8c902121904a2894109.jpg)

Ha! Exactly the same  ;)

I couldn't read this story without laughing. One of the "anchor" tenants is a SportsClips... and yeah Ihloff (Utica Square) and SportClips are definitely the same  :D.

Sports Clips is pretty awesome.

Sounds like the developers were wanting to create interest/buzz for their multimillion dollar property. While I do not like what's happening in that area, I hope it succeeds. Otherwise, we could wind up with a giant driving range (or better yet a sod farm) which would be so much better.

There used to be a driving range somewhere along that stretch but I don't remember exactly where.

A sod farm would be nice.

A horse pasture would be even nicer.

LOL. I saw that on the news the other night was like, WUT?

How about filling all the empty retail space in Regal Plaza first?

Regal Plaza is over-served

How is this in any way comparable to Utica Square?  And how exactly is it distinguishable from the 1000 other shopping centers in South Tulsa, including the one just across the street next to the bankrupt south tulsa mini-arena?

Its exactly like Utica Square, minus the location, trees, clocks, courtyards, gardens and walkability.

It's Tulsa now just moving South...why the hate?

Too much traffic already.  We don't need any more.  Pretty soon we will need to widen Memorial to 8 lanes and you all will gripe about paying for widening roads in suburbia.

No hate here. South Tulsa is a sales tax machine.

I just think that you should own what you build, if you are making a kite don't say it is a balloon. 

On a related note........Downtown Tulsa doesn't have enough parking lots.

The more I can shop south of the Creek, the better. 71st street is a nightmare and anything farther north is a hassle to get to.

Here's another joke of a news story along the same lines...

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/downtown/elliot-nelson-s-downtown-dream-for-mcnellie-s-pub-helps/article_ea84dd00-3a27-520e-b87d-7a73e9eac56e.html

Just more of the same old development for the sake of development....this will be another one of those flash in the pan strip center things that will be here today, gone tomorrow....   can anyone in town spell "Riverwalk"....?

If you are talking about this business development out by Bixby, have you seen up close what his going on there? I can tell you that the Fitness monstrosity is always busy, and will likely feed into that mall area.

  I get how one poster lamented that for the kind of traffic we have in south Tulsa, that the kind of shopping options available are pitiful.  The other day while heading back to Tulsa from Dallas we were hungry and decided to pull off at the next exit that looked like it had a couple of restaurants available to choose from.  Saw what looked to be a shopping center of some sort.  Once we pulled in we were pleasantly surprised to find that it was actually a small, mixed use, live/work/play type development with winding streets full of pedestrian friendly shops with living above, , a small "town square" type area, little stone creeks and waterfalls, trees, sculpture, very nice restaurants and outdoor cafe's, parking garages tucked back behind and closer to the highway, etc.  Not one of the larger ones I have seen but well done with varied and unique architecture some brick, some stone, some wood etc, etc. and nicer arguably than anything we have in Tulsa, including Utica Square.  And it was just a random "shopping" center type thing there, no big deal really.

I know Tulsa is a small city but I do not think we are doing as well as some of our leaders would have us believe.  And they are also the same ones that do not think we need to do anything different to change.  Along the same lines I am still surprised that we do not have the amount of new urban infill/living going into our downtown that a metro of our size might be expected to have.  Our growth seems quite lackluster in both quality and "volume".

Realistically, there’s far more announced projects getting completed since 2008 than ones not being developed.  The last large-scale development I can even think of being shuttered is the mixed use development which was supposed to happen on the west bank of the river south of the Creek Turnpike and that was a result of the national economy and financing vehicles imploding in 2008.

As local residents of the metro area, I believe we all suffer from "parental myopia”.  In other words it’s like being the parent of a teen ager.  Your sense of growth of your child is very gradual, whereas friends or grandparents who visit every six or twelve months see growth phases as being much more dramatic.

Tulsa has seen huge growth in the last ten years in urban and suburban areas and really without as rapid of population growth as the larger cities we look up to.  It may not seem apparent because we live amongst it and the landscape evolves slowly.

The subject of Austin, Texas came up over dinner last night.  Their population is growing rapidly and the real estate market is very hot right now.  Lots of commercial, retail, and residential development.  However, the downside is, they can’t keep up with infrastructure needs at the rate they are growing and traffic congestion in ATX is becoming as much an issue as it is in Houston or Dallas.

I personally prefer Tulsa’s slower rate of growth and hope we never have an “explosion” like ATX is experiencing now nor like the front range of Colorado experienced 10-15 years ago.

Everything is always busy down there.  We used to go to Top That on Mem from time to time (has been over a year now) and then just cruise on south.  Occasionally would stop at another little pizza place a few miles further that used to be pretty good.  Haven't been there in a while, either.

Has been over a month since we drove all the way down Memorial, and at the time it was just a bunch of commotion for commotion sake.  Lots of activity, but nothing really interesting.  (Usually I can get interested in watching what many would consider mundane if there is some apparent reason for the activity, but this was just movement....)  Life along that corridor would bore me to death...probably literally!

Would you say your businesses growth (or should I say, your income) is more or less dependent on local growth than either my retail store or mural businesses?

Really it doesn’t depend on local growth at all.  We do a lot of service work in the Tulsa area on existing boiler systems and sell quite a bit of equipment for upgrades and replacement for buildings which have been here for years.  With the exception of some niche markets that we do packaged systems for  like microbreweries, new construction is not an area we chase heavily as it’s lower margin than pursuing equipment component sales to local energy-related companies who are selling equipment all over the world.  In fact, I can’t remember the last new commercial development project we sold a boiler for in the Tulsa market.  As well, we buy and sell used equipment globally.

My income is more closely tied to national economic trends and energy prices than anything.  I do realize there are many businesses like your own which depend on growth of the consumer base to succeed and grow. 

In my mind, steady and measured growth is far more preferable than a huge explosion in a short amount of time.  Especially since Tulsa is so slow to respond to infrastructure needs to keep up with development.  Look how many two lane arterial roads we still have in well-developed areas of south Tulsa.

I would think though that a decent rate of growth would fluctuate in the 3-5% range, with the occasional slowdown and uptick here and there from that.  For quite a while now Tulsa has been fluctuating in the 0-2% growth range which I find worrisome.  In that scenario it wouldn't take much to slide us into a negative growth territory and get into downward rut or spiral we would find terribly hard to pull ourselves out of.  But our leadership seems to think this rate of growth is ok and does not want to do anything to ramp up our growth rate a little bit to help us weather the times when we will slow down from where we are now (we are not doing anything to improve it, just waiting for the winds of change to take their course and crossing our fingers hoping it will be good and not bad, not how I like to live).  

As for Tulsa's slow response to infrastructure needs and roads.  We have far more lane miles per the population, than is needed by almost double and tax receipts seem to regularly be lower than expected.  Again as I have mentioned before, the city hired a company which assessed our growth potential and what would happen if we continued "per usual" (slower growth 1-2% and possibly eventual decline) versus making the recommended changes (and curving our average growth up a few notches).  So far their predictions have been spot on. There was another post on here a short time ago that linked to a population growth map of Tulsa.  Most of the areas as one would expect were holding steady and in decline.  There were a few spots of growth that are the obvious ones, South Tulsa and the Tulsa Hills area (that firm the city hired mentioned that the Tulsa Hills area would buy Tulsa about 15 years more "suburban style" growth") and then there were a few spots in east Tulsa which were also growing in the areas that have a heavy Hispanic population.  But again, most areas were steady or in decline.  Where are we going to be once the South Tulsa area and Tulsa Hills area begins to fill out?  I doubt that even the 0-2% over all growth we have now will be able to be maintained.  

The mayor is betting on the Gilcrease Expressway idea and trying to open up that section for more suburban style development over working to switch our city into a mode that would promote good urban infill development.  Exactly the opposite of what the firm the city hired said would be wise to do.  The trends all over the country are for more and more people and cities to be upping the urban infill type growth.  We are still betting on suburban style growth, and putting ALL our eggs, our future, into that basket.  I don't really think we will be able to compete with the suburbs in the suburban growth offerings once we have filled out the South Tulsa & Tulsa Hills areas, and I don't think we should want to.  I think it's time we began planning to be a city that competes with other cities. I think we should at least permit good urban development and stop making it illegal.  And I think it would be quite helpful if we had some areas zoned to be high quality urban/pedestrian/cycle friendly ones.  We have the potential if we do, with the good bones we still have, to use that as a means to ramp up our growth 1 0r 2% above what we are doing now.  It's a relatively simple and inexpensive thing to do compared to other ideas people might throw out don't you think?  The other ideas people have are; lower crime, improve schools, some "grand big idea" things like islands in the river, etc.  all of which would be a heck of a lot more difficult to do, especially if the cities already slow growth slows down any further.      

Unfortunately the lane miles and population are in different parts of town.
 
 :(

The Whole Foods development on 91st has become a booming success so far.  People just hang out there all the time.  The family, the dog, and I took a walk the other evening from our house at 87th, and when we arrived there were several other families with their dogs sitting around, enjoying meals on the outside patios of Whole Foods, and the other businesses.  Seemed everyone had the same idea.

I think this will continue to spur development in that area.  South Tulsa really needed that. 

TheArtist - Do you know where I could find the data on the lane miles per population you referenced?  Also, you mentioned the recommended changes from the company the city hired, do you know what those are or could you point me in the direction of those recommendations? 

Thanks for your help

Much of the information is found here...

http://www.incog.org/Transportation/demographics.htm

I will have to do a little digging myself.  I believe the company was KPMG that helped with the Plani-Tulsa New Comprehensive Plan.  What's exciting is that according to the timeline, the new Zoning changes outlined in the new Comprehensive Plan, are supposed to be approved spring of this year!  Who wants to lay odds on that actually happening?
 
http://www.planitulsa.org/plan

I believe there are some points starting on pg. 22 http://www.planitulsa.org/files/Strategic-Plan-web-030810.pdf

That could lead to some of their metrics.  

Some other interesting points, (My bold).



"However, through PLANiTULSA’s
public input process, Tulsans expressed
significant support for expanding the range
of transportation options.
The land use and economic portions of
this plan indicate that in many areas of town,
the transportation system defines and often
limits neighborhood development and hinders
economic opportunities.

Roads with
multiple wide lanes, large intersections, and relatively few
pedestrian amenities (i.e. wide sidewalks, medians with
trees, parallel parking, and short intersection crossings) are
not conducive to walking, biking, or transit and continue
to foster a land development pattern that is dependent on
automobile access. The land use and economic development
priorities found in Our Vision For Tulsa depend on a
transportation system that supports mixed-use places, transit,
and increased viability of alternative modes.


Our Vision for Tulsa’s transportation strategy prescribes a
departure from the traditional transportation life cycle that
emphasizes mitigating traffic congestion with automobile
capacity improvements in the form of additional lanes
or building new roads. This traditional process leads to a
perpetual need for improvements to the roadways system.
The practice of making roadway improvements without
consideration of potential land use changes has resulted in
a land development pattern that is automobile-centric and
costly in terms of maintenance and quality of life for the
City of Tulsa.

Transit expansion is key to realizing Our Vision for
Tulsa because it enables the City to reduce expenditures
without extending infrastructure and enables denser
development because of a reduced need for parking and
wide roadways. Transit should be included as an integral
component of the city’s economic development strategy,
which includes the creation of new and sustainable centers
and neighborhoods. Accordingly, equitable and sustained
transit funding, through instruments separate from transit
fares, must be identified for the transit system to grow.


In the past, the transportation project development
process has relied solely upon the addition of
automobile capacity via new lane miles, grade
separations and by-pass roads. The PLANiTULSA
plan recommends land use and transportation policies
and practices that will enhance the viability of
transit, walking and biking as travel modes.

Key Actions
• With INCOG staff, coordinate revisions to the
regional travel demand model to adopt demographic
projection stated in Our Vision for Tulsa.
• Adopt the Sustainable Network Policy, including
economic and quality of life metrics, from
Our Vision for Tulsa, to complement INCOG’s
transportation decision-making process and project
selection criteria.
• Use the Urban Corridor Planning Process to
inform the INCOG and City of Tulsa project
development processes.


Our Vision for Tulsa emphasizes new economic
opportunities and population growth through the
development and re-development of walkable new
urban centers. Connecting regional assets (parks,
cultural sites and educational facilities), employment
centers and existing neighborhoods to these new centers
will be a crucial part of implementing the plan. The
plan defines a multi-modal roadway system and a
transit network that can extend the walking and biking
reach of commuters and recreational riders.

I’m reviving this topic after talking to a friend yesterday whose girlfriend ended up turning down a promotion that would have moved them to Austin later this summer.  They went down on Friday and cut the trip short on Saturday after looking at the dismal housing options available to them on a $350,000 budget.  The houses they looked at in that range were in sketchy areas and not much square footage for the money.  They were also as put-off by the horrible traffic congestion there as I was on my last visit.

He said anything with any sort of space in a nice area is simply out of reach and the real estate agent they were looking at properties with advised them that most good property prospects are selling above asking price.

This is one reason why explosive growth is bad, a company might miss out on really good prospects for employees if someone is averse to long commute times and can’t afford quality housing in the market.  It over-inflates real estate prices, and this is one way bubbles are created that force people into a higher monthly house payment or rent payment that they may not be comfortable with. 

Perhaps your friend should try Detroit.  Great suburbs there and extremely affordable housing.  Had a friend mention that you could get a small mansion there at incredibly affordable prices. They also have high crime and anemic growth rates like Tulsa so she would feel right at home.

5 Year Private Sector Job Growth
(From Business Journals "Oct 2013 Economic Index") 


OKC                +3.29%
Salt Lake City  +2.96
Nashville         +7.92
Austin             +10.9%
Denver           +2.01%
Charlotte        +1.07%
Little Rock       -0.25%
Jacksonville     -0.82%
Dallas-FW        +5.63%
Columbus       +3.40%
Buffalo NY       +1.11%
Omaha            -0.36%
Detroit             -1.10%
Tulsa               -3.30%

I've been going to Austin here and there over the last 5 years.  I have to say the traffic is starting to be exactly like Dallas' traffic.

I'd need to know a lot more about the situation before I'd give a lot of weight to a single example.  I don't really want to know the specifics, it's just that there are a lot of factors that influence a decision to move, such as:

- Are there children involved?  (This is huge, and definitely affect where a person would live.)   
- Where would she be working? (Downtown?  North Austin? etc...)
- Thinking in terms of minutes, not miles, what type of commute would be too much?
- Define "sketchy".  Are we talking crime, or simply a more bohemian style? (There are ton of "eclectic" neighborhoods down there that are perfectly safe.)
- Is she currently at suburbanite, or a mid-towner?
- etc...

But you're right,  If she really does/did have a hard cap of $350K, it would be very difficult to find anything in "Austin proper".   She'd probably need to look to the suburbs, and then of course you hit traffic, etc.   On the other hand, if there are no kids involved, and she could bump up to $400K, that would open up quite a few options.  But the high home prices are simply indicative that a lot of people want to live there,  particularly in the hip areas like SOCO, etc.   

The company in question will find another, probably equally as qualified person, who will make that move because they will decide it is worth the extra money and hassle just to live there.  I had a similar experience "back in the day", when I was single and living in Little Rock and hating it, and my theoretical destination was Denver (or in that area).  In my case it wasn't housing costs (I was a single guy, and would have lived in a hovel) but rather actual compensation.   I had several offers, but none in the range I was already making at the time. I finally asked a Denver local recruiter about it, and he said "It's Denver.  Everybody wants to move here.  The companies don't have to pay as much because people will take a hit just to move here."   I ended up taking a job in Dallas instead, but to this day I wonder if I should have pulled the trigger and moved to where I really wanted to be, regardless of whether it was the most practical decision.

I had been to Austin the spring of ’07, ’09, and again in ’13.  I was really shocked how much more Dallas-like the traffic was between ’09 and ’13.  I couldn’t imagine living in Georgetown and working south of downtown.

Obviously, I can’t know every single detail of what influenced their decision to bolt instead of probing further, they might both have simple fear of the unknown, but the housing situation seemed to be the focal point of why they headed back early.  People who have an “ideal” place they’d like to live sometimes find out it’s not all it’s cracked up to be when you are faced with actually moving there.  My friend said there were vagrants hanging out around the area of one of the homes they looked at and the other seemed to have a lot of unemployed young men with neck tattoos wandering around.

I am aware one more factor was my friend would be going down without a job so they really couldn’t count on an income from him yet to factor in a housing budget until he had a job.  So, of course, that was a factor.

This brought up the similar conversation I had with my son-in-law a few weeks ago about a friend of their family who was facing a frustrating bidding war on buying a condo in Austin because the price is a moving target.  Condo developers know there is a huge demand and they are taking advantage of it.  People want housing bad enough there, they are willing to pay, in some cases, $100K over asking price just to buy a friggin’ condo.  

My wife and I have been pondering moving to Pagosa Springs, Colorado for some time.  We were even looking at a few business opportunities out there pretty close up to a few months ago when we went back out in November.  Unless you luck into a very rare opportunity to work for someone else at a professional level income, you either end up working a couple of service industry jobs to make ends meet and live in a total sh!t dump or you create or purchase a business to make it there.  After talking to business owners who didn’t know that we were looking to move and being willing to listen with an open mind as to the realities of living there and owning a business there, it became obvious that we might want to think of it again in a few years when we can think of it as more of a retirement situation.  It would be a slower pace of life, but along with that you do sacrifice some things you have in a city the size of Tulsa.

Sure, someone will eventually take that position that my friend’s GF passed on or maybe someone else will jump on it without a second thought.  I’m simply making the point that the 10+% private sector job growth rate that Artist pointed out Austin is experiencing isn’t for everyone, that it creates some potentially serious financial consequences when that over-heated market cools down and people are $100 or $200K upside down in their property or when their cush job gets RIF’d and they can no longer afford the payment.

I have a friend moving to Tulsa from Denver for the same reasons.  He has never lived in Tulsa but in Norman and OKC before Denver.  He was frustrated with high cost of living and worsening traffic.  He couldn't afford a house in central Denver but is looking at buying one in Tulsa that is newer, twice the size and with a pool only a 5 min from his office in south Tulsa.  Salary is about the same but obviously goes further in Tulsa.  He said he was okay with the trade off between hiking/skiing in the mountains and the close proximity to lakes for boating in Tulsa.

Obviously the fastest growing cities are growing at such a pace for a reason and people are lined up to replace that job in Austin or my friend's job in Denver.  But depending on your situation Tulsa can be a very easy place to live, and I worry that as people figure that out growth will accelerate and we'll be facing some of the same issues.  Planning for this growth should be a much higher priority, especially in the areas of transportation and education.  Higher growth could help with continuing downtown and surrounding urban development, and more jobs could bring a wider variety of retail and nonstop flights which would be nice.

Lest anyone think I’m anti-growth, I’m not.  I don’t care for explosive growth which over-burdens the resources of an area and creates unsustainable economic bubbles. 

Colorado Springs went through a similar metamorphosis in the late 1990’s when tech companies were relocating there from Silicon Valley due to- you guessed it- escalating cost of living due to explosive growth that was making it harder to attract really good young talent to the area.  Locating at the “base” of the mountains was pretty attractive and it wasn’t necessary to pay quite as much to attract potential employees there. 

I’d pick COS over DEN any day.

I don't advocate for growth of the kind like you see in Austin, but would like to see something in the 3% range for Tulsa.  Funny, if on the national level we had job/population growth of the sort Tulsa has (though admirable unemployment rates for sure), high poverty and crime rates, etc. people would be saying the President, etc. is a failure and the national economy is in a bad spot and something must be done.  But here if we have 1% growth or less we are doing just fine. 

Anyone have any experience or heard anything about Salt Lake City?  They seem to be growing quite robustly but seem to be taking a very different growth model with a large amount of TOD type development and rail transit.

 

If oil companies hadn’t seen fit to move their accounting and administrative operations to Houston, I’m pretty sure we’d see the more marked growth.  If Tulsa could attract more people for the never-ending shortage of employees for fabrication and welding jobs, it might show up as 2-3% growth.  Unfortunately, people seem less inclined to move away from home in search of work than they were even 30 years ago.  One exception seems to be North Dakota for oil jobs but they have really bad housing shortages along the lines of Austin, and my understanding is housing costs are astronomical as a result, so $80-$90K per year oil field jobs aren’t going as far as they would in, say, Woodward, Oklahoma.  Seems I read last week that Woodward is the fastest or one of the fastest growing cities in Oklahoma.

Tulsa is just far enough from the current major oil plays to partially benefit from that growth (existing companies with operations in those areas are doing well) but not close enough to see the type of growth that is affecting North Dakota, West Texas and western Oklahoma.  You also see that in the metro's growth just in the past year, which is higher than previous years (2010-2013 metro growth is 2.57%).  Tulsa's companies and geographic position generally favor natural gas development over oil so when that finally sees growth I think Tulsa will see more as well.  Though Tulsa's position as a midstream hub has led to increased growth thanks to mostly oil transport and storage.  Advanced manufacturing and financial services are areas that could grow more in coming years.

However the energy sector is not as big in Tulsa as in comparable cities experiencing huge growth thanks to the current oil boom, like Houston and Midland.  It is bigger in OKC and their higher growth rate reflects that.  Tulsa has an aerospace industry that has been sluggish, and AA has been either downsizing or stagnant.  Telecommunications, once the driver of the Tulsa economy in the 90's, hasn't been a big growth engine.  Technology and research has been picking up but the area is not enough of a higher education center to be a hotbed.  

Fixed it for you....put the clause that explains the situation completely, rather than a Fox News half-information sound bite....


Average in Tulsa - $28,000 / year.  About $14 an hour-ish.  And yeah, I have seen some of the ads that promise 40k a year.  Makes me wonder how much overtime that involves...?

I have done welding in Tulsa decades ago and gotten $10.  So welding seems to be a new "minimum wage" arena...where the average in real terms is going down....

http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-Welder-l-Tulsa,-OK.html

We believe in the law of supply and demand in this country because it suits us to do so. When it doesn't suit us we ignore it. I spoke with a relative in OKC whose company is having the same problem Conan has described in finding welders, fabricators and skilled manual labor in general.
 
I suggested he pay more in salary for these guys and he said they were already paying them $30K per year. Then pay $35K and offer some benefits I suggested. He said his employer is not going to pay that much for welders/fabricators. OK, then start your own school and train them yourself and get the government to subsidize the process, contract with them for two years to make sure you aren't training for other companies and then write it off as expense of doing business I countered. We don't want to do that he replied. Too expensive and time consuming.

What they want to do is whine about the shortage created by an imbalance of supply and demand but ignore the obvious solutions because of the long standing class distinctions. The same thing is happening throughout manual labor jobs that no one wants or can do anymore except non wasp's.

Half-information sound bite?  I work in the industry.  Stick to things you actually know something about instead of expelling methane into topics you have no recent knowledge of.

It’s simple: just like medical professionals, simply not enough skilled ones to go around.

Actually, you aren't the only one....


And you start out correctly - there simply are not enough skilled ones to go around........at half-price.

If you don't like the facts, then show some evidence that you think shows the facts are not right.  I showed supporting documentation, plus anecdotal evidence that the industry hasn't advanced in decades.  What did you show?  Besides a methane exhalation....