The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

What's the deal with that ghetto area around 61st and Peoria?  It seems to be an isolated area, as most of the neighborhoods around it are pretty nice.  Has this area always been bad or did it recently decline, and why?

Headed that direction for 20 years......I think it finally has hit bottom........

I lived in a small apartment complex right on 41st about 10 years ago. Had driven by during the day to check it out. Was neatly kept and looked nice. Bout a month after moving in woke up to hearing a guy just walking down the  parking lot with a bat bashing in everyones car windows as he casually strolled by.  Couple months later woke up to hear someone right under my window behind the bushes firing a gun at the apartments across the street and then heard return gunfire back. Funny how ones army training kicks in, like a reflex, in a split second I found myself on the floor in the kitchen having "low crawled" there from the bedroom lol. Yes I had rug burns, no comments from the peanut gallery lol. Needless to say I decided to move after that.  

If you look at home prices and apartment prices in the area they are the same as the poorest areas of north and west Tulsa.

I have not lived in too many areas of Tulsa where I did not hear gun fire on a fairly regular basis. I believe it is common in most populated zones of the City.  

I always thought it was a good thing, one less worthless being to have to deal with most likely.  

When I lived up north in Osage County there was more gunfire on the 4th of July and New Years Eve night than in all of the TV footage I have seen coming from Iraq. Full automatics, semi automatics and very very large artillary.  

Folks up on the north side are locked and loaded I can guarantee that.  They are armed to the maximum and love to display their fire power so everyone around them knows what they are holding.

In midtown there are fewer numbers of fuil automatic weapons that I hear, but the overall numver is about the same, they also have some heavy weapons.  And they too love to fire them off on occasion.  I can hear about five separate guns in various areas being fired every weekend in a two mile area around here.    

When I lived near downtown, there were guns being fired near 15th and Lewis alot.  Most were semi automatics sounded like pistols mainly.  When I was remodeling my grand parents home near Gilcrease about 15 years ago, the neighbors had a massive shoot out with a group of men in a van, that left one guy dead, and they dragged another guy into the van and drove off.  Bullets were wizzing by the windows and it was pretty wild.  Every day and at night the prostitutes would gather on our corner. Workers driving all sorts of company, city and county vehicles would pick up the girls at all hours of the day and night.  I wanted to open a Fireworks type building and sell vairous items including ice, cups and mix, tobacco and condoms, but I never got around to it.   Should of set up my Video camera and filmed all the activity. If we only had YouTube then like we do today ....

Tulsa has lots of Ghetto areas, and they seem to be growing and gaining ground.  

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Originally posted by TheArtist

I lived in a small apartment complex right on 41st about 10 years ago.

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Was it 41st or 31st where the stand off was years ago, and the building was burned down in the process?  Something about the robot being used in the ordeal.  T  

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Originally posted by bugo

What's the deal with that ghetto area around 61st and Peoria?  It seems to be an isolated area, as most of the neighborhoods around it are pretty nice.  Has this area always been bad or did it recently decline, and why?

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I drove 61st from Memorial to Riverside a couple days ago and wondered the exact same thing as I passed by.  It's not just Peoria, though, it's as far east as Lewis, strangely enough.  Right outside Southern Hills CC, there's this???

There is one apartment complex between lewis and peoria that seems to make the news quite often. It  almost seems like that one complex, plus the lack of much else at 61st & peoria, contributes. Since peoria ends at riverside, I don't think they get enough traffic to support any large amount of retail or otherwise. Peoria south of I-44 and north of I-44 are two different roads.

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Originally posted by ricecake

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Originally posted by bugo

What's the deal with that ghetto area around 61st and Peoria?  It seems to be an isolated area, as most of the neighborhoods around it are pretty nice.  Has this area always been bad or did it recently decline, and why?

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Many of the apartment complexes in that area were built during the oil boom days of the 70's and early 80's. When the oil bust came in the mid 80's, to deal with high vacancy rates, the complexes started accepting government subsidized tenants. Unfortunately, as is the case in many such situations, a small percentage of the subsidized tenants has ruined the area for the majority.

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I think alot of it started when the apartment complex just north of the park was made Section 8 back in the late 70's. The duplexes just east of the park were okay then, but the area just continued to deteriorate. There has always been areas in Tulsa that were not the greatest but the areas around them were nice. The Normandy apartments just west of Sheridan & 36th by Evans Furniture is also an example of this.

My first apartment after college was at Lincoln Glens at 67th and Peoria.  Not a bad apartment, but after you see people climbing over the fence at 1am, your neighbors have the wheels stolen off of their cars, etc., you want out.  I broke my lease early, sucked it up, and bought my first house in midtown.  I think one thing that i distinctly rememember was that the area was poorly drained.  There always seem to be ditches full of water, and everything is very flat.  I think it's all in a flood zone.  That can't be good for development.  Combine that with the large number of aparments, both section 8 and simply low rent, and it's a recipe for disaster.  Many have said that the lack of high capacity roads has also kept it from developing into anything.  And now that it has that reputation, I don't expect it to change anytime soon.

dbacks is correct.

The real estate boom of the mid to late 70's allowed developers to put up sub-par housing and rent it for luxury rates. The multitude of 'row' type housing just south of 61st street, west of peoria went up at the very end of the boom, was low quality (expecting to reap high rental rates) when the market collapsed. There were probably 2000 units there. They ended up having to rent as Section 8 housing. Over the course of the next 10 years, it became a slum.

It took the City another 10 years to realize what a mistake it was and bought it under Urban Renewal, then correctly bulldozed them.

Unfortunately, they had inflicted a broader impact on the surrounding community by that point which persists today.

At the time the units were originally built, this area of town was among the newest, nicest places in the City. Retail/Commercial along Peoria between 51st & 61st was booming, as well as further north.

It still has nice neighborhoods. But, some really not so good ones, too. Especially the area just north and west of 61st & Peoria.

If one were to study city planning, neighborhoods, effects of developments on cities, this would be a prime study area on a historical basis.

I don't know how many here remember when TPS built Mason High School just south east of 61st & Peoria in the early 70's,(I think it was built at the same tiome as East Central.) and the outrage that came out in 1979 when TPS citing not enough students closed Mason, and the students, sophomores and juniors were divide between Memorial and Edison, and the seniors were allowed to go to the school of their choice. In a way that area was ahead of the curve in the 70's until the bust came.

Was there a water slide just south of 61st many moons ago?

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Originally posted by Noodlez

Was there a water slide just south of 61st many moons ago?

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I think there was one of those metal or fiberglass ones that you slid down on a burlap bag. There was a Putt Putt Mini Golf and a Tastee Freezejust south of 61st on the west side of Peoria across from the Warehouse Market, and I can remeber there was a Champlain gas staion on the s/w corner. This was also when Peoria ended at 71st and Riverside ended at 61st. (So now I'm beginning to feel old and wondering why it is that I remember all this stuff.)

I worked in the Git-n-Go on 61st between Riverside and Peoria in '86 and '87.  It was already bad. We had many, many drive-offs on the gas pumps, but were prohibited from making it pre-pay only by upper management.  7-11 (later Circle K) across the street was held up several times, but we never were -- we had an isolated, well-lit island with fence around it whereas they backed up to the apartments where the robbers could quickly disappear.  Repo men stopped in our store often on their way to get cars from the area.  It got ugly a time or two like when I refused to buy a watch from this guy who had obviously stolen it, but it never got to the point of tripping the alarm while I was in the store.

Dbacks, I started at Memorial soon after Mason opened.  We were on friendly terms with Mason, cheered each other's marching bands at state competitions.  I had several friends at Mason.

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Originally posted by MikeB

Dbacks, I was at Memorial when Mason opened.  We were on friendly terms with Mason, cheered each other's marching bands at state competitions.  I had several friends at Mason.

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One of my brothers wife was a Memorial grad in 73. The four of us all graduated from Nathan Hale, 70, 72, 73, and me in 81. When Hale won the 4A football title in 1979, a lot of people said that is was beause of the coaches and players that came from Mason.

There was a water slide just west and south of 61st and lewis -- remember going to it all the time.

you climbed up the slope with a rubber pad and went down the slide on it.

good times

I live at 28th and Harvard, in the last 4 years I have probably heard 5 gun shots total (not counting new years eve).

I wouldnt say gun fire in Tulsa is that common.  I know guns, I've lived in places where it is common... I'm not living in one of them now.

I live in Red Fork, and I've NEVER heard gunshots. But it's also a low-crime area.

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Originally posted by cannon_fodder

I live at 28th and Harvard, in the last 4 years I have probably heard 5 gun shots total (not counting new years eve).

I wouldnt say gun fire in Tulsa is that common.  I know guns, I've lived in places where it is common... I'm not living in one of them now.

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I feel fairly confident in saying that I have NEVER heard a gunshot in the city in the 8 years I have lived here, including my time at 67th and Peoria, 21st and Delaware and now in Florence Park.  I think I would probably freak out if I did hear one.

I hear gunfire occassionally, but I just assume that it is hunters shooting the wild rabbits, squirrels, wild turkeys, deer and fox in the woods by the creek.

They must be very bad shots though, because I often hear two different types of guns shooting five or six times each.

Ghettos like the one there are just self perpetuating.  The housing projects group all of the low income people together in one location.  Businesses designed to keep poor people poor (Landromats, payday loans/cash advances, pawn shops, liquor stores, and plenty of places to buy cigarettes and lottery tickets) set up shop nearby.  People too poor to afford automobiles have very few nearby job choices and just stay there and stay poor.

Another thing I can tell you about the area, being a man of the city and visiting these places daily, is that the complexes in this area have no problem renting to, lets say, people who may have trouble showing proper identification elsewhere.  Especially very recently, this area has exploded in non-english speaking population.


Now, let me tell you something I noticed about the new River Plan that I don't think is such a good idea.  The plan calls for a pedestrian bridge at 61st on the River.  This would link two currently unconnected ghetto housing projects with a convenient bridge for thugs and drug dealers to just waltz on across.  On the east side of the river, you have Fairmont Terrace, along with some of the other very low rent but not government housing type projects.

On the West side of the river, just past Turkey Mountain at 61st and Santa Fe, you have the Parkview Terrace housing project.  You may have heard about this place on the news a couple of days ago where they found a teenage girl shot in the head by thugs.   Right now, a lot of people wouldn't consider these places close to one another, especially thugs who randomly run around in drug fueled shenanigans - But put a bridge right between the two without doing any sort of improvements to the area or crackdowns on crime and drugs, then this could be a potentially disastrous idea.

That being said, the River plan could also do wonders for the property values of the homes in the area.  If someone with a little bit of vision (and a lot of money) could buy up and redevelop some of the worst properties, and rennovate some of the ones in better condition, that could combine with the River plan to totally turn around the situation at 61st and Peoria.

I do think people living in these projects should be treated fairly if someone were to purchase and demolish their current dwellings.  I think getting people out of these situations would be one of the most fair things you could do for them.  People on welfare and government subsidizing need to be evenly spread to homes around town where there are decent opportunities to get jobs and break the cycle of ghetto poverty - not to mention getting away from an entire mini-economy surrounding them that preys on their situation.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Mondo's Italian Restaurant, which was on the south side of 61st just west of Peoria. It later moved to Lewis north of 61st and opened a branch on Memorial at 68th (now home to Cosmo), but the new locations didn't last.

I used to drive through the area on an almost daily basis circa 1980-81, back when Riverside took a left turn onto 61st. It seemed to be a nice middle-class post-war suburban area back then. South of 61st on Peoria led to a kind of backwoods area.  Peoria and 71st stopped where the two roads met.

I'm really reaching way-back in the old memory vaults for this, but at 61st and Peoria, across from the Warehouse Market (is it even still there?) was this small Vietnamese Restaurant called Tuyet's. Is it still there?

Young Tulsan and others are pretty much spot on.  This is a mess of our own creation...failed land use policy...zoning, specifically.  We failed to recognize that there will always be renters and there will always be a demand for rental units.

Everybody raises a stink when apartment complexes are proposed in their back yards.  Except maybe, other huge apartment complexes.  And so, Tulsa followed the path of least resistance, expanding the rental concentration in that one location, one massive complex at a time.  Then they all went subsidized...fell like dominoes.

These are the kinds of results you get when you outlaw garage apartments and little four-unit walkups (like in Swan Lake).  Smaller, incremental, manageable, mixed-income solutions like that were made illegal through zoning.  But the demand didn't disappear.  Eventually, the "Big" solution turned into a colossal failure.

Joey's Blues Bar use to be off of 61st then moved down to 68th and Peoria.....

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Originally posted by AMP

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Originally posted by TheArtist

I lived in a small apartment complex right on 41st about 10 years ago.

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Was it 41st or 31st where the stand off was years ago, and the building was burned down in the process?  Something about the robot being used in the ordeal.  T  

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I believe it was 41st and Peoria. I worked for the same company as the guy in the stand off. He worked for the Drug Warehouse at 31st and Harvard and I was a route driver for all of the stores. If I remember correctly he killed a husband and wife the day before, and set fire to cover up the crime. The fire that started at the stand off was "reported" at the time to be a result of gunfire during exchange with the police. I want to say that his name was Butch, but I do know that he ran the back area (shipping and recieving) at that store.

That happened on Rockford about 42nd......I remember one of the SWAT guys coming out of second story window....His rifle went off accidentaly and hit the brick vaneer in front of him.........

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Originally posted by bugo

What's the deal with that ghetto area around 61st and Peoria?  It seems to be an isolated area, as most of the neighborhoods around it are pretty nice.  Has this area always been bad or did it recently decline, and why?

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I believe it was a article in the Tulsa World a few weeks ago that said the worst crime in the city of Tulsa is between I-44 in the north, and RiverSide on the west, Peoria on the east and 61st on the south. That block right there had the most police calls and crime in all of Tulsa or so they say.

I was in Tulsa in late 2006 and had to find a address in North Tulsa around Admeral, I don't know what the other cross streets were it's been awhile- anyhow, this big wooden apartment complex on the corner there was really scary. In broad daylight kids and others were out all over the place, some climbing in & out of windows instead of using doors. I guess drug dealing had to have been going on too. I would not want to be near that place at night. I have never seen such a run-down shambled place with people still living in it. I believe the building started on Admeral and ran 1-2 blocks north. The building looked like it belonged in a  3rd world country though. Where was Tulsa's building inspector and code enforcer?

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Originally posted by sauerkraut

I was in Tulsa in late 2006 and had to find a address in North Tulsa around Admeral, I don't know what the other cross streets were it's been awhile- anyhow, this big wooden apartment complex on the corner there was really scary. In broad daylight kids and others were out all over the place, some climbing in & out of windows instead of using doors. I guess drug dealing had to have been going on too. I would not want to be near that place at night. I have never seen such a run-down shambled place with people still living in it. I believe the building started on Admeral and ran 1-2 blocks north. The building looked like it belonged in a  3rd world country though. Where was Tulsa's building inspector and code enforcer?

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Even our boys in blue avoid some areas of town.  Not enough back-up.