Route 66 Museum on Riverside

[LandArchPoke]

Project has been withdrawn...

https://tulsaworld.com/news/local/developer-withdraws-plans-for-route-66-mixed-use-project-near-old-11th-street-bridge/article_1d7f3718-f368-11ed-b7c5-a3d189e177a1.html

I mean who would have thought a car elevator and rooftop amphitheater would be too expensive to build? LOL

Also how they thought they could get that many hotel rooms and multifamily units into a five story building with the bottom floors being retail/museum space is a real stretch to the imagination. To do all the uses to the scale they were talking about it would have had to be at least 10 stories on that site or would have had to have some major modifications to the floorplate areas from those renderings.

I'll give it to Selser Schaefer - they produce really nice rendering but are never in any realm of reality to what can be built cost wise or scale wise ever. It's very misleading to promise a project to look the way they show - Santa Fe Square is another example of that. I don't see how so many get fooled by this but apparently the budget was something like $40-50 million above their original budget lol. How does that even happen and no one at the city that evaluated that proposal and picked it thought to themselves this seems too good to be true huh? Inflation has happened, rates have gone up but that's max $5-10 million in cost increase on that size of project no nearly $50 million on top of the original budget (essentially twice their submitted numbers - that's pretty crazy). I would like to know what the contractor who quoted their original budget was smoking lol either that or if they didn't have one and told Selser Schaefer we want to spend $x and show some renderings of what could be built - then they got taken by the architects who are wildly unrealistic on renderings. Helps their clients win pitches/RFPs but obviously backfired on them here.   

[shavethewhales]

^You may know more about it than me, but my impression is that Selser Schaefer knew what they were doing, but the cost increases of the past few years are just too much to keep up with. This isn't the only project falling due to cost increases and won't be the last. Heck, Gilcrease is only funded through the shell of the building due to continual cost increases.

I don't understand how they were going to fit it all in either, but I assume they sketched the floorplans. Probably tiny hotel rooms and studio apartments?

It's a bad time to be trying to get anything off the ground. I expect the next concept pitched for this corner will not be so flashy.

[LandArchPoke]

^You may know more about it than me, but my impression is that Selser Schaefer knew what they were doing, but the cost increases of the past few years are just too much to keep up with. This isn't the only project falling due to cost increases and won't be the last. Heck, Gilcrease is only funded through the shell of the building due to continual cost increases.

I don't understand how they were going to fit it all in either, but I assume they sketched the floorplans. Probably tiny hotel rooms and studio apartments?

It's a bad time to be trying to get anything off the ground. I expect the next concept pitched for this corner will not be so flashy.

Gilcrease is an outlier and I frankly think a lot of that comes down to how the city bid out the work and they put themselves in a corner with contractors who are gauging the city now. Someone is pocketing excess millions on the construction/contractor side on that project. 

There have been cost increases the primarily driven by interest rates. Makes the construction debt a lot more expensive and reduces your returns on the perm debt side too. However, rate increases don't justify doubling of the construction costs. Material prices have stabilized and some have actually came down but labor costs and things like that are still stressed. 10-25% would seem in the realm of reasonable but 75-100% increase is not.

That means either the contractor who gave Sharp the cost estimate either royally screwed up on the original budget or Selser Schaefer sold Sharp a bunch of BS in the renderings claiming for what budget they wanted to spend that those renderings were realistic. They weren't. You can tell that simply by the scale of the renderings the conceptual idea was completely unrealistic. How no one questioned this I don't get it. Selser Schaefer did this on the Jenks Main Street RFP too with a bunch of fancy renderings of a building, streetscape, etc. that was completely unrealistic to build for the construction budget that went along with it. Helped them win that RFP for that developer too and that project is going to see major reworking to make it financially work as I've heard the developer is really struggling to make that happen. I do have a big issue with architects who sell renderings and things like that on public projects that are very misleading. It's a pattern with them for sure including Santa Fe Square and they've used those renderings to get tax incentives, etc. and then look what Santa Fe's office building looks like now? At some point I hope people catch on to what they do with projects so we can stop awarding RFPs to developers who don't submit more realistic expectations/ideas for sites. The selection committee should have to answer more detailed questions about this too but no one is ever held accountable for terrible decision making on things like this in Tulsa. Hopefully the other finalist is given a chance to see if they can make their project work.

[SXSW]

I loved the Selser Schaefer proposal.  The site needs something iconic.  Maybe the City should increase its subsidy?

[TheArtist]

It's a bum location. I wouldn't put anything in there even if someone else totally paid for it. Whatever business went in after the building was built, would fail. Not enough through traffic, can't put much else around it to grow more of an attraction there over time, difficult to get to even when seen from nearby roads and would have to really stand out to be noticed enough for anyone to pay attention to begin with, not near enough to anything else for someone to want to stay at it as a hotel walking distance wise, etc. It would have to be a publicly funded enterprise surviving on donations and taxpayer dollars, whatever went in there because a for profit one could not make it, nor would want to try as other locations are better/easier. For profit business is tough and competitive as it is, you don't need to choose a location like this just to make yourself have even more of a "challenge". Thats absurd. And a tourist spot doesn't need that either! This is NOT a good location. Who thinks of this stuff? 

[SXSW]

It's a bum location. I wouldn't put anything in there even if someone else totally paid for it. Whatever business went in after the building was built, would fail. Not enough through traffic, can't put much else around it to grow more of an attraction there over time, difficult to get to even when seen from nearby roads and would have to really stand out to be noticed enough for anyone to pay attention to begin with, not near enough to anything else for someone to want to stay at it as a hotel walking distance wise, etc. It would have to be a publicly funded enterprise surviving on donations and taxpayer dollars, whatever went in there because a for profit one could not make it, nor would want to try as other locations are better/easier. For profit business is tough and competitive as it is, you don't need to choose a location like this just to make yourself have even more of a "challenge". Thats absurd. And a tourist spot doesn't need that either! This is NOT a good location. Who thinks of this stuff?  

I think it's a good location for housing overlooking the river/near downtown and walking distance to the emerging Medical District.  So in that sense it is a good location.  But agree for any kind of retail enterprise it's not the best location.  I would like to see any kind of Route 66 museum/interpretive center take the over the Meadow Gold site at 11th & Quaker; the City of Tulsa already owns that site and could acquire the adjacent parking lot from Group M to demolish the podium building, temporarily relocate the sign and build a new museum building that fronts the street with the sign on top.  That area already see a good amount of foot traffic during the day with Decopolis, Buck Atom's, Jane's, Wildflower and several other businesses.  Much better use of the city Rt 66 funds IMO.  And while they're at it improve the streetscape along 11th.