51 Yale - Mixed use development

[sgrizzle]

By "mixed" they mean two hotels, retail and restaurant, but this is an improvement over the vacant Don Pablos and Celebration Station. Also sounds like the existing Denny's and Hotel may be gone.

http://www.journalrecord.com/article.cfm?recid=89253

quote:
OKC, Edmond developers plan Tulsa hotel complex
May 28, 2008
TULSA – Champion Hotel Development of Oklahoma City and Tapp Development of Edmond have teamed up to build two five-story hotels and a two-story office complex in a new retail project along Tulsa's broadened Interstate 44.
Called 51Yale, the joint venture promises the first new hotel construction in more than two decades along that busy section of interstate, said Mike Craddock, the Tulsa managing broker of HotelBrokerOne and president-elect of the Oklahoma Association of Realtors.
51Yale also offers seven pads for lease to restaurant and small retail development at Yale and E. Skelly Drive, the former locations of Don Pablo's Mexican restaurant, the Celebration Station restaurant, and two other properties.
"We're in conversations with multiple restaurant uses for that site," said Tapp President and Chief Operating Officer Jim Tapp. "I would expect one of the two hotels under construction by the end of the year and some of the restaurants by the end of the year."
The 17.36-acre, doughnut-shaped site sits along the key entryway corridor to S. Yale Avenue's large office and health care clusters. One parcel promises 12,000 square feet of upscale retail space. Another features the 29,622-square-foot office site.
"That little L-shaped building in itself is going to be a neat deal," said Tapp, describing its high-end mixture of office, retail and restaurant. "You don't see a lot of that in Tulsa."
Site plans indicate Tapp and Champion – the development arm of hotel investor Champ Patel – plan to raise a 137,754-square-foot hotel with 104 rooms and a 113,550-square-foot hotel with 117 rooms. Both will boast an indoor pool and three meeting rooms.
Tapp identified one hotel as a Residence Inn. The other awaits brand approval.
Workers have started demolition of the Don Pablo's to clear the 51Yale site, which encircles but does not involve Tulsa's lone Baymont Inn.
While outparcel construction will depend on pre-leasing successes and regulatory approvals, Tapp said 51Yale also will involve some speculative construction. He said developers have enjoyed strong pre-leasing interest.
"All of the vertical improvements ... all of that will be in phase-one demolition," said Tapp, with Crafton Tull Sparks overseeing engineering needs. "Our next phase of engineer drawing includes the Residence Inn footprint and the site requirement. I expect that to take 90 to 120 days."
Some observers projected the total construction cost at more than $20 million.
"It would exceed that by a long shot," said Tapp, who said it would be premature to estimate such factors. "The two hotels would achieve that."
Tulsa County Courthouse records show Sunny Investment Properties LLC, identified as a Patel company, paid $3.5 million earlier this year for the former Celebration Station site. The developers gave $1.6 million for the Don Pablo's site.
Craddock said completing construction early next year could give 51Yale an advantage over other hospitality properties along the interstate, which is in midst of an extended widening.
Several existing hotels have started or completed multimillion-dollar renovations along the I-44 corridor, including the Holiday Inn Select at Yale and the Embassy Suites at the hospitality cluster bordering the interstate's intersection with State Highway 51.
"The Yale exit already has been remodeled or reconfigured, so he will not have to deal with that interchange road construction, unlike the other hotels to the west, which will have to deal with construction of the highway," said Craddock. "Plus, there will be four hotels taken out by the widening of I-44, so you do have a supply of hotels being taken out and newer rooms added. They'll be the latest and greatest brands within the marketplace."
Those four hotels – the Tower, Ramada, Howard Johnsons and Victorian Inn – together contribute about 200 rooms to the 13,000-room Tulsa market, which ended 2007 with a 61-percent occupancy rate.
Craddock suggested this construction could be the first of many hospitality projects along this widening traffic lane.
"If you take that corridor back east to the river, your newest product there is a minimum of 24 years old," he said. "That was the main corridor through Tulsa and where some of the first properties were built in Tulsa. So with the redevelopment of the highway you're definitely going to see an urban renewal of commercial sites."

[TheArtist]

Seems like an improvement over all. Adds a little more height and density to the area. Nothing to write home about, but an improvement none the less.

[safetyguy]

Seems to me that they are capatilizing at the right time since a couple of hotels will be lost due to 44's construction.

Residence Innappears to be one of the hotels coming.

[RecycleMichael]

Speaking as a guy who has spent over a thousand nights in a hotel in the last fifteen years, this is good.

New hotels in the mid-price range are way better than old hotels.

[T-TownMike]

This is great news. Anybody know how tall the new buildings will be?

[OKC_Shane]

I had to double check to make sure they didn't mean "TAP Architecture" of OKC rather than Tapp of Edmond, but they meant Tapp. I looked at their website to see if I could find renderings of this Tulsa project but no such luck. Their previous office developments all seem to be "garden offices" (crappy single family home style buildings) but from the article this one sounds like an actual office building.

The term "Mixed Use" is really overused and developers have used the desirability of a "mixed use project" to market anything that includes both a hotel and office or retail space.