quote:
Originally posted by Floyd
Chuck Lamson apparently ruled out the Tulsa river site for the Drillers. It's either Jenks by the river or downtown.
As for Tulsa Landing, those developers wanted a land handout in exchange for putting in the lifestyle center. My guess is that they're waiting on the next handout and will be right back on board when we're ready to give it to them. I would also guess that Mayor Taylor is waiting a while for passions to significantly fade before wading back into river development (pun intended). It's going to take a TIF at minimum.
And in my opinion, making sure downtown devlopment is on pace should be a higher priority than developing the Tulsa portion of the river. The City might be waiting to see what comes of the land parcel package downtown before trying again to give away the river real estate.
I share your frustration with all the secrecy, but sometimes that's the only way to get parties to come to the table.
I have no inside 411 so this is total, wild speculation on my part:
As soon as the city consolidtates their engineering department at OneTech and maintenance moves to the old Tulsa Airpark, there's going to be good size parcel of land available on the SOUTH side of the 21st St. bridge which the city owns now and will need to do something with.
A sizeable component (18%, that's sizeable when you consider how many miles of improvement were to take place) of the river tax was someone on the inside trying to grease someone else's pockets on the concrete plant land. How else can anyone explain the major escalation in value on that parcel in one year between the channels and the RTP?
I'm speculating that for cost of demo and a $1 per year lease, there will be an M.U.D. on the COT M & E base.
Of course, that is without me taking into full consideration what all the city's legal obligations are with existing properties to be shuttered with the consolidation at OT. Assuming TDA or another entity takes it over, that's what I would envision unless there were provisions under the financing of th OT purchase which would preclude that.
Based on the success of that, later there will be a private transaction for the concrete plant by a developer with money to do their own deal.
