South Utica 6th-11th street

[titan43112]

I drove by and saw the completed Pediatric Dental Group building at 6th and Utica and was very impressed. A very interesting design that really stands out from everything else in that area. My question is, is Utica from 6th to 11th part of the pearl's redevelopment? It seems that there is a reasonable amount of unused property that could be redeveloped to kind of fill in between Hillcrest and PDG. Thoughts?

[OurTulsa]

That stretch of Utica is within the Pearl boundary and they hope at least the west side of Utica will be included in their Form Based Code soon.  I've seen that dentist office and while it's good to have new energy and development in this area the building is in many ways out of sorts with the pattern proposed with the Form Based Code.

The building should have been pushed to the corner more than one story in height wrapped with a generous sidewalk environment.  The parking area should have been relegated to the back and screened from view.  While it's nice now I think it will stick out like a sore thumb in time (how much time - don't know)... 

Car oriented design will not help bring back the City and unfortunately unless we require a relegation of the auto environment typical business owners and developers are not going to risk going against convention - regardless of a collective desire to create pedestrian orientation and urbanity fact is the vast majority of our population drives and toward that mode is how convention will develop until required otherwise.

The Pearl is counting on the The Form Based Code to help alter conventional design