Simon Outlet Mall 61st & Hwy 75

[patric]

how would you feel if a bunch of complete strangers told you what you can/can't do with the land you own? People that may live no where close to your land?

You mean like a foreign government seizing my land so they can build a pipeline to sell oil to China?

[cynical]

There are many reasons why a landowner won't actively pursue sale of the property. We have a number of examples downtown of investor/owners sitting on property waiting on The Next Big Thing. The owner of the red building north of El Guapo's still sits on it, doing nothing but paying taxes, even after the Next Big Thing happened around him. And while it is true that no one has proposed that the city or county condemn the property, almost everyone in this conversation has proposed rejecting every use of the property that is inconsistent with recreational use without any meaningful vehicle for compensating the landowner for the useful value of its property.

Hence the city's (or the county's) involvement. Remember the three elements for an inverse condemnation:

1. An entity with the power of eminent domain;
2. "Takes" the property;
3. For public use.

The reason the mountain bikers can't take up a collection and hand $3.2 million to the owner and close a deal is that the mountain bikers, even if organized into a corporation, do not have the legal power to force the owner to sell. While everyone may have their price, no one can be forced to sell. The power of eminent domain is an attribute of sovereignty. As the sovereign, the state has that power and can, in certain cases defined by statute, delegate that power to other entities. So cities, counties, railroads, public utilities, etc, have the power by statute. Mountain biking clubs don't. Nor does the Sierra Club. Nor do I. The city or the county could clearly take this property for park purposes. The question here is can the government force the landowner to preserve undeveloped land in its present condition without paying compensation.

So those of us who lack the power of eminent domain sit in the stands and cheer for one side or the other without much of a way to directly influence the outcome. The protesters have taken the only route open to them - collective political action. That is as it should be, but with one caveat. The existence of political pressure to preserve this property as it is doesn't immunize the zoning authority from liability for essentially taking the property for public use without just compensation. The public officials involved in the decision are caught between the economic reality that the community as a whole won't support acquisition of the property for its fair market value, but the activists don't really care about that. Their goal is preservation. Compensation is at most an afterthought, as it has been in this discussion, when it should have always been a part of the equation.

That's an interesting metric.  They do know 11,000 cars per week pass into the lower lot.  Even if you did it as a per car charge of $5 and assuming the fee did not knock down usage (judging by how many people show up every weekend now, I doubt a user fee would kill it that much) it would pay out in about 58 weeks.

However, that's not a practical approach if the land were to be taken out of play for future development, assuming Simon walks away.  I'm rather surprised the owners of the property never made overtures to RPA or the Y about some sort of seller financing ever since their developer walked away in 2008 from the office park concept.  I'm probably even more confused as to why users of the trails back then didn't coalesce and form a group to buy it once that went away.

A good number of runners, equestrians, hikers, and mountain bikers are professionals, not broke college kids looking for a freebie.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Would you PLEASE read cynical's post on this.

I read it thoroughly.  It was and is a good post - covered a lot of ground.  I even commented on it a moment later - and I quote;

It is a good post.  As others have said, no one has said to just take without paying.  No one has stepped up to buy, though.  Maybe we are all waiting on Kaiser to do that...?



I was agreeing with you (at least in part)....and in that following note, reinforced what you were saying about buying the place rather than just moaning and groaning about it's potential use.  We gotta get you out of lawyering and into some sunshine and fresh air....catch up on making Vitamin D, and all that jazz.

[Conan71]

Zoning application is now online:

http://www.tmapc.org/Documents/PRC/02-19-15/Z-7296_Z-7296-SP-1.pdf

According to the application it does require re-zoning the CS, OL, and AG zoning presently on tracts on the property to CO.

Simon has included a few promising-looking things in trying to mitigate their presence:

-35' lighting standards which will direct lighting away from the north and east properties and direct it to the ground (no mention of efforts to shield it from the west and south)

-Trails and trail access in their development buffer zone.

I'm not really sure why an outlet mall would ask for a max building height of 85' that seems odd unless they are thinking of adding a hotel on sight.  Main sign along 75 is 90' tall and 600 square feet.

They also will provide no screening to mitigate the sight lines from any angle other than to protect their customers from seeing the backs of their buildings.

Primary ingress/egress is a single point on 61st St.  They have an emergency ingress/egress point on the west side of the property.  The site plan shows a widened 61st St. bridge as well as road widening to their main property entrance.  There will be a "circulator" street in the project itself.  They show no improvements to Hwy 75, it would still be four lanes with the cloverleaf access at I-44 "as-is".  There were rumors of a frontage road parallel to the west side of the property to somehow connect to I-44 which made no sense in the first place.

This traffic arrangement, without further explanation is insufficient for the volume of traffic they will create, IMO.  If they have no plans to improve the road and bridge (best intel says the city pays for the street, ODOT for the bridge and neither are on the drawing board at either entity any time soon) then you have major traffic headaches.

There is no mention in the application as to when the road and bridge would be widened and who would have to pay for that.  Their sanitary sewer plan  also shows needing a right of way from west to east on the Y property.  I wonder how the Y feels about that?

[guido911]

You mean like a foreign government seizing my land so they can build a pipeline to sell oil to China?

Yeah. Exactly like that. 

[Red Arrow]

Primary ingress/egress is a single point on 61st St.  They have an emergency ingress/egress point on the west side of the property.

That should be enough to stop them without other issues.

[Conan71]

That should be enough to stop them without other issues.

It would appear not, otherwise, I think they would have submitted another way.  Other mall developments I've studied have multiple access points.  Heck even Woodland Hills is a good example with several points of ingress/egress, though all the extra pad development which came along in subsequent years makes it compare like apples to oranges.

[Red Arrow]

It would appear not, otherwise, I think they would have submitted another way.  Other mall developments I've studied have multiple access points.  Heck even Woodland Hills is a good example with several points of ingress/egress, though all the extra pad development which came along in subsequent years makes it compare like apples to oranges.

Big difference between "should" and "would".

[Red Arrow]

I was thinking of offering a tax break to keep the area open.  But.... with a fair market value of $1980 for a bit over 52 acres and only $24 in tax (according to the Tulsa County Tax site), I don't think that would be a motivator.

[dbacksfan 2.0]

That should be enough to stop them without other issues.

The outlet mall at Anthem north of Phoenix is close size wise to what Simon is proposing and for many years had a single entrance/exit without issue since the early 90's. They recently, about 7 years ago added another entrance/exit after the development of the neighborhood to the west.

Simon proposed 350,000 sqft
Anthem 293,000 sqft.

http://www.craigrealtygroup.com/outlet-center/anthem-1003

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.873216,-112.1486941,710m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

[Conan71]

I was thinking of offering a tax break to keep the area open.  But.... with a fair market value of $1980 for a bit over 52 acres and only $24 in tax (according to the Tulsa County Tax site), I don't think that would be a motivator.

That's basically lunch for four at Bill & Ruth's.   

[ZYX]

Wow, that parcel is bigger than I thought it was.

Having read the proposal, nothing really seems out of the ordinary. Although, I'm a bit confused as to what exactly the buffer zone (the area outside the red dashed line in the site plan that Conan posted above) will be. It seems as though they'll have to do too much leveling of the property to leave that area as is. "Buffer zone" is a very vague term and doesn't indicate much about what they plan to do.

I did not see in the application how they plan to deal with runoff. Considering the amount of soil that would be covered with asphalt, that is going to be a major issue. Where will all the water empty into?

Traffic in that area will be incredibly bad should this development be realized. Turning left off of highway 75 onto 61st street can already be challenging during peak hours as it is. It would become all but impossible with an outlet mall there. I believe Conan said earlier that the developers did a study that concluded that an outlet mall would add about 60 cars per minute to current traffic in the area. That cannot happen with the current infrastructure. Traffic on highway 75 would likely be impacted in both directions during peak shopping hours due to a high number of people exiting the highway and then having a hard time turning onto 61st street. I would expect a significant uptick in accidents.

When does this go before the city? I'm interested to see what TMAPC has to say.

[SXSW]

I don't see how this can be feasible with the infrastructure improvements needed (and not presently funded) and the major site work required there not to mention the subsurface is all rock.  How much will the city be on the hook to make this work?  I want that disclosed.

[rdj]

That's basically lunch for four at Bill & Ruth's.   

No sushi though.  Just sandwiches, chips and water cups.

[heironymouspasparagus]

I did not see in the application how they plan to deal with runoff. Considering the amount of soil that would be covered with asphalt, that is going to be a major issue. Where will all the water empty into?

It's all headed to the Arkansas.  Maybe this is the justification needed for a dam...catch the Simon runoff and fill the river!  Except for that whole drought thing we are going through the last few years....