Santa Fe Square on the big surface parking lot in the Blue Dome...

[DowntownDan]

I used to walk by that terrace from the skybridge and always thought it was a wasted space. I don't work in that building anymore but the bank also seemed liked wasted space. I'll need to walk through sometime to see the changes, out of curiosity.

[Jeff P]

Nice!  Thanks for the update.  Are they making changes in the resource center/former Forum also?

I don't think so. That's all still office space. I have heard they are wanting to bring back some more retail into the area where Hallmark and Stems used to be, but haven't heard any announcements on that yet.

Also I don't recall what they've said they're going to do with the original "cafeteria" type area on the lower level.  Because once they finish with the "lounge/terrace" area, they are converting the area directly to the west (used to be a Level 3/CenturyLink/whatever server farm) into a new "food hall."

The Lounge Area/Terrace are supposed to be done this fall, and the food hall after that.

Here are some renderings:

Lounge area (area that used to be BOK tellers):


Terrace external view:


Terrace:


Food hall:

[DowntownDan]

That looks great. I wish they had done that when I still worked in the building.

[Oil Capital]

I don't think so. That's all still office space. I have heard they are wanting to bring back some more retail into the area where Hallmark and Stems used to be, but haven't heard any announcements on that yet.

Also I don't recall what they've said they're going to do with the original "cafeteria" type area on the lower level.  Because once they finish with the "lounge/terrace" area, they are converting the area directly to the west (used to be a Level 3/CenturyLink/whatever server farm) into a new "food hall."

The Lounge Area/Terrace are supposed to be done this fall, and the food hall after that.

Interesting.  I was asking about the Resource Center because someone recently posted that Williams was moving people from the Resource Center back in to the Tower.  As an aside, I always thought that was a very odd location for a server farm...

[Jeff P]

Interesting.  I was asking about the Resource Center because someone recently posted that Williams was moving people from the Resource Center back in to the Tower.  As an aside, I always thought that was a very odd location for a server farm...

I don't know of any broad initiative to move all or most of the employees in the Resource Center to the tower, but we are constantly shuffling people around, so it's very possible that some random people or groups moved from WRC to the tower.

Obviously with WPX floors coming open we could be doing some more shuffling around, depending on whatever potential new tenant(s) would fill that space. 

I will say that the Resource Center seems like it would be a lot tougher to "partial out" into non-Williams tenants.  The way it's configured now, you'd need one tenant to take either the entire 2nd or 3rd floor... and even then it would be tricky because there is a huge open staircase between the two floors and it's a totally open floor plan so would be tough, from a security standpoint.

[DowntownDan]

I know it's been mentioned before, but I would love to see the streets reconnected through or around the Hyatt and Resource Center. It's probably prohibitively expensive, but I hate that the blocks are cut off. I otherwise don't know what the resource center could be used for. I think there might be a market for a shopping mall type retail center, but I would much prefer it be grown organically in some of the ground floors in the CBD, like in the past (the Philcade was originally a shopping market on the ground floor I think).

[SXSW]

I know it's been mentioned before, but I would love to see the streets reconnected through or around the Hyatt and Resource Center. It's probably prohibitively expensive, but I hate that the blocks are cut off. I otherwise don't know what the resource center could be used for. I think there might be a market for a shopping mall type retail center, but I would much prefer it be grown organically in some of the ground floors in the CBD, like in the past (the Philcade was originally a shopping market on the ground floor I think).

Reconnecting Main would be amazing for downtown connectivity.  I would assume Williams already owns the parking lot to the west of the Resource Center so if they decided to redevelop that whole block it could make sense to tear down the Resource Center and have frontage on Main and Boulder.  The section between 2nd and 3rd is more difficult with the Hyatt in the way.

[TulsaBeMore]

Reconnecting Main would be amazing for downtown connectivity.  I would assume Williams already owns the parking lot to the west of the Resource Center so if they decided to redevelop that whole block it could make sense to tear down the Resource Center and have frontage on Main and Boulder.  The section between 2nd and 3rd is more difficult with the Hyatt in the way.

I'd like to see them reconfigure the Hyatt site on 3rd street ---- make Samson Plaza a proper main drive entrance to the hotel and a green space.  It was always a hotel without a front door to me.  Not sure how you'd get Main opened to 2nd street without taking down a lot of building.  To make a proper hotel entrance, they may have to build up a floor or two to stack meeting space. 

Totally off topic --- back when it was a Western International Hotel (pre Westin) I was a kid and they had an area in the upstairs lobby with brochures for all the other Western International Hotels.  I got one or two of each... maybe 20-30 hotels?  They were slick and expensive feeling then --- I doubt they could afford them now.  They may still be in a box somewhere in storage.           

[tulsabug]

Interesting.  I was asking about the Resource Center because someone recently posted that Williams was moving people from the Resource Center back in to the Tower.  As an aside, I always thought that was a very odd location for a server farm...

Unless I'm getting turned around in my head (which happens a lot), that little area to the west used to be the Vyvx NOC with the Video Services area right by it before we moved into the ice cube. If so it would make sense to use the area as a server farm since fiber and such was already run throughout it.

[DTowner]

^Yes, it will be interesting to see what happens to it now after the final revisions. It has gone through one round of value engineering and reconfiguring already, and I'm not sure the final round will do it any favors given the pressure on the market. Then again, it depends on what foundational clients they have. Landing Magellan could elevate the status of the whole property, plus the fact that it truly is some of the best real estate in the downtown area. I still wish they were building that curved building across from Blue Dome though.

With the dramatic material cost increases this past year, this building is likely being reengineered (again) to cut out more costs.  If this building gets built, I fear it will be a Cimarex-like disappointment compared to any of the prior renderings, and the renderings themselves represent an ongoing series of lowering expectations. 

[SXSW]

With the dramatic material cost increases this past year, this building is likely being reengineered (again) to cut out more costs.  If this building gets built, I fear it will be a Cimarex-like disappointment compared to any of the prior renderings, and the renderings themselves represent an ongoing series of lowering expectations. 

From what I've heard the apartment portion will be mostly brick similar to The View.  Not ground breaking architecture by any means but solid infill in an area that sorely needs it.

[swake]

With the dramatic material cost increases this past year, this building is likely being reengineered (again) to cut out more costs.  If this building gets built, I fear it will be a Cimarex-like disappointment compared to any of the prior renderings, and the renderings themselves represent an ongoing series of lowering expectations. 

I doubt it will be that bad. I will expect that most or all the retail will not be built at this time.

[LandArchPoke]

I doubt it will be that bad. I will expect that most or all the retail will not be built at this time.

Building the retail will be unavailable if they plan to include it. If they don't include it then it will never be there. The only part they might not build out is where the theater was planned, but anything that has something vertical above it they're going to have to at least build out the shell space in the process.

With the dramatic material cost increases this past year, this building is likely being reengineered (again) to cut out more costs.  If this building gets built, I fear it will be a Cimarex-like disappointment compared to any of the prior renderings, and the renderings themselves represent an ongoing series of lowering expectations. 

Lumber is the main material cost that is creating issues. That won't impact the finishes on the office portion which will be steel and concrete then whatever facade they choose.

Cimarex was a really unique situation. They were originally in the One Gas building and Kanbar at that point was a mess and they pissed off a lot of tenants. Thankfully Price is a much better ownership group now that Kanbar is gone. Cimarex had been attempting to renew there for several years and it got to the point they said F it we'll go elsewhere. Well at that point the vacancy rate downtown in occupy-able space (excluding older obsolete buildings and building not owned by Kanbar) was about 1%. The only option was to build new. Well Cimarex is cheap, to put it nicely. They basically said we need this amount of space and we refuse to pay more than $20.00 sq. ft. - so the developer did it, well when you're building new with that amount of income on an urban site you get a POS building. So it was either that or Cimarex was going to close their Tulsa office. The developer frankly made the building as nice as they could given the economics of that deal. Hopefully some day in the future someone will buy that building and pull the facade off and replace it with glass or maybe add some detailing. As long as Cimarex is the tenant that won't happen though.

So, unless the Santa Fe deal signs an anchor tenant at $20.00 or below it won't look as bad as Cimarex and shouldn't be value engineered much beyond that last set of renderings. The size of the TIF will help some too hopefully to at least make the street level higher quality. Really that the important part, if the street level is built out shitty it will be a complete failure of a project given how it connects so many districts together. It could be ugly from floors 3 and up and you'll never notice it outside of an aerial picture if the street level is done right. That's another reason the Cimarex building is such a failure is because the street level was done so poorly with pedestrian access to the retail space.

[tulsabug]

With the dramatic material cost increases this past year, this building is likely being reengineered (again) to cut out more costs.  If this building gets built, I fear it will be a Cimarex-like disappointment compared to any of the prior renderings, and the renderings themselves represent an ongoing series of lowering expectations. 

Welp - there goes the Sandwich bar.

[Tulsan]

I doubt it will be that bad. I will expect that most or all the retail will not be built at this time.

I was told there would still be retail but didn't hear anything else on possible redesign.