Williams closing OKC Office, hundreds of Jobs to Tulsa

[TheArtist]

They actually walk down Boston Ave. every day to eat lunch in the Deco District daily. Tons of them. Not sure why you're being condescending. Additional 400 jobs in fantastic news for the district.

I am quite happy we are getting the additional jobs! I was just pointing out my observations. You know what. I think I am going to see about getting us some pedestrian counts for a few spots in our area this coming year so we can tell how many people on average, per day/hour go down some of the streets around us. That way we can see just what this "tons" of people actually is.

[heironymouspasparagus]

I am quite happy we are getting the additional jobs! I was just pointing out my observations. You know what. I think I am going to see about getting us some pedestrian counts for a few spots in our area this coming year so we can tell how many people on average, per day/hour go down some of the streets around us. That way we can see just what this "tons" of people actually is.

Are pedestrian counts something that city does?  And I would guess then make available to businesses...??  How do they do that?   Set up a camera and just actually count with some "people identification" software?

[TheArtist]

Are pedestrian counts something that city does?  And I would guess then make available to businesses...??  How do they do that?   Set up a camera and just actually count with some "people identification" software?

Yes, sometimes cities do them but often the city merely assists groups of volunteers to do them.  A group like Tulsa's Typros for example.  There are organizations that can help your group do them with instruction manuals/videos etc. and there are sample "count sheets" and other materials.  It's basically just a group of people going out and doing it, nothing too high tech.  

Yes the city would often make them available to businesses in order to help attract retail to an area and they can be used by the city to track trends, help planning and infrastructure projects, etc.

I have thrown the idea out several times and lets just say it was mentioned to me "in the hallways" afterwards, that they don't wan't to do them, well, because the city would look bad and we have a better chance of attracting businesses without them knowing the "truth" of where we are currently.

Frankly I think businesses know where we are they can simply look and see how poor our pedestrian traffic is, its pretty durned obvious lol.  But I think there is value in doing the numbers to force the city to look at the reality of it, and take steps to make things better versus burying our heads in the sand, looking the other way and going about business as usual.  Plus, if anything we will be able to at least show growth trajectories "We were here a couple years ago, we are here now." and that could be positive.

Sadly, whats likely to happen is that we will get this next wave of development, then in a few years everyone will see that things haven't improved much pedestrian wise and retail will still struggle and THEN there will be enough of an urgency to finally face reality and do something.  Basically we could have been doing things 5 years ago that we will instead be starting to do 5 years from now, in a much less flexible and more difficult development situation.    

[TulsaGoldenHurriCAN]

Yeah, we sill have a long way to go. However, downtown is far better today than it was 10 years ago and far better than 5 years ago. I thought it was doing pretty good 5 years ago, but if you do a street-view around Brady or Blue Dome, it was a ghost town, empty streets. So now we're past the ghost town stage and into the inhabited, but not densely stage.

I went to the Boxyard. It looks really neat. It is ambitious. I hope Tulsans support it and the owners market it in ways to bring out Tulsans from all over. Midtown/downtown junkies can't keep everything up and going. It sounds like they're already a bit surprised at the lack of foot traffic there so far. The cold weather might be keeping people in, but looks like downtown is still not a holiday shopping destination. And on weeknights, besides the big-name established places, most places are pretty sparse. Perhaps new places have been opening faster than demand will keep up with on weekdays. It goes back to Tulsans not supporting their urban core. Many blame it on parking too (a non-issue). Seems cultural. Woodland and many other suburban auto-centric places are always packed out this time of year. Even though you walk much further in Woodland than downtown, the perceived inconvenience of going downtown is exceeding the benefit for most people while it's only weekends where parking gets somewhat tough compared to elsewhere (still easy though). Hopefully Santa Fe will change that (1300 spaces, massive shopping area, surrounded by existing local eats and bars).

Box yard is a good step to make downtown a destination though. If we have to wait until Santa Fe Square gets built to become a real shopping area, that would be bad for downtown. Most of the Boxyard shops will be long gone by then if that's the case. Boxyard really should have worked harder to open in the fall (now is a terrible time to open and outdoor-centric shopping mall). They had originally planned to open summer 2016.

They open Saturday so I plan to check it out, support it and hope it goes well!