WPX Downtown HQ

[patric]

This site's closet competition would be the Reasor's on 15th which is awful - like legitimate gross. It's a shame they didn't just close that store and build a flagship downtown.

That location runs a close second to the one at 41st & 109th E. Ave.

[DowntownDan]

Not trying to be rude here,

But do you mean like the Arco Building, Reunion Building, Sinclair Building, Oil Capital Lofts, Adams Lofts, 111 Lofts, Jacobs Lofts, The Meridia, YMCA Lofts, Transok Lofts, East End Village, Harrington's Lofts, Vandever Lofts, Robinson Packer Lofts, Bedcheck Building, 420 Mayo, Mayo Hotel, Philtower Lofts, Tribune Building...



I mean, Tulsa is actually doing very well on this front.

Like someone else said, enough that it meets whatever "critical mass" is required for whatever formula grocery stores, pharmacies, dry cleaners, etc. need, and enough to where you see people walking around at all different times of day, in different parts of downtown, and between them. We started from almost zero residential downtown less than 20 years ago, so listing them all is great, and needs to continue at a high pace for what I would like to see as a legit residential neighborhood.

[LandArchPoke]

Lol! Not to take this off-topic but are we talking design or health code violations - please elaborate.

100% building/design. Not too sure health code isn't an issue there either - it's not somewhere I'd buy anything from without looking at expiration dates I'll just say that. I'd make the trip to Brookside to go to the nicer one.

I can't imagine the 15th Street one won't be renovated sooner than later or they'll find another location for it. They just finished the reno's at 71st and Sheridan not too long ago and it's nice as well, so they're slowly doing them. Wouldn't be surprised if 15th is going to have something done after they finish the new store in BA at 121st/Creek. The area around the 15th store has changed dramatically in the last 5 years and has a ton of new higher income/college educated residents than it used too given the influx of people into Florence Park, TU area, Pearl District.

Developers have ran out of good/reasonable lots in midtown. I'm starting to see a lot more tear downs even East of TU and tear downs starting to happen southeast of I-44 and northwest of Woodland Hills. It's interesting to watch how that's slowly progressing out from the core of midtown the last 10 years. There's very little opportunity in Florence Park, etc. either so it's moving more and more east and north and then southeast. The area east of Southern Hills and north/west of Woodland Hills I think will be a huge tear down and rebuild market in the next 5-10 years. Could eventually lead to the revitalization of places like The Farm, etc. This has already been a hot area for apartment investors to buy up lower end complexes and renovate them so it's an area not many are talking about that I think is just at the beginning of a big wave of redevelopment. 

[swake]

100% building/design. Not too sure health code isn't an issue there either - it's not somewhere I'd buy anything from without looking at expiration dates I'll just say that. I'd make the trip to Brookside to go to the nicer one.

I can't imagine the 15th Street one won't be renovated sooner than later or they'll find another location for it. They just finished the reno's at 71st and Sheridan not too long ago and it's nice as well, so they're slowly doing them. Wouldn't be surprised if 15th is going to have something done after they finish the new store in BA at 121st/Creek. The area around the 15th store has changed dramatically in the last 5 years and has a ton of new higher income/college educated residents than it used too given the influx of people into Florence Park, TU area, Pearl District.

Developers have ran out of good/reasonable lots in midtown. I'm starting to see a lot more tear downs even East of TU and tear downs starting to happen southeast of I-44 and northwest of Woodland Hills. It's interesting to watch how that's slowly progressing out from the core of midtown the last 10 years. There's very little opportunity in Florence Park, etc. either so it's moving more and more east and north and then southeast. The area east of Southern Hills and north/west of Woodland Hills I think will be a huge tear down and rebuild market in the next 5-10 years. Could eventually lead to the revitalization of places like The Farm, etc. This has already been a hot area for apartment investors to buy up lower end complexes and renovate them so it's an area not many are talking about that I think is just at the beginning of a big wave of redevelopment. 

If you cut the front off that building and redid that it would likely be fine, the rest is just a box.

[LandArchPoke]

If you cut the front off that building and redid that it would likely be fine, the rest is just a box.

The interior still needs a considerable amount done - but that is essentially all they do to the stores is redo the facade and redo the flooring, lighting, and shelving inside. It is just a box so it's not that complicated to do on the interior a lot of it is just reconfiguration of the layouts - given the age of the building the mechanical systems likely need to be upgraded in the process too to support better freezes, refrigerators, deli/bakery, etc. I don't think Reasor's owns the 15th Street location so question is are the landlords up to negotiations to allow them to do it or will they have to find another location to move the store. Most retail landlords will do just about anything and everything to keep grocer tenants post Covid so my guess is they'll figure out a way to renovate that store at some point.

[swake]

The interior still needs a considerable amount done - but that is essentially all they do to the stores is redo the facade and redo the flooring, lighting, and shelving inside. It is just a box so it's not that complicated to do on the interior a lot of it is just reconfiguration of the layouts - given the age of the building the mechanical systems likely need to be upgraded in the process too to support better freezes, refrigerators, deli/bakery, etc. I don't think Reasor's owns the 15th Street location so question is are the landlords up to negotiations to allow them to do it or will they have to find another location to move the store. Most retail landlords will do just about anything and everything to keep grocer tenants post Covid so my guess is they'll figure out a way to renovate that store at some point.

I get that, I was talking about your bad design comment, the entrance/front of store design of that building is the part this is so awful.

[DowntownDan]

I frequent 15th and Lewis and it's fine, just not as fancy as Brookside. They've redone some things to make it better over the years, and I hope there is a plan to make it similar to the Brookside location. It seems like the footprint is much smaller, but could easily be expanded, it's not like there's a lack of room in the parking lot. It really should be equally as important as Brookside for a marque store.

[ComeOnBenjals]

At least lately it seems some of these lateral moves have really pushed some of the legacy Tulsa ownership groups to get serious about redevelopment. Cimarex was what broke Kanbar and got him to sell out to Price and now that tower is 90%+ occupied along with a lot of that portfolio redeveloped too. The main ownership of the Boulder Towers are the people behind Santa Fe Square's office building. I can't imagine they'll let that property just die - they'll either do some renovations or sell it to someone who will reposition it.

Just as an example of the office shuffling being a net positive for downtown: Matrix Service Company just moved their headquarters from Meridian Tower at 51st and Skelly to the FirstPlace Tower. They're taking up 3 floors with about 125-150 people. The more the merrier downtown, business and residential are both great!   

[tulsabug]

100% building/design. Not too sure health code isn't an issue there either - it's not somewhere I'd buy anything from without looking at expiration dates I'll just say that. I'd make the trip to Brookside to go to the nicer one.

I can't imagine the 15th Street one won't be renovated sooner than later or they'll find another location for it. They just finished the reno's at 71st and Sheridan not too long ago and it's nice as well, so they're slowly doing them. Wouldn't be surprised if 15th is going to have something done after they finish the new store in BA at 121st/Creek. The area around the 15th store has changed dramatically in the last 5 years and has a ton of new higher income/college educated residents than it used too given the influx of people into Florence Park, TU area, Pearl District.

I wish they would renovate the 21st and Yale location - that one gets completely neglected. It seems when another location gets new fixtures or carts, the 21st and Yale store gets the hand-me-downs. The 15th one as a whole has it's pros and cons - I agree a better design is needed. It's just such a small store and the selection is terrible. The 21st and Yale is great for size and selection, but the building and design inside is barely a step above Warehouse Market. They can't even get the new Reasors logo on their signage.

I agree on the expiration dates - both those stores are terrible at it. I've found multiple things well out of date (3-6 months). You really have to watch the pricing too, especially the 21st and Yale location. I've gotten to the point of taking pictures of pricing in the aisles so when things start ringing up wrong, as they always do, I'm prepared and they can't argue it (or wait 10 minutes for someone to check it). They forced me to become "that" customer.

I'll now return this thread to it's normally scheduled topic. 

[tulsabug]

Just as an example of the office shuffling being a net positive for downtown: Matrix Service Company just moved their headquarters from Meridian Tower at 51st and Skelly to the FirstPlace Tower. They're taking up 3 floors with about 125-150 people. The more the merrier downtown, business and residential are both great!   

Why does the Meridian Tower even exist (also - tower? what idiot named it that? that's not a tower by any definition of the word, not that it's a meridian either). It's such a random building in such a random location full of other disjointed random businesses without any synergy. Nothing about that area has ever made any sense since CMC closed down.

[LandArchPoke]

Why does the Meridian Tower even exist (also - tower? what idiot named it that? that's not a tower by any definition of the word, not that it's a meridian either). It's such a random building in such a random location full of other disjointed random businesses without any synergy. Nothing about that area has ever made any sense since CMC closed down.

That area along Yale is Tulsa's second largest office corridor from 51st ish starting with Meridian/Case down to 91st. Definitely disjointed but if you need a cheaper office space or something 'south' there's not many options outside of the Yale corridor. Meridian is kind of a discount to Warren Place and the stuff at 91st and it has an advantage of being easily accessed from Midtown.

The only other 'big' cluster of office is around Corporate Woods, 169/BA but most of those are pretty dated and landlords have not done a good job at keeping those updated.

Meridian and the Case 'tower' just west on 51st have generally stayed pretty full. They're really more Class B+ but there's not a lot of options. Warren doesn't like chopping up floors so if you're a smaller tenant that can't take at least a full floor you're almost forced into places like Meridian, etc. A lot of these are seeing more of a medical user influx (plastic surgeons, dentists, etc. that don't need heavy medical office spaces/access to labs).

Tulsa is a very unique city that does not have much of a suburban office presence on the corporate side (non medical related). OKC has a huge cluster along the Kilpatrick, KC's in Overland Park/I-35, Indianapolis is primarily Carmel, St. Louis is in Clayton/I-64, Omaha along Dodge Rd, Des Moines in West Des Moines... etc etc.

While some of those are slightly smaller than the CBD's by total sq ft of office the Class A markets tend to be much bigger in the suburban clusters. Tulsa's only significant class A office is Warren Place and the CBD still dominates for HQ locations and Class A construction. Warren Place really isn't much nicer than say First Place Tower downtown and WPX, Vast Bank Building, Santa Fe Square, etc. are much much nicer buildings. Class A construction downtown has probably been easily 4 to 1 in the last decade (even places like Austin can't say that with significant suburbanization of office there in the Domain, Apple's campus, Charles Schwab campus, etc.). It's a very rare thing especially in sunbelt markets to have such a heavy concentration of tenured HQs and outpacing suburbs in new construction still. Pretty much all of the large relocations/expansions in Dallas are suburban in either Plano or Irving (Legacy West/Las Colinas) - Uptown is a strong market but it's still largely outpaces by the suburbs.

Prior to Devon Tower OKC's only Class A building downtown was Leadership Square which really isn't that nice - they've still had a fair amount of suburban Class A construction more so than Tulsa. With Chesapeake (even though no along the turnpike it's still suburban they've probably had more suburban Class A office built outside of the core in the past decade). Omaha has seen some balancing out as well and Mutual of Omaha is planning a new tower downtown but HDR and other major corporate office tenants there are still suburban and building new suburban offices. Since Citgo left and SemGroups implosion I don't think Tulsa has a suburban employer with a 'corporate' office with over 500 people and certainly not any that have built new. NGL is still HQed in Warren and they're Fortune 1000 but they don't have as significant corporate employment as many of the other O&G companies, I think their office is under 500 people - their total employment is less than 1,500 company wide.

[SXSW]

^ QuikTrip is probably the largest company with a non-CBD corporate HQ but is still within Tulsa city limits.

[Urban Enthusiast]

In the back of my mind, I thought maybe QuikTrip might want to occupy this building. I know they have nice digs, but downtown would offer their employees so many nearby amenities compared to where they are now.

[Red Arrow]

In the back of my mind, I thought maybe QuikTrip might want to occupy this building. I know they have nice digs, but downtown would offer their employees so many nearby amenities compared to where they are now.

There would be a lot more choices for lunch.  Not being of a "Downtown Mindset", please enlighten me what all these amenities are.  I took my lunch from home when I was working (I'm retired now) so lunch choices were of limited value to me.

Parking is always an issue.  I remember my dad complaining about paying income tax on the value of the "free" parking he received when working downtown in the 70's and early 80's.  Everyone, myself included, wants to eliminate the huge expanses of surface parking but no one seems to be ready to step up to parking garages beyond a limited supply for new construction.  Where would you put the cars from QT headquarters employees?

https://goo.gl/maps/StRpz2m8iZa5W5td8

A usable regional public transit system would go a long way toward making working downtown attractive.

[SXSW]

In the back of my mind, I thought maybe QuikTrip might want to occupy this building. I know they have nice digs, but downtown would offer their employees so many nearby amenities compared to where they are now.

QT has built a nice corporate campus and even has free food and drinks available for their employees within the buildings (they test out new F&B concepts).  They've been there awhile so many of their employees likely live on the south and east sides of the metro.  I don't see them moving anywhere and if anything they would just expand their campus; they own the large property just to the east where they could effectively double the size of their campus.