TCC Downtown campus infill project

[perspicuity85]

TCC is planning a new 56,000 SF facility for its downtown campus.  Perhaps the best part of this is that it will take the place of an existing surface level parking lot!  See article from Urban Tulsa for more info:  http://www.urbantulsa.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A15364

[sgrizzle]

I do think the wording could've been better as not to snub TU.. The expansion is great. MEtro does not have a computer department (those classes are done by NE and SE campus so that will be an important move. Too bad it still doesn't include a parking garage.

[SXSW]

Great news!  It would be nice to see some multi-level student housing in their plans though, maybe in the future.  The areas of surface parking south of 10th Street from west of Boston to Detroit would be good for housing.  Consolidate all commuter parking into a large garage between Main and Boston on 9th Street with street level retail space.  Additional TCC building expansions could take place north of 9th Street between Boston and Cincinnati.

[dsjeffries]

Any photos or renderings of the project?  I went to TCC's website to find more info and was left with nothing...

[inteller]

quote:Originally posted by sgrizzle

I do think the wording could've been better as not to snub TU..

that high school twit cant write an article without snubbing someone or something.

[perspicuity85]

quote:Originally posted by sgrizzle

I do think the wording could've been better as not to snub TU.. The expansion is great. MEtro does not have a computer department (those classes are done by NE and SE campus so that will be an important move. Too bad it still doesn't include a parking garage.

Yeah, I wasn't even aware that OSU-Tulsa offered degrees that included four years of studies exclusively at the Tulsa campus.

[TheArtist]

I didn't see it as a snub to TU.  Perhaps a poorly worded aside on the fact that Tulsa, frustratingly, hasn't had a public 4 year universtiy.  I took "traditional" to mean Public university, where as TU is a Private university. Course I don't think I would call TU a nontradtitional university, not sure what is proper in that case.

Would love to see a rendering of what TCC is building. []

This is all I could find lol, still looking for the architect.


http://www.tulsacc.edu/archive/boardregents/AgendaDec.05.pdf

[PonderInc]

Glad to hear they will be building on an existing surface parking lot.  Please tell me that this doesn't mean they will "need" to add more surface parking to make up for what is lost!  

(My dream for that area is filling every TCC surface lot with residential/retail development, thus encouraging students and employees to live/shop nearby and reducing the number of cars they would need.  I'm allowing one well-designed parking garage with street level retail in my dream.)

[SXSW]

quote:Originally posted by PonderInc

Glad to hear they will be building on an existing surface parking lot.  Please tell me that this doesn't mean they will "need" to add more surface parking to make up for what is lost!  

(My dream for that area is filling every TCC surface lot with residential/retail development, thus encouraging students and employees to live/shop nearby and reducing the number of cars they would need.  I'm allowing one well-designed parking garage with street level retail in my dream.)

My thoughts exactly, the area around TCC is one big piece of asphalt in the middle of an urban area.  Fill in those parking lots and that's a huge chunk of downtown that could be filled with pedestrian activity with the number of students/faculty TCC has at its Metro campus.  Fill that area in as well as the area around the arena along Denver (the hotel/condo proposal is a good start) and the "East Village" area (the East End project should take care of that) and downtown is a much better place.

[Oil Capital]

quote:Originally posted by SXSW

quote:Originally posted by PonderInc

Glad to hear they will be building on an existing surface parking lot.  Please tell me that this doesn't mean they will "need" to add more surface parking to make up for what is lost!  

(My dream for that area is filling every TCC surface lot with residential/retail development, thus encouraging students and employees to live/shop nearby and reducing the number of cars they would need.  I'm allowing one well-designed parking garage with street level retail in my dream.)

My thoughts exactly, the area around TCC is one big piece of asphalt in the middle of an urban area.  Fill in those parking lots and that's a huge chunk of downtown that could be filled with pedestrian activity with the number of students/faculty TCC has at its Metro campus.  Fill that area in as well as the area around the arena along Denver (the hotel/condo proposal is a good start) and the "East Village" area (the East End project should take care of that) and downtown is a much better place.

I think you or someone should take some snapshots of that area and send them to Bing Thom.  You'll recall he couldn't find any empty space downtown after a month of searching.

[PonderInc]

Great point! [:O] Hey Bing!  Over here!  We found some space!  Oh, and there's some over there too!  And over there!  

TCC's vast parking lots are also totally lost tax revenue.  I was looking at downtown land records recently, and if I understand correctly, TCC pays $100/year taxes per city block of surface parking.  (Same for many other parking lots downtown, including church-owned and Tulsa Parking Authority lots.)  Imagine if Tulsa had preserved it's downtown buildings so that they could be utilized...we'd have hundreds of thousands of dollars more tax revenue each year.

[perspicuity85]

I think you or someone should take some snapshots of that area and send them to Bing Thom.  You'll recall he couldn't find any empty space downtown after a month of searching.
[/quote]

Bing Thom was specifically asked by the Stakeholders to utilize the river.  One idea was to find a way to connect the river with downtown.   Unfortunately there were a few things about the area between downtown and the river that complicated this proposed connection.  The placement of the IDL creates a barrier between the two, and the elevation change from downtown to the actual river's edge is significant- maybe 25 feet or so.  I actually worked around some of Thom's associates, and there was at one time an idea floating to create a sort of canal from the edge of downtown to the river.

[Oil Capital]

quote:Originally posted by perspicuity85

I think you or someone should take some snapshots of that area and send them to Bing Thom.  You'll recall he couldn't find any empty space downtown after a month of searching.

Bing Thom was specifically asked by the Stakeholders to utilize the river.  One idea was to find a way to connect the river with downtown.   Unfortunately there were a few things about the area between downtown and the river that complicated this proposed connection.  The placement of the IDL creates a barrier between the two, and the elevation change from downtown to the actual river's edge is significant- maybe 25 feet or so.  I actually worked around some of Thom's associates, and there was at one time an idea floating to create a sort of canal from the edge of downtown to the river.
[/quote]

Whatever.  He's the one who said he had spent a month in town and that there was no space downtown to locate a public gathering place . . .  (and therefore he had to creae a new one in the river.)

[perspicuity85]

Construction should begin sometime this year:

http://www.selserschaefer.com/create_current_tcc.html

[sgrizzle]

Looks better than the adjacent building.