College for Downtown Tulsa.

[deinstein]

Anyone know the candidates for the OSU President gig yet? I'd be interested on researching them.

[TStheThird]

I doubt that OSU will halt plans at their flagship campus in Stillwater to grow the campus in Tulsa.  They will grow each campus to compliment, not compete.

[cannon_fodder]

Compliment would be nice, but currently the Tulsa campus is subordinate to Stillwater.  If you want a degree, you most often have to bus to Stillwater to get some or many of the classes (depending on the degree).

I hope it grows as they plan AND they find ways to make it feel like a real college instead of an extension of one. (if that makes sense).  Maybe truck in some pissed off hippies or zealots every now and then for protests/telling students why they are going to hell.  

[USRufnex]

That's the issue, here.  On the one hand, I wish Tulsa had a OU-Tulsa & OSU-Tulsa using the same downtown campus, much like Indiana Univ-Purdue Univ-Indianapolis (IUPUI plays NCAA basketball in ORU's conference)... IUPUI is just east of downtown Indy...

As noted before (by me), I think a good full-fledged university to compliment OSU-Stillwater should contain a strong arts program-- after all, OSU has traditionally been an agriculture school (Pistol Pete ain't really a cowboy at heart; he's an Aggie)...  

As for athletics, I'm pretty sure OSU is already building a soccer/track&field stadium and has a nationally ranked women's socer team (coached by a Bishop Kelley grad, if memory serves).

But Tulsa doesn't have a college playing at either the NAIA or NCAA Division II level... think about the prospects of sports fans from NEO, UCO, SEOSU, ECSU, SWOSU, Cameron or NAIA teams at SNU, Oklahoma Christian, USAO, OCU, and OBU going to downtown Tulsa for games, probably basketball to begin with; any stadium facilities would be at least a decade away (unless T Boone Pickens decides otherwise...)

quote:Originally posted by TheArtist


Many people consider within the IDL to be downtown. I consider a lot of the things around it to be downtown as well, including the college. I would prefer a soccer stadium not be within the IDL, but rather it be outside the IDL by the college. The photo you show of Omaha's stadium seems to show something similar. The soccer stadium is in a less developed area just to the other side of the highway from their downtown.

Not saying a soccer stadium wouldn't work within the IDL at all, just would like to have it as close to the college as possible so that it could be considered both as part of their campus and as part of downtown.

A soccer stadium at OSU-Tulsa is an old argument; and one of the big issues I had with the criticisms of Nov 2005's East Village (40 acres of housing/retail, 20 acres for a 20k stadium) was the carping done--- this magical IDL dividing line existed, yet The Village at Central Park is outside this line; there's a big box Home Depot INSIDE the IDL... the site is still a good site for any arena/stadium/ballpark/ampitheatre, yet when  Global's original proposal came around, I heard all this talk of "move it a few blocks this way" or "no... a little to the right," "move it ANYWHERE outside the IDL" or "OSU-Tulsa would be PERFECT"... the only way OSU-Tulsa would be the answer is if T. Boone Pickens has his checkbook out...

Otherwise, OSU-Tulsa is an inferior downtown location for a sports stadium; if the Drillers have no interest in playing there, why would it interest MLS?  TU's men's soccer team rarely draws over a thousand fans... and Indy's minor league ballpark is outside the CBD; the RCA Dome and NBA arena are both inside that magic dividing line... [8D]

You know, I wish Union HS would have done a 20k football/soccer stadium that MLS coulda partnered with, but instead we're stuck with the UMAC to compete with Expo and the Reynolds Center... oh, and that BIG arena downtown...

My hopes these days are pinned on a smaller Skelly Stadium after they bulldoze the upper west stands and replace it with a huge 3 story press box... but attracting Major League Soccer to Tulsa that way has about as much chance of happening as Zinedine Zidane playing for my beloved Chicago Fire...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRWwmk-JjG8

Oh wait... what were we talking about? []

[deinstein]

It's fairly obvious the IDL is one of the biggest problems. You either need to get rid of it on the North or East side. I say get rid of it on the North for OSU-Tulsa.

[TheArtist]

quote:Originally posted by deinstein

It's fairly obvious the IDL is one of the biggest problems. You either need to get rid of it on the North or East side. I say get rid of it on the North for OSU-Tulsa.

I have heard the "get rid of the IDL" mantra from several posters.  But I have been to larger cities where highways cut right through things, aka Dallas for instance, and there is really no disruption of growth and connectivity.  There are lots of things on one side, lots of things on the other, and plenty of people zipping back and forth over and under the highways to either side.  So it cant be the highways fault that there is a lack of growth and connectivity, its the lack of growth in that part of Tulsa which creates the lack of connectivity.  Sometimes the highway is actually a nice feature to live next to because it creates room for a vista, otherwise your looking out your higrise apartment into another highrise right next door.  Parks, cemetaries, canals, parking garages, parking lots, soccer fields and stadium, and all kinds of other things can act in the same way.  Dead space or breathing room, your perspective would depend on how much growth and density you have. I would rather see any money, that would be spent on getting rid of a highway, used to build something that would make it worth your while to get to the other side for,,,, like a larger college. Oh, and I bet that highway will not be any barrier at all in keeping those students living on campus away from the clubs in the Blue Dome district. []

[deinstein]

Dallas is a wasteland, in my opinion.

I'm talking about more progressive development like Portland, OR...who took down a freeway blocking downtown and the river. Which is no different than I-244 blocking OSU-Tulsa.

In my opinion...

[cannon_fodder]

Hey, while we are at it lets build a giant dome over the city that keeps the temperature at 72F year round.

Where would we move the highway to?  Something has to be bulldozed - who's neighborhood do we destroy so OSU-Tulsa can have a nice view of downtown?

Who is going to pay the hundreds of millions of dollars to move a perfectly good road?  No way federal funding would help with this.

I'd also like to see more hills in Tulsa for some landscaping.  We need to bulldoze the new development in the South and put in some hills.

[TheArtist]

Tulsans donate 15 million to OU..... to the Norman campus. [B)]

http://www.tulsaworld.com/BreakingNewsStory.asp?ID=070221_Br_abreakOUdon

Why don't they just move to Norman if they don't give a crap about Tulsa.

[deinstein]

You don't move the highway. You simply don't need one to the North and you can make the neighborhood more lively by connecting both sides. By doing this you open up the area around 'Black Wall Street' to OSU-Tulsa development. You know...in those open fields and in empty warehouses.

[sgrizzle]

quote:Originally posted by TheArtist

Tulsans donate 15 million to OU..... to the Norman campus. [B)]

http://www.tulsaworld.com/BreakingNewsStory.asp?ID=070221_Br_abreakOUdon

Why don't they just move to Norman if they don't give a crap about Tulsa.

Swing and a miss.

[cannon_fodder]

Just to be perfectly clear here, you want to demolish 6 to 8 lanes of elevated interstate highway along with the entrance/exit points associated with them and re-route that traffic around down town on the remaining 6 lanes to the South via the 4 lanes of Hwy 75 North?

That would mean... all traffic from 51, 75, I-44, 11/Osage Nation, and 412 would funnel on 6 lanes of traffic.  It would also mean the nearest on ramp for  several areas of downtown would be moved a mile or so further away.  We would also have to double the lanes turning from I-244 to 75, from 75 to 51/64, from 51/64 back to 244, and from 412 to I-244... since that part of the loop would be the only choice.  That's alot of new ramps to build as we tear out 6 to 8 lanes of elevated highway, the on ramps, and existing connections to the freeways.

Perhaps it would have been wise to put OSU Tulsa inside the loop to start with?

Anyway, moving a huge chunk of highway isnt going to happen.

[deinstein]

Why cater to the automobile?

All you would take away are the the Cincinnati and Detroit downtown exits. Which is really one exit considering they are one way streets.

And yes, make them use the Highway 75 east section of the IDL instead...

You don't need highways on all four side of downtown. Not in the city at all...

[deinstein]

And I know it's not going to happen, people here love their extra highways. We'll be the last city to think progressively about New Urbanism and great public transportation as a whole.

[USRufnex]

We're probably only talking about a half mile stretch of craptastic 8-laned by-pass anyway... from Cincinnatti/Detroit to the exit for hwy 75?

It'd be nice to see a study on traffic patters there... I rarely see much traffic on I-244 in general...