Ghetto area around 61st and Peoria?

[bugo]

What's the deal with that ghetto area around 61st and Peoria?  It seems to be an isolated area, as most of the neighborhoods around it are pretty nice.  Has this area always been bad or did it recently decline, and why?

[Breadburner]

Headed that direction for 20 years......I think it finally has hit bottom........

[TheArtist]

I lived in a small apartment complex right on 41st about 10 years ago. Had driven by during the day to check it out. Was neatly kept and looked nice. Bout a month after moving in woke up to hearing a guy just walking down the  parking lot with a bat bashing in everyones car windows as he casually strolled by.  Couple months later woke up to hear someone right under my window behind the bushes firing a gun at the apartments across the street and then heard return gunfire back. Funny how ones army training kicks in, like a reflex, in a split second I found myself on the floor in the kitchen having "low crawled" there from the bedroom lol. Yes I had rug burns, no comments from the peanut gallery lol. Needless to say I decided to move after that.  

If you look at home prices and apartment prices in the area they are the same as the poorest areas of north and west Tulsa.

[AMP]

I have not lived in too many areas of Tulsa where I did not hear gun fire on a fairly regular basis. I believe it is common in most populated zones of the City.  

I always thought it was a good thing, one less worthless being to have to deal with most likely.  

When I lived up north in Osage County there was more gunfire on the 4th of July and New Years Eve night than in all of the TV footage I have seen coming from Iraq. Full automatics, semi automatics and very very large artillary.  

Folks up on the north side are locked and loaded I can guarantee that.  They are armed to the maximum and love to display their fire power so everyone around them knows what they are holding.

In midtown there are fewer numbers of fuil automatic weapons that I hear, but the overall numver is about the same, they also have some heavy weapons.  And they too love to fire them off on occasion.  I can hear about five separate guns in various areas being fired every weekend in a two mile area around here.    

When I lived near downtown, there were guns being fired near 15th and Lewis alot.  Most were semi automatics sounded like pistols mainly.  When I was remodeling my grand parents home near Gilcrease about 15 years ago, the neighbors had a massive shoot out with a group of men in a van, that left one guy dead, and they dragged another guy into the van and drove off.  Bullets were wizzing by the windows and it was pretty wild.  Every day and at night the prostitutes would gather on our corner. Workers driving all sorts of company, city and county vehicles would pick up the girls at all hours of the day and night.  I wanted to open a Fireworks type building and sell vairous items including ice, cups and mix, tobacco and condoms, but I never got around to it.   Should of set up my Video camera and filmed all the activity. If we only had YouTube then like we do today ....

Tulsa has lots of Ghetto areas, and they seem to be growing and gaining ground.  

[AMP]

quote:Originally posted by TheArtist

I lived in a small apartment complex right on 41st about 10 years ago.

Was it 41st or 31st where the stand off was years ago, and the building was burned down in the process?  Something about the robot being used in the ordeal.  T  

[dsjeffries]

quote:Originally posted by bugo

What's the deal with that ghetto area around 61st and Peoria?  It seems to be an isolated area, as most of the neighborhoods around it are pretty nice.  Has this area always been bad or did it recently decline, and why?

I drove 61st from Memorial to Riverside a couple days ago and wondered the exact same thing as I passed by.  It's not just Peoria, though, it's as far east as Lewis, strangely enough.  Right outside Southern Hills CC, there's this

[sgrizzle]

There is one apartment complex between lewis and peoria that seems to make the news quite often. It  almost seems like that one complex, plus the lack of much else at 61st & peoria, contributes. Since peoria ends at riverside, I don't think they get enough traffic to support any large amount of retail or otherwise. Peoria south of I-44 and north of I-44 are two different roads.

[dbacks fan]

quote:Originally posted by ricecake

quote:Originally posted by bugo

What's the deal with that ghetto area around 61st and Peoria?  It seems to be an isolated area, as most of the neighborhoods around it are pretty nice.  Has this area always been bad or did it recently decline, and why?

Many of the apartment complexes in that area were built during the oil boom days of the 70's and early 80's. When the oil bust came in the mid 80's, to deal with high vacancy rates, the complexes started accepting government subsidized tenants. Unfortunately, as is the case in many such situations, a small percentage of the subsidized tenants has ruined the area for the majority.

I think alot of it started when the apartment complex just north of the park was made Section 8 back in the late 70's. The duplexes just east of the park were okay then, but the area just continued to deteriorate. There has always been areas in Tulsa that were not the greatest but the areas around them were nice. The Normandy apartments just west of Sheridan & 36th by Evans Furniture is also an example of this.

[tulsa1603]

My first apartment after college was at Lincoln Glens at 67th and Peoria.  Not a bad apartment, but after you see people climbing over the fence at 1am, your neighbors have the wheels stolen off of their cars, etc., you want out.  I broke my lease early, sucked it up, and bought my first house in midtown.  I think one thing that i distinctly rememember was that the area was poorly drained.  There always seem to be ditches full of water, and everything is very flat.  I think it's all in a flood zone.  That can't be good for development.  Combine that with the large number of aparments, both section 8 and simply low rent, and it's a recipe for disaster.  Many have said that the lack of high capacity roads has also kept it from developing into anything.  And now that it has that reputation, I don't expect it to change anytime soon.

[Wrinkle]

dbacks is correct.

The real estate boom of the mid to late 70's allowed developers to put up sub-par housing and rent it for luxury rates. The multitude of 'row' type housing just south of 61st street, west of peoria went up at the very end of the boom, was low quality (expecting to reap high rental rates) when the market collapsed. There were probably 2000 units there. They ended up having to rent as Section 8 housing. Over the course of the next 10 years, it became a slum.

It took the City another 10 years to realize what a mistake it was and bought it under Urban Renewal, then correctly bulldozed them.

Unfortunately, they had inflicted a broader impact on the surrounding community by that point which persists today.

At the time the units were originally built, this area of town was among the newest, nicest places in the City. Retail/Commercial along Peoria between 51st & 61st was booming, as well as further north.

It still has nice neighborhoods. But, some really not so good ones, too. Especially the area just north and west of 61st & Peoria.

If one were to study city planning, neighborhoods, effects of developments on cities, this would be a prime study area on a historical basis.

[dbacks fan]

I don't know how many here remember when TPS built Mason High School just south east of 61st & Peoria in the early 70's,(I think it was built at the same tiome as East Central.) and the outrage that came out in 1979 when TPS citing not enough students closed Mason, and the students, sophomores and juniors were divide between Memorial and Edison, and the seniors were allowed to go to the school of their choice. In a way that area was ahead of the curve in the 70's until the bust came.

[Noodlez]

Was there a water slide just south of 61st many moons ago?

[dbacks fan]

quote:Originally posted by Noodlez

Was there a water slide just south of 61st many moons ago?

I think there was one of those metal or fiberglass ones that you slid down on a burlap bag. There was a Putt Putt Mini Golf and a Tastee Freezejust south of 61st on the west side of Peoria across from the Warehouse Market, and I can remeber there was a Champlain gas staion on the s/w corner. This was also when Peoria ended at 71st and Riverside ended at 61st. (So now I'm beginning to feel old and wondering why it is that I remember all this stuff.)

[MikeB]

I worked in the Git-n-Go on 61st between Riverside and Peoria in '86 and '87.  It was already bad. We had many, many drive-offs on the gas pumps, but were prohibited from making it pre-pay only by upper management.  7-11 (later Circle K) across the street was held up several times, but we never were -- we had an isolated, well-lit island with fence around it whereas they backed up to the apartments where the robbers could quickly disappear.  Repo men stopped in our store often on their way to get cars from the area.  It got ugly a time or two like when I refused to buy a watch from this guy who had obviously stolen it, but it never got to the point of tripping the alarm while I was in the store.

[MikeB]

Dbacks, I started at Memorial soon after Mason opened.  We were on friendly terms with Mason, cheered each other's marching bands at state competitions.  I had several friends at Mason.