Ghetto area around 61st and Peoria?

[dbacks fan]

quote:Originally posted by MikeB

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

One of my brothers wife was a Memorial grad in 73. The four of us all graduated from Nathan Hale, 70, 72, 73, and me in 81. When Hale won the 4A football title in 1979, a lot of people said that is was beause of the coaches and players that came from Mason.

[NellieBly]

There was a water slide just west and south of 61st and lewis -- remember going to it all the time.

you climbed up the slope with a rubber pad and went down the slide on it.

good times

[cannon_fodder]

I live at 28th and Harvard, in the last 4 years I have probably heard 5 gun shots total (not counting new years eve).

I wouldnt say gun fire in Tulsa is that common.  I know guns, I've lived in places where it is common... I'm not living in one of them now.

[rwarn17588]

I live in Red Fork, and I've NEVER heard gunshots. But it's also a low-crime area.

[tulsa1603]

quote:Originally posted by cannon_fodder

I live at 28th and Harvard, in the last 4 years I have probably heard 5 gun shots total (not counting new years eve).

I wouldnt say gun fire in Tulsa is that common.  I know guns, I've lived in places where it is common... I'm not living in one of them now.

I feel fairly confident in saying that I have NEVER heard a gunshot in the city in the 8 years I have lived here, including my time at 67th and Peoria, 21st and Delaware and now in Florence Park.  I think I would probably freak out if I did hear one.

[RecycleMichael]

I hear gunfire occassionally, but I just assume that it is hunters shooting the wild rabbits, squirrels, wild turkeys, deer and fox in the woods by the creek.

They must be very bad shots though, because I often hear two different types of guns shooting five or six times each.

[YoungTulsan]

Ghettos like the one there are just self perpetuating.  The housing projects group all of the low income people together in one location.  Businesses designed to keep poor people poor (Landromats, payday loans/cash advances, pawn shops, liquor stores, and plenty of places to buy cigarettes and lottery tickets) set up shop nearby.  People too poor to afford automobiles have very few nearby job choices and just stay there and stay poor.

Another thing I can tell you about the area, being a man of the city and visiting these places daily, is that the complexes in this area have no problem renting to, lets say, people who may have trouble showing proper identification elsewhere.  Especially very recently, this area has exploded in non-english speaking population.


Now, let me tell you something I noticed about the new River Plan that I don't think is such a good idea.  The plan calls for a pedestrian bridge at 61st on the River.  This would link two currently unconnected ghetto housing projects with a convenient bridge for thugs and drug dealers to just waltz on across.  On the east side of the river, you have Fairmont Terrace, along with some of the other very low rent but not government housing type projects.

On the West side of the river, just past Turkey Mountain at 61st and Santa Fe, you have the Parkview Terrace housing project.  You may have heard about this place on the news a couple of days ago where they found a teenage girl shot in the head by thugs.   Right now, a lot of people wouldn't consider these places close to one another, especially thugs who randomly run around in drug fueled shenanigans - But put a bridge right between the two without doing any sort of improvements to the area or crackdowns on crime and drugs, then this could be a potentially disastrous idea.

That being said, the River plan could also do wonders for the property values of the homes in the area.  If someone with a little bit of vision (and a lot of money) could buy up and redevelop some of the worst properties, and rennovate some of the ones in better condition, that could combine with the River plan to totally turn around the situation at 61st and Peoria.

I do think people living in these projects should be treated fairly if someone were to purchase and demolish their current dwellings.  I think getting people out of these situations would be one of the most fair things you could do for them.  People on welfare and government subsidizing need to be evenly spread to homes around town where there are decent opportunities to get jobs and break the cycle of ghetto poverty - not to mention getting away from an entire mini-economy surrounding them that preys on their situation.

[MichaelBates]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Mondo's Italian Restaurant, which was on the south side of 61st just west of Peoria. It later moved to Lewis north of 61st and opened a branch on Memorial at 68th (now home to Cosmo), but the new locations didn't last.

I used to drive through the area on an almost daily basis circa 1980-81, back when Riverside took a left turn onto 61st. It seemed to be a nice middle-class post-war suburban area back then. South of 61st on Peoria led to a kind of backwoods area.  Peoria and 71st stopped where the two roads met.

[mr.jaynes]

I'm really reaching way-back in the old memory vaults for this, but at 61st and Peoria, across from the Warehouse Market (is it even still there?) was this small Vietnamese Restaurant called Tuyet's. Is it still there?

[Chicken Little]

Young Tulsan and others are pretty much spot on.  This is a mess of our own creation...failed land use policy...zoning, specifically.  We failed to recognize that there will always be renters and there will always be a demand for rental units.

Everybody raises a stink when apartment complexes are proposed in their back yards.  Except maybe, other huge apartment complexes.  And so, Tulsa followed the path of least resistance, expanding the rental concentration in that one location, one massive complex at a time.  Then they all went subsidized...fell like dominoes.

These are the kinds of results you get when you outlaw garage apartments and little four-unit walkups (like in Swan Lake).  Smaller, incremental, manageable, mixed-income solutions like that were made illegal through zoning.  But the demand didn't disappear.  Eventually, the "Big" solution turned into a colossal failure.

[Breadburner]

Joey's Blues Bar use to be off of 61st then moved down to 68th and Peoria.....

[dbacks fan]

quote:Originally posted by 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  

I believe it was 41st and Peoria. I worked for the same company as the guy in the stand off. He worked for the Drug Warehouse at 31st and Harvard and I was a route driver for all of the stores. If I remember correctly he killed a husband and wife the day before, and set fire to cover up the crime. The fire that started at the stand off was "reported" at the time to be a result of gunfire during exchange with the police. I want to say that his name was Butch, but I do know that he ran the back area (shipping and recieving) at that store.

[Breadburner]

That happened on Rockford about 42nd......I remember one of the SWAT guys coming out of second story window....His rifle went off accidentaly and hit the brick vaneer in front of him.........

[sauerkraut]

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 believe it was a article in the Tulsa World a few weeks ago that said the worst crime in the city of Tulsa is between I-44 in the north, and RiverSide on the west, Peoria on the east and 61st on the south. That block right there had the most police calls and crime in all of Tulsa or so they say.

[sauerkraut]

I was in Tulsa in late 2006 and had to find a address in North Tulsa around Admeral, I don't know what the other cross streets were it's been awhile- anyhow, this big wooden apartment complex on the corner there was really scary. In broad daylight kids and others were out all over the place, some climbing in & out of windows instead of using doors. I guess drug dealing had to have been going on too. I would not want to be near that place at night. I have never seen such a run-down shambled place with people still living in it. I believe the building started on Admeral and ran 1-2 blocks north. The building looked like it belonged in a  3rd world country though. Where was Tulsa's building inspector and code enforcer?