Drillers Downtown Press Conference Today

[swake]

quote:Originally posted by Floyd

quote:Originally posted by inteller

quote:Originally posted by Floyd

There is no possible way this will go to a popular vote, city or county, unless the Mayor suddenly hates having any sway.  It might pass, but it would cost her every cent of political capital for the rest of her term.  So forget sales tax or municipal bonds.  Think state funding or TIF.

state funding?  Oh yes the entire state will enjoy funding a little downtown yuppy hangout.  I have a feeling you won't be getting the support of the farmers out in Mayes or Cimmaron counties.  The state would PAY for something to stay inside Oklahoma when they can have it for free?  Makes ZERO sense.

As long as it took Jenks to cobble together a TIF, I don't see KK doing it in 4 months.  Hell just finding an unwitting developer will take that long.

I misspoke.  By state funding, I meant a change in state law allowing a higher hotel tax.

State law allows a higher hotel tax, the people have to vote to it in. Susan Savage tried it years ago and was shot down on a previous version of 2025.

[Renaissance]

quote:Originally posted by swake

quote:Originally posted by Floyd

quote:Originally posted by inteller

quote:Originally posted by Floyd

There is no possible way this will go to a popular vote, city or county, unless the Mayor suddenly hates having any sway.  It might pass, but it would cost her every cent of political capital for the rest of her term.  So forget sales tax or municipal bonds.  Think state funding or TIF.

state funding?  Oh yes the entire state will enjoy funding a little downtown yuppy hangout.  I have a feeling you won't be getting the support of the farmers out in Mayes or Cimmaron counties.  The state would PAY for something to stay inside Oklahoma when they can have it for free?  Makes ZERO sense.

As long as it took Jenks to cobble together a TIF, I don't see KK doing it in 4 months.  Hell just finding an unwitting developer will take that long.

I misspoke.  By state funding, I meant a change in state law allowing a higher hotel tax.

State law allows a higher hotel tax, the people have to vote to it in. Susan Savage tried it years ago and was shot down on a previous version of 2025.

Oh.  I thought it had to go through the state legislature.  Thanks for the correction.  I guess Taylor is willing in theory to take this one to the people, maybe if no private developer steps to the plate.

(From now on I'm going to use as many baseball metaphors as I can.)

[spoonbill]

quote:Originally posted by Floyd

quote:Originally posted by swake

quote:Originally posted by Floyd

There is no possible way this will go to a popular vote, city or county, unless the Mayor suddenly hates having any sway.  It might pass, but it would cost her every cent of political capital for the rest of her term.  So forget sales tax or municipal bonds.  Think state funding or TIF.

A TIF on what? To have a TIF you have to have an "I"ncremental increase in taxes. There's no place where that is going to assuredly happen in the vicinity of the stadium. You can't hope for it, the city is going to be borrowing money with the TIF so it has to be very solid.

State funding? Sure, that's going to happen. You people really need to start to realize that state government is the enemy of Tulsa and should be treated as such. The state certainly treats Tulsa in this manner. Tulsa will get nothing except derision for going hat in hand to the state asking for stadium funding. Let's recall how that five year plan to widen I-44 that started in 1986 is going? It will probably not be done in 2016. The state had to be shamed in to accepting The OSU Medical Center as a $160 million gift. The state is NOT our friend and will not be helping.

A hotel tax should be a no-brainer, but we have too many blogger types and people like "Inteller" for that to be an option.

The hypothetical East Village TIF would require partnership with a private developer.  The "I"ncremental increase comes from the private part of the partnership.  The City and the developer would enter into an agreement to build an East Village very similar to the plan proposed by Global Development.  City of Tulsa would be responsible for site cleanup and stadium construction.  The Private Developer would be responsible for creating mixed-use commercial development around the stadium.  City of Tulsa funds their part through borrowing against the TIF, precisely as Jenks will do.  The "I"ncremental increase comes from the private part of the partnership.

Skeptical that we'll be able to find a developer to help out?  I was too, for a second.  But then I noticed that we have a little angel making this happen, did you?  

quote: Taylor said the land in the East Village area that was under a purchase option for the Wal-Mart Supercenter has been signed over to the city. She said private funding is being used to finance those option prices. She didn't release the amount.

Somebody is providing the seed money for this deal to happen.  That "somebody" is either a philanthropist (e.g. Kaiser), an interested developer (e.g. Global), or a combination of the two (e.g. Kanbar).  Will be interesting to find out who.

Please!  Kanbar has washed his hands of Tulsa.  He owns empty buildings in several cities.  Has for years.  He uses them as a savings account.

[swake]

quote:Originally posted by TulsaSooner

quote:Originally posted by swake
A TIF on what? To have a TIF you have to have an "I"ncremental increase in taxes. There's no place where that is going to assuredly happen in the vicinity of the stadium. You can't hope for it, the city is going to be borrowing money with the TIF so it has to be very solid.

Tulsa Hills has a TIF and there was ABSOLUTELY nothing there before the shopping center that's being built.

What Tulsa Hills had was a solid and reputable development company with major leases in hand for the development from major retailers.

What we have downtown is no developer and no leases, in fact the lowest common denominator in major retail, Wal-Mart, famously passed on the site because they aren't in growth mode right now.

You are hoping for Global, and I was too, but they couldn't afford a couple of hundred grand to keep their option alive on the Nordam land last year before the current credit crunch, I would highly doubt their ability to raise money has improved in the last year, I would guess it has disappeared.

I was hoping today for a developer with a plan and financing or a white knight like Kaiser just building a new stadium. What we got was an agreement to negotiate, haven't they been doing that for the last year?

Let's see who bought the Nordam site. I bet the "private" money was TDA.

[inteller]

yes, lets let her burn our chances for getting conventions in the moneypit downtown by raising hotel taxes.

Just let the Drillers go, it isn't worth destroying what scraps of future economic development we have left.

[TulsaSooner]

quote:Originally posted by inteller

yes, lets let her burn our chances for getting conventions in the moneypit downtown by raising hotel taxes.

Just let the Drillers go, it isn't worth destroying what scraps of future economic development we have left.

Please.  Everywhere you go there are hotel taxes out the wazoo and if it's like everything else, most places are higher than ours.

[RecycleMichael]

I see all the normal naysayers have weighed in on this. You guys are unbelievable...attacking before you knew anything, finding fault with everything when you did, then making dire predictions about every aspect again.

I went to the press conference. I spoke at length with the entire Drillers contingent. They are very pleased.

This announcement was overseen by a room full of people wanting to make this happen. I saw downtown business owners, OSU-Tulsa officials, Chamber and city urban planning officials, baseball fans and more and all agree that this was very positive news.

The plan is moving forward. The downtown business people want it. We baseball fans want it. This development will have a major impact on the successful downtown than most of us want.

I refuse to listen to you naysayers on this forum. Go ahead and knock, I am already disturbed.

Thank you to Mayor Taylor and the Tulsa Drillers management team for working toward a great opportunity for us fans.

[spoonbill]

Artist's rendering.  

Not to scale.  Overlay on Google Earth and measure features.  

Comments?

[TeeDub]

Go baby go...

Just don't raise the taxes.

[tulsa1603]

One thing I like so far is that this is keeping it simple:  Just a stadium.  Not a pie in the sky 9 figure development, synthetic river or some other complicated engineering feat.  Something that the costs on should be easy to control.  Not a huge amount of land being grabbed, and the land is already being acquired...hopefully as a gift from a generous third party.  I don't think it will decrease attendance...it will probably increase it for the first year or so in my opinion.

Let the private developers start taking the surrounding properties without city intervention and let's see what happens.

I'm going to stay open minded with this one.

[swake]

quote:Originally posted by TeeDub


Go baby go...

Just don't raise the taxes.

Typical, I want everything and I don't want to pay for anything.

[Renaissance]

It looks like a placeholder drawing to me.  I would be impressed if they've actually moved forward with any serious designs.

Would like to be able to discern what those little pictures on the side do/say.

[Composer]

It looks great so far.  GO TULSA!

[AVERAGE JOE]

quote:Originally posted by Floyd

It looks like a placeholder drawing to me.  I would be impressed if they've actually moved forward with any serious designs.

Would like to be able to discern what those little pictures on the side do/say.

Well, it does say "Concept Illustration." Patience. []

[spoonbill]

quote:Originally posted by spoonbill



Artist's rendering.  

Not to scale.  Overlay on Google Earth and measure features.  

Comments?

I was puzzled and a bit upset that they did not present a scale image of the development.  I was also puzzled that the images distributed to the media were only available in low resolution print format, so I did a little diggin and got a medium resolution image from the Driller's website.

Now my big question is, (and perhaps you can help Michael, because you were there) where is the massive off-site parking?  Are they are not offering any concession for parking?

I was able to dimension the park on the site.  Are they really going to build a 400' deep backfield?  That would put us in the record books, and make it almost impossible to hit one out of the park!

There are also several other dimensional problems with the stadium, but I'll save those for additional posts.  I understand that it was a rush job and it probably won't actually be on this site, but I just wanted people to look at this rendering and understand that this is very very far from real.

We in the development world call this baiting the investor.  It is not ethical, but it is frequently practiced.  I assure you, there is a mad scramble for a real site, otherwise they would have offered some real drawings.  

It only takes 10 minutes for a good planner to do an overlay and put things together based on the rules!  They know this site is just smoke!