Moving Forward: Oklahoma City

[thelakelander]

We're selling but we can't do it all alone.  We'll need you guys too.  I think its pretty well known that Peyton isn't going to embrace the concept.  Its not in his DNA.  2011 is where people should be focused.

[fsujax]

oh i am trying too! just seems to fall on deaf ears. We need the business community to play a more active, selling role!

[tufsu1]

Went to a meet the Mayor breakfast sponsored by ULI this morning. The Mayor talked about the three projects  for Downtown (Frienship Fountain, etc.) and the Convention Center, but when asked about mass transit.....well, let's just say it wasn't good. He did mention the JRTC and busways, but said that "light rail" is probably still 20 years away. Looks like you guys still have some major selling to do!

I spoke with 2 major mayoral candidates last week....the first one said the same thing as the Mayor...

And the other, while agreeing that we are way behind, didn't seem to have enough knowledge about how we could catch up....so I offered my assistance.

Will be heraing from a 3rd mayoral candidate soon...but expect that person to be the last one to grab onto the transit notion (or anything else progressive for that matter).

[thelakelander]

I've met with two so far and plan to speak to another on Monday.

One (Johnson) has always agreed and the other (Mullaney) agreed after a four hour meeting with MJ a few weeks ago.  He believes we already have the money for these things, education and more but that our funding priorities must change (ex. get our financial house in order).  I plan to meet Moran on Thursday.

[Lunican]

Here is a link to the article by Ron Littlepage.
http://jacksonville.com/opinion/columnists/ron_littlepage/2010-02-07/story/lets_follow_oklahoma_citys_path_to_success_in_jac

Let's follow Oklahoma City's path to success in Jacksonville

As many of you know, I'm originally from Texas.

Those familiar with that great state know there's a rivalry with the area to the north called Oklahoma, among other names.

Oklahomans don't have kind things to say about Texas, and Texans don't have kind things to say about Oklahoma.

Now that I've called Jacksonville home for 31 years, I'm proud of this city and want it to progress, so imagine the discomfort I felt reading two recent articles in The New York Times holding up Oklahoma City as a model.

One was headlined: "A Downtown Becomes Full of Life Again."

Oklahoma City?

One of the articles pointed out that in the 1990s, Oklahoma City's downtown was struggling: The only hotel downtown was about to close and the convention center's roof leaked.

"Our city was dying," Ronald Norick, who was mayor at the time, told the Times. "You could shoot a cannon at 5 p.m. and you wouldn't hit anybody."

Sound familiar?

...

[thelakelander]

I wonder why Oklahoma City doesn't believe rail is 20 years away from implementation in their city?  What are we lacking that they don't?

[fsujax]

Leadership!

[reednavy]

Leadership!

Exactly, a Republican mayor that isn't afraid of seeing the big picture ahead, unlike our mayor.

[kells904]

Hello MJ...

As you can see I don't post very often.  I feel smarter just by reading all of your posts.  Anyway, it goes without saying lake, that you guys do need all of us to join in the fight with you on this.  Election season is absolutely CRITICAL to the future of the City, and to avoid keeping us all in this Mayberry mentality for another 20 years.  Right now I live in Va. Beach...in some ways this area is almost exactly like Jacksonville--as you guys have pointed out before.  There's 5 different incarnations of an interstate (I-64, 264, 464, 564, 664), HOV lanes and four- and five-lane highways.  And STILL, traffic sucks.  These people know that building more roads isn't the long-term answer, and they've broken ground on a light rail project that'll eventually connect the Seven Cities and try to reverse sprawl.  Why COJ and JTA think building miles and miles of more roads for a bunch of clumsy ass buses--buses that no one is going to ride--is such a splendid idea infuriates me.
Our City Hall needs to know that NOT ONE OF THEM IS SAFE, and can get booted at any time they conveniently "forget" that they work for us, and it's not the other way around.  That, in my opinion, is the only way to effect change.  The next mayor has to understand the importance of damn near everything discussed on this site; if none of the candidates running meets this criteria, then it's up to us to let them know that none of them are good enough, and we won't vote for them.  Yes, that's a monumentous undertaking on our part to actually have an election that matters, but I don't think we have much of a choice this time.

[finehoe]

Ballpark renaissance striking out in D.C.
By: Bill Myers
Examiner Staff Writer
June 1, 2010
 
The Washington Nationals were supposed to be the symbol of D.C.'s economic renaissance.

But half a decade after the city's leaders plunked down hundreds of millions of tax dollars to bring baseball back to the nation's capital, many Washingtonians are still waiting for their dividends.

"What did it bring here besides the stadium?" said Victor Williams, who lives in the neighborhood near Nationals Park.

The $611 million stadium -- nearly all of it paid out of public coffers -- was packaged as the best way to build up the long-moribund neighborhoods around the Navy Yard and the Anacostia River.

"This ballpark really is about ... the rebirth of the Anacostia waterfront," then-mayor Anthony Williams said at the 2006 groundbreaking.

But the collapse of the economy and the team's futility have conspired to keep people and businesses from the area. Half Street SW is still advertising about 75,000 square feet of space and is, as one resident described it, "a giant bowl of mud."

It didn't help that one of the neighborhood's top developers was Monument Realty, whose main financier, Lehman Brothers, shut down in the recession.

Attendance at Nationals games was projected to average nearly 30,000, meaning suburbanites would help pay for the stadium with every ticket, hot dog and beer. But the Nats reached that milestone only in 2005, the club's first year in the District -- in Robert F. Kennedy stadium. This year, in the Nats' third year in their new park, fewer than 21,000 are coming to each game.

That means D.C. businesses are shouldering the biggest burden in paying the stadium off. From fiscal 2005 to the end of this fiscal year, more than $269 million in baseball-related revenues will have come into the city's coffers, records show. Barely a quarter of those revenues will have come from stadium sales taxes or stadium rent; the rest will have come from two citywide taxes on businesses.

Still, the ballpark is producing cash. The city finance office projects that baseball will have netted more than $135 million by the end of fiscal 2010.

"For all the anti-baseball people out there, we are balancing the budget on the profits of the stadium," said Councilman Jack Evans, D-Ward 2.

Stephanie Hession, a real estate economist from CoStar Group, said the ballpark is a victim of poor timing: The shovels were breaking ground just as the economy was heading south.

"It has nothing to do with D.C.," Hession said. "It has everything to do with overall trends."

Nationwide, baseball attendance is down by about 400 customers a game, according to Baseball-Reference.com.

The vacancy rate for offices near the ballpark is more than 13 percent, Hession said. That's a slight improvement from last year. And she said a recent study showed the area's population more than doubling from last year.

The citywide vacancy rate has been about 15 percent.

"The submarket is emerging," Hession said. "It takes time to develop into a viable area."

In the meantime, the economic slump has made landlords and real estate agents desperate.

"They're throwing in the kitchen sink to get folks to move there," Capitol Hill staffer Alex Johnson told The Washington Examiner about his apartment near the ballpark.

Councilman David Catania, I-At Large, was an ardent foe of the stadium deal. He said, though, that the city has to make the best of it.

"As it turns out, we've paid a huge cost, and we're still waiting for the benefits," Catania said. "In the long run, it'll pay off."



Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Ballpark-renaissance-striking-out-in-D_C_-95284144.html#ixzz0pc9JP425

[jc74868]

"At 6 AM on 12/15 the temperature in Oklahoma City is 18 degrees, with a projected high of 38 today. Nuff said"
The average December temp for OKC is 55. nuff said

[simms3]

Actually OKC has huge temperature swings.  It's never consistently cold and whenever it does get cold like it does in more northern climates, it usually warms up significantly during the day in OKC.

That, and 18 degrees is actually not too cold.  It gets a heck of a lot colder in parts of TN, KY, IL, IN, MI, WI, MN, the northeast, etc etc (even Atlanta will get down to 10 degrees every once in a while).

[mtraininjax]

Anytime you see snow on the ground, its cold. OKC had that this year.

[jcjohnpaint]

I wonder if Jacksonville will ever overcome its differences and do something like Oklahoma City is doing?  We should be looking here for answers.