CTroyMathis

Interesting articles on an attractive 13-year old (young) endeavor in OKC.

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Slow-growing Bricktown still considered very young
Elizabeth Camacho Wiley
06/17/03

In 1993, property owner Don Karchmar classified Bricktown as having just entered the "embryo stage."

Today, the downtown Oklahoma City entertainment district remains in infancy, according to other property owners there.

"We never have gotten out of the embryo stage," said Jim Brewer, owner of four buildings on the Bricktown Canal. "We've done so much, but we have so far to go."

About 70 percent of the canal is occupied by restaurants, shops, nightclubs and offices. The remaining 30 percent of space is in still- undeveloped, multilevel warehouses. Their dusty, boarded-up windows reflect what Bricktown's status was for nearly five decades -- abandoned and desolate.

Age is something Bricktown property owners, developers and boosters can't seem to agree upon. Some say the district is four years old, others say it is 15.

But one thing they agree on is that business development in any historic district takes time -- and sometimes lots of it.

Development's pace

With the completion of the SBC Bricktown Ballpark and the canal, in 1998 and 1999, respectively, hopes quickly rose among Oklahomans expecting to see a San Antonio Riverwalk-type district pop up, developers said.

The canal and ballpark attracted a rush of businesses, but not as quickly as many expected, said Devery Youngblood, president of Downtown Oklahoma City Inc.

He and Brewer said it took San Antonio's Riverwalk about 30 years to fully develop. Brewer said Bricktown is 13 years old.

"You take 13 versus 30, think where we'll be when we're as old as San Antonio," he said.

Youngblood said there is too much impatience among Bricktown patrons about canal business development.

"It's a bit like asking in the second quarter why we haven't won yet. With Bricktown, we're probably in the early second quarter of the game," he said.

Former Oklahoma City Planning Director Garner Stoll -- now the community development director in Parker, Colo. -- said business development along the canal has "exceeded my expectations."

"It's very hard to make historic buildings compete with the cornfield locations (suburbs)," Stoll said. "In that respect, I think Bricktown has done remarkably well."

Waiting for the anchors

Brewer said high-profile national chains are considering establishing operations in Bricktown, but they're waiting for two things to happen -- completion of a Bass Pro Shop just east of the canal and the opening of a 16- screen movie theater.

The Bass Pro store is expected to be completed by the end of the year and the theater within two years. They will serve as anchor tenants for Bricktown. The headquarters for Sonic Corp. -- expected to open by November -- will be another anchor.

Without those tenants -- all on the canal's south end -- Bricktown lacks the catalyst needed to lure more tenants, especially from out of state, Brewer said.

Norm Bekoff, operator of Water Taxi of Oklahoma -- the canal's water taxi service -- and property owner Jeff Brown said the poor economy is part of the reason for slow growth in Bricktown.

"It (development) is keeping pace with the sign of the national times," said Brown, whose 100- year-old Miller Jackson building at 115 E California Ave., is only 37 percent occupied.

Bekoff said national tenants are hesitant to invest in new locations -- especially in an area as young as Bricktown.

"Is the development slow? Yes, there's no doubt about it," he said. "But I think it's getting ready to get a lot better with the addition of these anchor tenants."

Choosy landlords

Some property owners are purposely keeping their buildings empty in anticipation of high-dollar deals that may accompany the predicted land run of tenants to the area.

Bekoff said owners are "looking to kill the big cow," and Brewer admits he's one of them.

"I'd rather be the last to rent than the first to rent," he said.

Brewer said he often turns away small businesses to ensure that adequate space is available in his buildings for big tenants.

Property owner Chuck Ainsworth has nearly filled up two of his canal buildings, but he's had little luck with the one at 19 E California, between Chelino's Mexican Restaurant and Joey's Chicago Diner. Lack of time to market the property is part of the reason, he said. But mostly he is selective about the types of tenants he wants in the building, he said.

"I think all of the owners down here want to put the right mix of businesses in," he said. "Bricktown Canal is kind of a big outdoor mall. As with any mall, you need to have a variety of tenants in there to make it work together."

Ainsworth said he has fielded calls from people wanting to open a restaurant on the canal. The problem is most of them have never run a restaurant. He said he's careful not to accept tenants with little or no business experience.

Brewer said he follows similar renting practices.

"I could have rented buildings for years down here to, we'll say, little mom-and-pop type-operations ... but they were bound to fail," he said. "Why put something in that you know is going to fail? It might benefit me a little bit, but I think it looks bad when they (businesses) come in and go out."

Calling himself "the keeper of the bricks," Brewer said he refuses to rent to nightclubs and bars. They don't belong in a family-oriented area such as the canal, he said.

Brown said he has less- rigorous renting policies. He said he accepts the risk of having small tenants -- such as Omni Flag and Indian Arts & Jewelry shops and the nightclub Club Rio -- in his building.

He said he's fortunate to be able to rent to national tenant Hooters Restaurant.

"Instead of having an empty building sitting there," he said, "I've got tenants that have been paying rent for the past two years."

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Planners look at downtown for new housing options
Paul Monies
06/16/03

Bricktown likes to bill itself as the fastest-growing entertainment district in the southwest and has a healthy sprinkling of offices, but housing growth is lagging in the historic Oklahoma City warehouse district.

Demand is definitely there — witness the recent success of nearby Deep Deuce Apartments and plans for a 260-unit complex called Legacy Summit in downtown’s Art District west of Bricktown.

And there’s plenty of empty space in the upper levels of several of the historic warehouses.

Despite ample space, housing options are few in the area.

“Part of the reason is the real estate is not priced well at this point for housing because we haven’t demonstrated yet how big and how deep the market is for housing downtown,” said Devery Youngblood, president of Downtown Oklahoma City Inc. “Once we do that, you’ll see a couple of things happen as developers in Bricktown get a little more realistic in terms of what the property is worth.”

Other than pioneers such as Regency Tower and Sycamore Square, downtown housing hasn’t been a priority until recently.

“Fifteen years ago, if you’d have stopped anybody in the city — the developers and the public officials — and said there’s going to be downtown housing, they’d have all laughed at you,” said Ron Norick, Oklahoma City’s former mayor who left office in 1998. “Today, they’re not laughing.”

After years of flight to suburbia, Americans are slowly returning to downtowns.

Most new residents are either young, single professionals or so-called “empty nesters” who have raised their kids in the suburbs and are looking to downsize their housing.

Boone Powell, a San Antonio architect who consulted on the Bricktown Canal, said downtown San Antonio continues to struggle to attract housing, although it has picked up recently.

The Texas city has battled urban sprawl to the north but is planning housing downtown along the river, north and south of the River Walk.

“If there’s any mission for all American cities, it’s that they need to increase the population living downtown and bring in the corollary developments like small grocery stores and dry cleaning stores,” Powell said. “They go hand-in-glove, but I guess you need the people first.”

Various downtown Oklahoma City plans call for about 2,000 units of housing in the next few years, although the area still lacks needed amenities such as grocery stores.

Also holding back residential conversion in Bricktown itself is the lack of parking close to the older warehouse buildings.

Some building owners don’t want to sacrifice parking spots that could make money or be used to attract restaurant and bar patrons.

“People just aren’t going to park three blocks away from their apartment,” said Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys. “Maybe other places, but not here.”

The lack of “rooftops,” the real estate term for housing, has caused several national retailers to shy away from downtown investments, some real estate brokers say privately.

“The goal is to have downtown as a complete community, and to do that, retail is not going to lead the rooftops, the rooftops are going to have to lead retail,” Humphreys said.

Youngblood said the idea that a grocery store is the missing link for downtown living is a misconception.

“The lack of a grocery store is not keeping people away,” he said. “The people who want to live downtown are pioneers. They want an urban environment, they don’t want a big supermarket that crowds the urban landscape.”

In spite of long drives to grocery stores, Judy Williams calls her time in Deep Deuce “one of the best years of my life.”

The UPS sales representative moved out of the apartments in February after being transferred back to her native Tulsa.

“I loved living there — the apartment and the community and the sidewalks,” she said. “It was a great central location for my job, and it was a lot better than an enclosed apartment complex.”

At rates of $950 a month for a two bedroom and $600 for a one-bedroom, she acknowledged it could be pricey for locals, but not for residents who came from out-of-state cities such as Seattle or Dallas.

Williams estimated about 60 percent of her fellow tenants came from outside Oklahoma.

Craig Brown, co-developer of Deep Deuce along with Dallas company First Worthing, likes to tell the story of watching residents walk through Deep Deuce at twilight to get their mail, something that wasn’t possible in the area 10 years ago.

Back then, Deep Deuce was known more for drug deals than being a good area to walk your dog.

He’s in the middle of renovating the Haywood Building on NE 2 into a restaurant, bar and club nestled between Deep Deuce apartment buildings.

“If we can take care of the people that are living here and all the others that come by, we should do all right,” he said of plans for the former doctor’s office that’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

While Youngblood understands downtown housing won’t happen overnight, the idea that the glut of older, or Class C, office space downtown could be converted into housing is taking off among some downtown developers.

Class C space downtown has about a 50 percent vacancy rate, while Class A and B have average vacancy rates of between 15 percent to 20 percent, Youngblood said.

One of the first developers to pursue housing downtown is Dick Tannenbaum, who has announced plans to convert office space at 500 W Main into about 70, high-end loft apartments.

For Humphreys, more of those conversions would solve two problems at once.

“There are Class C buildings that it is not economically viable to convert into Class B, but they can try to make it into residential, and that would help downtown and the office market all at once,” Humphreys said.