Core to Shore comes into focus
Plans for area of Oklahoma City have been fuzzy for years
My latest story in Sunday’s newspaper detailed developer Pat Salame’s plans for nine square blocks in Core to Shore — another interesting piece about what was a blighted and forgotten mix of housing and warehouses south of downtown.
For decades the area languished with little regard from the city’s business and civic leadership. The area stretching from E.K. Gaylord to Classen Boulevard was separated by the old Interstate 40 from the urban core.
That highway moved south a few blocks and suddenly the area mattered. The task of dealing with the area between core and shore became a priority.
The east half of the large swath of land is being addressed directly by City Hall with most of the land between the new I-40, downtown, E.K. Gaylord and Walker having been acquired for construction of the city’s largest park, a new convention center, garage, Omni Hotel and a Fairfield Inn.
Talk of Core to Shore predated MAPS 3 and the vision has been a bit fuzzy for more than a decade. But now it’s really coming into focus.
Construction started last week on the new park, which will be named “Scissortail Park” to complement the Skydance pedestrian bridge that will link the park’s north and south halves where they are separated by I-40.
Final design work is underway for the convention center, and public deliberations can be expected later this summer on a deal for the
600-room Omni.
If all goes as planned, most of this part of the vision should be a reality by 2020. Construction also is well underway on the downtown streetcar system, which will include tracks along the future Oklahoma Boulevard that will be built where the old I-40 was located. The rail barn for the streetcars also is visible along Hudson Avenue just west of the Union Train Station in the heart of the new park.
Again, all of this work is proceeding quite rapidly.
To the west, between Hudson Avenue and Shartel Avenue, is where a mystery is still unfolding. Pat Salame has amassed an impressive number of lots — 215 — in a nine-block area west of the park.
But some parcels are owned still either by folks in the neighborhood for a long time or by other investors and speculators who see a very different future ahead.
In just a couple of years, the area has been tamed by Salame, an admitted newcomer to this sort of thing, backed by a group of investors. More than two dozen crack houses and dilapidated structures have been acquired as part of Strawberry Fields.
So this area is hot for development.
What the original Core to Shore consultants didn’t calculate a decade ago is how much momentum would get started from the west where Farmers Market is showing signs of life and more than $70 million is being spent on housing, parking and retail along Film Row starting at Classen Boulevard between Sheridan Avenue and Main Street.
The momentum to the west, which also includes the 21c Museum Hotel and The Jones Assembly, and the city moving ahead with its work to the east, virtually guarantees better times ahead for the area Salame is calling “Strawberry Fields.”