LAST CHANCE
Former Lincoln Plaza blighted, set to be declared abandoned
The owner of the former Lincoln Plaza, once the city’s power center but now blighted, is promising to start renovations by January after narrowly avoiding the property being added to the city’s abandoned buildings registry.
The promise made this week to the city council specifically addresses the seven-story hotel tower, but questions remain over the adjoining office complex, which also is showing signs of vandalism and disrepair. The property is a couple of miles north of the state Capitol on Lincoln Boulevard.
Charles Locke, superintendent of Oklahoma City Code Enforcement, confirmed to
The Oklahoman on Thursday
he believed the promises conveyed by David Box, attorney for property owner Dick Tanenbaum, applied to both buildings.
Tanenbaum and his staff did not respond to multiple inquires since Tuesday, and Box said Thursday he was uncertain whether the promised renovations included the office complex.
A blighted present
The former hotel has numerous broken windows, graffiti visible throughout the building, and the former pool and courtyard are overgrown with trees and brush. Tanenbaum bought the hotel in 2011 and then the adjoining office complex in 2016.
“We recognize there is a problem,” Box said. “We have security there on a nightly basis. We have a fence. Until we start construction, we will continue to pay security and replace the fence when it falls. But there is hope on the horizon.”
The hotel closed more than a decade ago, but the vandalism and broken windows did not start to become a visible blight to the area until last year. The city council was persuaded not to declare the hotel tower abandoned after they were promised plans were proceeding to convert it into 179 apartments.
“This is what happened a few years ago when they secured the bottom level and put the fencing up to secure the bottom level,” Locke told the city council. “What we found when we inspected it was the fencing was down and openings throughout the property.”
At the time, Tanenbaum had recently converted the smaller of the two buildings into a headquarters for the Oklahoma Healthcare Authority. But this time around, Box was given a delay only through January on the abandonment declaration.
“It’s important to have you guys come back,” Ward 7 Councilman Lee Cooper told Box. “Let us see if we’re making any progress securing the structure, seeing any progress of this moving forward. We’ve been dealing with this for a number of months. My intent is to make sure they are coming back to give an update that things are moving forward.”
A futuristic past
The plight of Lincoln Plaza is vastly different from its start in 1967 when John Lewis, then president of First Fidelity Corp. announced a 24-acre development that would include a hotel, a trade mart to compete with Dallas, and ample underground parking.
Everything was to be "ultramodern” — including computers devoted to oil companies. Lewis proclaimed a trade mart at the complex would put Oklahoma City in competition with Dallas as a wholesale shipping hub.
The trade mart idea already had faded from the headlines when the complex opened with a Quality Inn banner on July 15, 1970. The hotel featured 312 rooms, a dinner theater with a rotating stage, a 14,000-squarefoot ballroom, and 17 meeting rooms.
At a time when downtown's aging hotels were either going bankrupt or being torn down by Urban Renewal, the Lincoln Plaza offered modern accommodations, ample meeting space and free parking.
Hard times for the hotel started with the oil bust of the 1980s. The office park, its ownership separated from the hotel, was filled with state agencies. But it too went empty and ended up in receivership.
Oklahoma historian Bob Blackburn sees Lincoln Plaza as being both a state historical site and of local architectural significance.
“That was the place in the day when Republicans and Democrats would all go to the same lounge to relax at night, have conversations and avoid the polarization we see today,” Blackburn said. “It was where the greatest number of political leaders and agency leaders would come together to talk about how to govern, not just win elections.”
Midcentury architecture, meanwhile, is in scarce supply in Oklahoma City as compared to Tulsa, Blackburn said.
“Tulsa is rich in midcentury architecture because in the 1950s, with agriculture and energy suffering in the state, Tulsa still had major oil companies with holdings in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela and they just kept building. Tulsa’s population almost matched Oklahoma City.”
Lincoln Plaza, he said, in size and location, is unique for Oklahoma City, Blackburn said.
“Having the texture of a different architectural style and material is very important for us to have for our culture, heritage and economy,” Blackburn said. “Lincoln Plaza represents an important phase of architecture for our city.”