PIVOT PLAN
Offices replacing hotel as stalled Midtown development resumes
“We really wanted something timeless and classic.” Candace Baitz Vice president of development and acquisition at Pivot Project
A stalled Midtown development is back on track with a new office building replacing a hotel that was to be built next to an Oklahoma City Streetcar stop.
The Pivot Project previously restored and expanded a stretch of decades-old buildings along the 1200 block of N Hudson Avenue with plans to turn it into a mix of retail, offices, a food market and brewery. Resolution Legal Group and Elk Valley Brewery opened before the start of the pandemic, but plans for the food market and a new sixstory hotel fell through.
Candace Baitz, vice president of development and acquisition at Pivot Project, said the $16.5 million office building construction at the northeast corner of NW 11 and Hudson Avenue will start this summer and should be completed by late 2023.
“We started plans for the hotel back in 2019,” Baitz said. “We got through the 100% documents in March 2020. But with the pandemic, funding for new hotels dried up.”
The new building, designed by architect Rand Elliott, will be four stories high and span 48,000 square feet. Parking will be tucked under the building with egress from NW 11.
“We’ve been working on this for little over a year,” Baitz said. “We knew we had the right partners. We have tenants – we’re about 65% pre-leased with JE Dunn, which is building it, as one of our tenants. We also have another law firm coming in.”
Baitz said a pedestrian alley, similar to the one next to the nearby Guardian Building on Robinson Avenue, will separate the new office building from the brewery.
Tenants, meanwhile, have started to move into the former theater at 1212 N Hudson that was to be home to a food market.
The space is now home to the Plant People Shop soon to be joined by a taco restaurant.
The only section of the block remaining to be addressed is the former Foodies Diner, 1220 N Hudson Ave., which was built in 1963 and is one of the city’s last surviving Valentine diners.
The diner has been empty for several years and was gutted as part of an abandoned effort to turn it into a bar. Pivot Project has a long-term lease for the building, giving them control of the entire block.
Baitz said efforts to lease the diner stalled with the pandemic but will resume soon. She also said more new retail concepts are likely to be added to the stretch in the near future.
The design has some similarities to the Heartland headquarters on Broadway, also designed by Elliott. Both feature classical white brick facades, but with modern accents and special outcrops from the buildings.
“We really wanted something timeless and classic,” Baitz said. “We at Pivot liked how Heartland turned out. This is our first time working with Rand Elliott, and we heard good recommendations from those who worked with them. There will be unique details in the brickwork, but subtle in what will be a timeless building.”
Steve Lackmeyer started at The Oklahoman in 1990. He is an awardwinning reporter, columnist and author who covers downtown Oklahoma City, urban development and economics for The Oklahoman. Contact him at slackmeyer@oklahoman.com. Please support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com.