9 May 2000
To the City Council:
The Midtown Coalition of Neighborhood Associations wishes to
express several concerns regarding the recommendations of the
Convention and Tourism Task Force of the Metropolitan Tulsa Chamber of
Commerce. In short, the Midtown Coalition urges the City Council to
make a thorough and independent evaluation of the Task Force report,
examining its economic assumptions, weighing the priority of the
proposed projects against urgent infrastructure needs, evaluating the
fairness of the proposed funding mechanism, and giving Tulsa’s
voters maximum flexibility to choose which of the projects should be
implemented.
At the regular monthly meeting of the Midtown Coalition of
Neighborhood Associations on Tuesday, April 18th, the neighborhood
representatives discussed what was known about the forthcoming Task
Force recommendations. Several neighborhood representatives had been
urging for some months that the Coalition speak as a body on the
matter. Task Force chairman John Benjamin was present to discuss the
current status of the Task Force and to answer questions from the
Coalition members. Of the others present, Midtown Coalition president
Michael Bates is a community volunteer on the Task Force, serving on
the Research Committee, Hap Bradley, the representative from Highland
Park, served briefly as a community volunteer on the Community
Outreach Committee, and Don Burdick, a resident of Central Park
Condominiums and a first-time visitor to the Midtown Coalition, was
appointed to the Task Force Steering Committee, also serving on the
Research Committee.
After a vigorous discussion, the Midtown Coalition voted to
communicate several concerns to the City Council. Although the final
Task Force report had been delayed and was not yet available at the
time of our meeting, the Midtown Coalition’s concerns did not deal
with the specific projects under consideration (about which the
members have diverse views), but rather with the principles by which
the recommendations would be evaluated by the City Council. Here are
the Midtown Coalition’s recommendations:
1. The City Council should make an independent evaluation of
the Task Force recommendations. It is encouraging to hear the
Council Chairman say that the Council will take its time in
considering the Task Force report. It would be an abdication of the
Council’s responsibility if it were to submit the Chamber of
Commerce’s plan directly to the voters without thorough
consideration. It should be remembered that the Chamber is a private
advocacy group, which has looked at this issue from the narrow
perspective of the hotel and convention business. The Council has a
duty to look at the big picture: How best to maintain and improve the
quality of life for all Tulsans.
2. The City Council should provide several opportunities for
public comment on the Task Force recommendations prior to submitting
the plan for a vote. The Task Force report should be made widely
available via the Internet and by other means. Public meetings,
conveniently scheduled and widely advertised to maximize attendance,
should be held to allow the Council to hear public comments, which
would be considered by the Council in crafting the plan it puts before
the voters. The meetings should not be used to “sell” the Task
Force report.
3. The City Council should commission an independent economic
analysis of the convention and tourism industry in Tulsa. The
Council needs to determine the true economic impact of Tulsa’s
convention and tourism business using data gathered from Tulsa, rather
than extrapolating from national averages. The Council should also
seek a conservative estimate of the tax revenue that would be
generated by the proposed projects and should ask whether these
projects will bring in enough new tax revenue to offset the cost of
maintaining them.
4. The Council should weigh the cost of these projects against
the large backlog of infrastructure needs – especially
residential streets, sidewalks, and sewers.
5. The Council should ask whether it is just to tax the
necessities of life to pay for entertainment and tourism. If a
broad-based sales tax is to be used, there should be an income-based
rebate. It was encouraging to see the report recommend use of an
entertainment tax to fund many of the projects.
6. The Council should give the voters the opportunity to pick
and choose from the list of projects. In particular, the arena
should be a separate ballot item from the convention center
improvements. The “all or nothing” approach may have been a key
factor in the defeat of the Tulsa Project. It would be a shame to see
popular items defeated by opposition to controversial recommendations.
7. The Council should insist on “pay-as-you-go”
financing. We are still paying (through 2013) for the last set of
convention center improvements, which were completed in the mid
‘80s. Convention centers and arenas become obsolete quickly as
other cities build even newer venues. We don’t want to still be
paying for an arena after it is woefully out of date.
8. The Council should question the conventional wisdom that
promotes large-scale public projects as the key to
revitalization. There is an “opportunity cost” to spending
nearly $300 million on big projects – that money is unavailable for
more modest projects that could be of greater benefit to the people of
Tulsa. For that amount, the city could fund an amazing amount of
small-scale improvements to help bring downtown Tulsa and other
neighborhoods back to life. Many such improvements have been
recommended as part of neighborhood and regional revitalization plans,
but they languish on the capital improvements list for want of
funding. To be sure, some of the recommended projects fall into this
category, such as the proposed improvements to Brady Village,
Greenwood, and the Route 66 corridor.
Some students of cities have observed that real revitalization and
economic development is generated indirectly as a city becomes more
livable and lively by building on its unique strengths. In the
process, you create a city exciting enough that conventions and
convention-goers want to come there. On the other hand, the big
redevelopment projects, involving bulldozers, explosives, lots of
concrete, and lots of tax dollars, almost always fail to live up to
their promise. The big projects produce cities that are “rebuilt,
but not reborn.” In the process, unique qualities of a city are
often replaced with carbon-copy public facilities. Downtown Tulsa in
particular has suffered from well-intentioned big public projects. Far
from revitalizing downtown and its environs, these projects seem to
have snuffed out whatever life remained in the heart of our city.
(Enclosed is an article by
Roberta Brandes Gratz, an observer of urban revitalization, who
contrasts the results obtained by the big project approach with those
gained by the small-scale, grass-roots approach she calls “urban
husbandry”. The article is an excerpt from her 1998 book, Cities
Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtown, which includes case
studies from cities large and small across the country.)
9. Finally, the City Council should swiftly and unequivocally
reject any proposal to use the city’s condemnation powers to
remove homes to make way for entertainment facilities. The Task
Force report recommends spending $100,000 to revisit the Charles Page
Boulevard Plan with a view toward redeveloping the area along the
river “between New Block [sic] Park and the Route 66 concept museum
[i.e., the old Southwest Boulevard bridge]” for “commercial,
entertainment, and leisure uses”. (Page 5 of the report.) The area
described is a neighborhood of single-family homes. According to a
presentation made to the Task Force on April 24, the redevelopment
plan would involve urban renewal acquisition and total clearance of
the area, in contradiction to the Charles Page Boulevard Plan, which
calls for the target area to be protected with historic preservation
overlay zoning, downzoned from multifamily to single-family
residential, and enhanced by the rehabilitation of vacant and rental
properties. (Charles Page Boulevard Plan, pp. 8, 23, 25.)
The target neighborhood is not a member of the Midtown Coalition,
and we do not presume to represent their interests on this issue;
nevertheless, this proposal is of concern to us because it represents
a potential threat to every neighborhood. We do not object in
principle to entertainment facilities along the river, nor do we
object to neighborhood residents freely deciding to sell their
property for such a purpose. Our concerns are twofold: the proper use
of the City’s power of eminent domain, and the credibility of the
City’s Comprehensive Plan and the neighborhood plans incorporated
therein.
We maintain that condemnation power should be used only in cases of
necessity, to provide for public infrastructure or to eliminate a
threat to public health or safety. To force residents to relocate for
the sake of entertainment facilities or any other non-essential
purpose is an abuse of that power. Presumably any neighborhood is at
risk if a developer with sufficient political clout finds it desirable
for redevelopment.
Regarding the Comprehensive Plan, the issue is
whether promises made to neighborhoods will be kept. The Charles Page
Boulevard Plan was developed in cooperation with area residents and
was approved by the TMAPC and the City Council and incorporated into
the Comprehensive Plan in 1996, less than four years ago. The Council
should inform and consult with residents of the affected area before
approving funding to revisit the Plan. Although we understand that the
Plan is not a binding document, ignoring its recommendations entirely
or changing it on a frequent basis creates uncertainty for property
owners, discouraging investments and improvements in an area. Ideally,
proposals to change the plan for an area should come only from
residents and property owners in that area. The credibility and
success of the pilot neighborhood infill plans currently under
development depend on whether existing neighborhood plans will be
honored.
We ask the Council to commit publicly, by means of a Council
consensus, to reject the use of eminent domain for non-essential
purposes, and to reaffirm its commitment to formally adopted
neighborhood plans. Such an act will reassure homeowners throughout
Tulsa that the Council is committed to protecting the interests of
neighborhood residents.
Thank you for giving
your careful consideration to our concerns. We invite the opportunity to
discuss these matters further with individual Councilors and the Council
as a body.
Authorized
by vote of the Midtown Coalition of Neighborhood Associations, April 18,
2000. Text approved by the board of the Midtown Coalition, May 9, 2000.
Michael D. Bates
President
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