Oklahoma City's Myriad Gardens to receive makeover
Devon CEO builds on legacy of Dean A. McGee in efforts to develop downtown Oklahoma City
BY STEVE LACKMEYER
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Published: October 9, 2009
Larry Nichols can show a visitor just about everything that’s right — and wrong — at the Myriad Gardens.
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"It’s been an eye-opening experience to see what’s here and what can be here. To build on the traditions of what Dean A. McGee did, to keep what was good and not what is not working — I think he would be delighted."
Larry Nichols
Devon Energy CEO
Myriad Gardens changes
→Dogs currently are prohibited from the gardens, but that ban will go away with the addition of an enclosed dog park southeast of the Crystal Bridge.
→A children’s area on the southwest corner of the gardens will include a new fountain, huts, a large slide and other interactive features designed to promote awareness of botany and nature.
→A cafe where visitors can buy sandwiches, snacks and drinks will be built between the children’s area, the fountain and the existing water stage.
→A retractable roof will be added to the seating section of the water stage.
→A more formal sit-down restaurant will be built east of the Crystal Bridge. Designs call for a rooftop dining patio that could be used for special events.
→A stream and a series of cascading water features using native stone from southeastern Oklahoma will be built from the corner of Sheridan and Robinson avenues to the gardens lake.
→A shallow water pool similar to the one at the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum will be built next to the restaurant and will be converted to an ice rink every winter.
→An amphitheater and grand lawn will be added in the gardens’ northwest corner, just south of Sheridan Avenue, and will be big enough to host 5,000 people.
→Two parking lots within the gardens will be removed to accommodate some of the improvements. Curbside parking will be added along every street around the gardens except Sheridan Avenue, resulting in several more spaces than are currently available.
→A new south facade and grand entryway will be created to the south end of the Crystal Bridge.
But unlike others who have yearned to make improvements at the downtown attraction, Nichols is helping launch a $35 million fulfillment of a public wish list that will add a restaurant, cafe, kiosks for renting model boats and bicycles, a children’s play area, an ice skating rink and what he hopes will become an iconic amphitheater and grand lawn.
The chief executive officer of
Devon Energy admits his interest in the gardens, with its iconic Crystal Bridge Botanical Tube — began as he focused on new headquarters across the street.
Nichols was shocked by what design consultants told him — that a visitor driving or walking around the gardens couldn’t even see the Crystal Bridge or find an entrance to get to it.
"I didn’t believe it,” Nichols said. "I drove very slowly around the park on a Saturday and very rarely could I see inside. That’s not good for visitors. ... We know it’s here, and we think we can see it. But if you or I walk or drive around it, we won’t see it either.”
James Pickel, board president of the
Myriad Gardens Foundation, couldn’t agree more that a makeover is overdue.
"We’ve been working on improvement plans for 20 years,” he said. "But there was never a source of funding.”
With construction of the new headquarters set at $750 million, Nichols surprised many downtown observers by asking that the tax increment financing (TIF) proceeds from the project not be used for amenities for the corporate campus, but rather to improve the surrounding downtown neighborhood.
The Myriad Gardens is the biggest single beneficiary of the TIF, with $35 million dedicated to making it a people place by adding amenities requested by residents.
Assistant City Engineer
Laura Story said the timing couldn’t have been better — voters in 2007 had approved $8.75 million for replacing the Crystal Bridge’s 3,028 glass panes.
Planning began with a design charrette in which the public was invited to submit ideas, several of which, including the children’s play area and dog park, were incorporated.
But planning hasn’t been without a share of tension rooted in how the gardens are perceived: Some see it as a park, while some of garden’s staunchest advocates cringe at such a description and want the attraction referred to as a garden (city definition sides with the garden advocates).
A small but vocal minority argued the gardens should not be changed. Pickel and others, meanwhile, acknowledge a makeover was needed but also wanted to ensure the gardens would remain.
"We don’t want to kill the botanical features of this garden,” Pickel said. "It was a big struggle. There are people who use this garden every day. ... We think over this time that we’ve struck a fairly good balance. It went from being purely gardens to purely a park and now we’re in the middle.”
Devon commissioned a survey of the gardens’ trees that looked at their health and estimated life span. From that designers have outlined a surgical removal of about 30 percent of the trees that they hope won’t detract from the green cover that took 20 years to grow.
The removal of some trees was deemed critical to attracting visitors, Nichols said, with new trails being designed at each corner as spokes leading directly to the Crystal Bridge.
The grand lawn, just south of Sheridan Avenue, also will require tree removal — and the removal of the north leg of the Myriad Gardens lake.
Wendel Whisenhunt,
Oklahoma City parks director, said the lake segment has been a troublesome collector of trash and debris for years and has never been one of the gardens’ better features.
The grand lawn and amphitheater also will replace blighted old tunnels and glassed-in rooms created years ago when city fathers hoped to connect the gardens with a shopping mall across the street.
That site is now where Devon’s 50-story tower is being built. Schematic designs for the gardens were approved Wednesday. If all goes as planned, the gardens makeover will start right after the 2010 Festival of the Arts with completion by spring 2011.
Nichols is aware that some comparisons might be drawn up between his own ambitions for downtown and the man who made the Myriad Gardens possible – late oilman Dean A. McGee.
"It’s been an eye-opening experience to see what’s here and what can be here,” Nichols said.
"To build on the traditions of what
Dean A. McGee did, to keep what was good and not what is not working — I think he would be delighted.”
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My only question on it is how many times is the money being paid back? Once thru the line of credit and another time thru the Bonds? I haven't seen the 30 year bond length you mentioned so don't know if it accurate. While bond length can vary, it is generally considered to be long term debt. And definitely ends up costing DOUBLE or TRIPLE the original cost (amount borrowed plus interest).
???
MAPS 3 is to be paid for by a one cent tax lasting 7.75 years. While there is certainly no provision in ORDINANCE NO. 23,942, prohibiting the issuance of bonds, it does say they can use bonds and other forms of indebtedness (supposedly confined to cash flow purposes)
"Chapter 52. TAXATION
* * *
ARTICLE II. SALES TAX CODE
* * *
§ 52-23.4.
(d) (7) If deemed necessary or appropriate by the City Council for cash-flow purposes, for the payment of principal and interest on and the costs of issuance of bonds, notes, lines-of-credit, or other evidences of indebtedness issued by a public trust with the City as its beneficiary for the purpose of providing a City capital improvement."
Point is, while bonds CAN be used, MAPS 3 format is designed to be primarily a pay-as-you-go, or construct-as-the-tax-is-collected. Same format used with MAPS and partially used for MAPS for Kids (it was a combination of sales tax and school bond issue). IF bonds are used it would indeed lead to what you describe and the possibility is certainly there.
The planners of this debacle reminds one of kindergartners trying to "play" with the big boys. When our metro brings in 30 million more tax-paying residents we might hire a real city planning group with credentials to come up with a real plan and have a real way to pay for it. Putting the yoke of owing for these Maps projects on 30 year bonds for our grandchildren to still be paying for is the worst of all the bad ideas. My grandmother would call this "putting the cart before the horse".
# Nichols Hills, OK
Perhaps we should run the "New Crosstown" through her neighborhood and thin out her trees.
Central Oklahoma needs rail transit. OKC Union Station and its 8-block-long yard are clearly the place for that. The need of some to attempt to deceive -- "Union Station will definitely stay" -- is straight out of OPUBCO's playbook. The expansive rail yard is being destroyed by the debt kings at ODOT. The truly beautiful Robinson and Walker underpasses, unlike the "ORU-nouveau skybridge or whatever they're calling it lately, will also fall to ODOT's vandals if Oklahomans don't soon come to their senses. Meanwhile, the downtown big shots and their pitiful toadies are talking about using the Union Station terminal building to "rent bicycles."
Is it not now entirely clear that what "Core to Shore" was really always about was "a big new lawn for Devon's new skyscraper?" And how long before the Devon Tower is just one more poorly maintained downtown building whose owners have moved out or moved on?
We're allowing our childrens' economic and transportation futures to be destroyed to accommodate this? On the yappy word of the "Jills of Nichols Hills?"
Hi ROb,
I can see both sides to that one, on the plus side at least this way, in theory we get to have some pretense to having some input into the projects instead of the blank check in perpetuity. With MAPS 3, the only real limitation in the ballot and ordinance is the finite amount of time the tax is collected in those 7.75 years. Although they can use bonds and other forms of indebtedness (for "cash flow" purposes of course). In fact, MAPS projects are already $26M in bond debt...over $5M spent... from the 2007 bond issue. The City has more allocated for bond debt than it does for it's contingency fund!
Ran across a MAPS article that said there was a possibility they were going to have to use $10M in bonds to cover the cost overruns at that point. DON'T KNOW IF IT HAPPENED OR NOT, never ran across another article verifying either way. IF IT DID HAPPEN, it said it was a 20 year bond and the "debt service" was $1M a year (if I understand it correctly, that is just the interest being paid, not the principle...so, $20M + the $10M = $30M). That also means we are STILL paying for the original MAPS and will be for another 8 years (the balance of the 20 years when the article was dated).
If that math holds up, the $26M bond debt authorized for MAPS 3 projects so far, is actually costing $78M.
We'll be getting a functional but incomplete Convention Center because again, it's probably better to spend the money in two phases. Get a building we can use, and, if it truly generates the traffic the city is hoping, that's the time to improve it further. Kind of like the Ford Center.....we built the bones of an NBA arena because we didn't know if we'd get a team or not and, when we did, then we made the necessary improvements.
As far as transit goes, we're a car centered city. We don't even know if we'll be able to get people out of their cars to ride mass transit. We don't know what kind of state, federal and adjacent city funds we can tap for a more extensive mass transit system. Why not start small, institute a transit system in the CBD like many other cities have, and plan carefully for a more extensive system? We save $270 million in the short term, but might end up getting other funds from places other than our sales tax. And, rather than slapping a plan together for a more extensive system in a few short months, we can take our time and plan it well. The streetcar plan is pretty exciting, actually, and it's just the kind of thing that might get our car-centric city enthused about mass transit elsewhere.
If we stop improving our city, we stagnate or move backwards. We're not exactly a showpiece for the nation right now, so it's probably not a good time to rest on our incomplete laurels. MAPS made an excellent start, but we've still got a ways to go. As before, I spend more on my morning coffee every month than I'll spend on MAPS. I'm more than willing to give up a few pennies a day to improve my city.
Agree completely. I would add, read the Ballot and the Ordinance (what you are actually voting on) and identify which project(s) are worth your consideration. Compare this ballot with previous MAPS ballots.
Read the City's Core to Shore report and notice many things are apparently missing from the 70 acre park ($130M for half a park?).
Read the Chamber's Convention Study and realize we will be getting a functional but incomplete building (much like the Ford Center was) for $280M (phase 2 costs an added $120M+).
Look at the Mayor's referenced transportation study (that eook `8 months to complete) and discover that we are only getting one element (downtown streetcars) of an overall plan that was to cost close to $400M (only $130M planned).
I am in favor of most, if not all of the announced MAPS 3 projects, but given all of the above, voting for it is questionable at this point.
The additional $850 million is necessary to bring Oklahoma to the "average spending per student" in this REGION. We currently rank 46th in the US.
Why are we spending $777 million on parks, when our children need the money more? Maybe MAPS 3 should pay for this instead! Either way it looks like our taxes are going up soon....
improve services. MAPS 1 brought billions of dollars of money into our economay, and MAPS 3 might as well. It's about a lot more than pretty.