When Jim Cowan steps out of his office on the west side of the AT&T Bricktown Ballpark, he sees the results of 20 years of public and private investments that transformed a dilapidated early 20th-century industrial warehouse hub into a bustling entertainment district for the new millennium.

But despite years of success, the Bricktown Association executive director says the district is still a work in progress.

Visitors from near and far visit each year to shop, eat, drink and lazily float the Bricktown Canal on water taxis. The district’s clientele is a healthy mix of locals meeting for lunch or dinner, and a steady stream of visitors attending events and conventions at the nearby Cox Business Services Convention Center.

Some fear all of that could change with an initiative that will be put before city voters on Dec. 8 to continue the momentum of a series of publicly funded building projects by extending a 1-cent sales tax. The current copper is funding renovations to Ford Center and to build a practice facility for the Oklahoma City Thunder. A MAPS 3 vote will ask voters to kick in an estimated $777 million over seven years and nine months, beginning April 2010, when the existing penny sales tax is set to retire. With the new MAPS proposals, Cowan is afraid city leaders only see Bricktown in its rearview mirror.

The biggest threats to Bricktown in the MAPS proposal are that a new 70-acre, $130 million park; a $280 million convention center; and abundant available land could draw the district’s core business to the south by attracting a mix of retailers looking to grab choice spots around the proposed convention center. New shops and restaurants near the convention center could leave convention visitors little reason to head east and cross E.K. Gaylord Boulevard to venture into Bricktown.

The Cox and Ford centers are separated from Bricktown by the busy boulevard and railroad bridges, but to date, visitors have had no hesitation crossing the street or riding the trolley into the entertainment district for lunch, dinner, coffee, a movie, shopping or nightclubbing.

Most of the businesses in Bricktown have local nameplates, but some national brands have set up shop in the district, such as Hooters and Coyote Ugly in the Miller Jackson building, facing the canal. Arizona-based Harkins Theatres constructed a 16-screen theater in Lower Bricktown.

With national retailers dipping their toe in the district, a shift toward creation of a “new district” could cause existing, larger brands to pull up stakes for a more desirable locale, or lead others not to consider Bricktown at all.

Cowan says that could eventually cripple the district, which generates a steady flow of traffic from the conventions at Cox and events at Ford.

DEEP IMPACT
In February, Cowan informally polled Bricktown merchants, many who said 20% to 40% of their annual sales were directly related to events at Cox center.

“The convention center has a dramatic impact on Bricktown,” he says.

At Nonna’s Euro-American Ristorante & Bar in Bricktown, owner Avis Scaramucci says she can’t put an exact number on how much business her restaurant, bar and gift shop generates from the Cox center, but that it would be safe to say it is at least 25% of her annual sales. She gets an additional bump in sales on nights there are events at Ford Center. Both combine to keep guests coming through her doors.

“It makes a noticeable difference,” she says.

In perhaps a bit of foreshadowing, Bricktown merchants are feeling the effects of months without Ford Center after it went dark earlier this year for the first phases of about $100 million in renovations to ready it for the Thunder’s sophomore season and several big-name concerts.

Already, Bricktown merchants have taken hits to their bottom lines as several concerts have performed up the turnpike, because there was no comparable facility open in Oklahoma City. Sure, Paul McCartney and Britney Spears came sweepin’ down the plain in recent months, but performed in Tulsa’s newly minted BOK Center while bypassing OKC.

Despite the slow summer, Cowan braced Bricktown merchants to swallow hard, hunker down and take a hit, knowing that Ford Center would reopen bigger and better. This fall, Thunder will again hit the court, and shows as diverse as Irish vocalists Celtic Woman and Australian rockers AC/DC will keep the center hopping, hopefully spelling increased business for Bricktown establishments after a few dreary months.

DRY SPELL
But the dry spell has not gone unnoticed.

“It’s really been a hit for me,” Scaramucci says. “All of that business has gone to Tulsa.”

Scaramucci, who also serves as chairwoman for Bricktown Urban Design Committee, doesn’t want to feel a pinch like that again. And while she is all for a new and expanded Downtown, she does not want it to develop at the expense of Bricktown and the foundations laid by other existing districts.

“Growth is a wonderful thing as it occurs to the south and adds to the experience,” she says. “I just don’t ever want a disconnect between our wonderful Downtown districts.”

A possible solution to that disconnect was addressed by Cowan this summer as he came out at a Bricktown Association meeting with the enthusiasm of Harold Hill from “The Music Man” on the need for a Bricktown Canal extension to be included in MAPS 3.

The $23 million taxpayer-funded canal was completed in 1999, with improvements in 2003 and 2004. Cowan envisions a canal that will find a way under the railroad bridges that create the western border of Bricktown and connect it by paths and water taxis to the proposed convention center and the Myriad Botanical Gardens. He ran the idea of putting the canal extension on the MAPS 3 ballot up the flagpole, but no one at city hall saluted. When the projects were announced, there was no mention of a canal extension.

One item that was included: a Downtown transit system with a price tag of $130 million. The transit line would include what is described on a Web site created by the YES for MAPS Coalition as “five to six miles of Downtown streetcar.” That organization is headed up by the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber.

The Web site shows an urban tram passing Nonna’s along Sheridan Avenue. But if it is built, those in the entertainment district wonder if people at a new convention center would actually climb aboard and ride several blocks from the convention center to Bricktown.

“It’s a concern for all of us,” Scaramucci says.

One ray of hope could be an untapped area of Bricktown to the east of the core entertainment district. While there has been little activity in the area nearing Lincoln Boulevard, Cowan sees opportunity. The city is moving a fire station to that stretch of Lincoln, and plans have been kicked around for a possible hotel.

Investor Robert Meinders owns several industrial buildings in the area, and to date, has not stated any plans for those. In what Cowan described as pie-in-the-sky ideas for Bricktown’s future, he would like to see a canal that goes south of Downtown, and an extension to the east for future  development at Meinders’ properties. There is no method of funding on the horizon for such improvements or canal extensions, but Cowan likes to dream big.

CONNECT THE DOTS
As Bricktown’s neighbors to the north – University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and Deep Deuce – and to the south along Oklahoma River continue to grow and expand, Cowan would like to see those districts connected by some means to one another and to whatever develops south of the CBD.

Completion of the convention center and park will unfold over the next decade if approved by voters, giving Bricktown and other districts a transition time to find how they can work and co-exist in a mutually beneficial manner.

Unlike Bricktown of the late 1980s, with numerous salvageable buildings, those in the Core to Shore area will mostly be razed in a combination of public and private projects. Filling in the entire 750-acre Core to Shore area is expected to take decades to complete. It is occupied by dilapidated buildings, overgrown lots and auto graveyards.

Roy Williams, president and CEO of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber, says Bricktown merchants have nothing to worry about.
Williams does not have a crystal ball, and when the first MAPS was initiated, Bricktown was in its infancy with no competition, but he is certain that what will ultimately develop will not be in competition with the existing district. And in looking at the proximity of a new convention center to Bricktown, Williams does not think the distance of the proposed center, two to three blocks from the south entrance of Bricktown, will deter visitors from trekking there by foot or transit line.

“While a site for a new convention center may seem distant from Bricktown, in reality, it would be just a few blocks away from the district,” he says. “The concentration of entertainment offered by Bricktown is unique and not likely to be duplicated. The type of amenities that would develop around a convention center would be totally different from Bricktown and would offer variety, not competition.”

Cowan welcomes competition and lively discussion, and credits competition and the private response to public improvements in Bricktown as the reason the area on the east side of Downtown went from a hardscrabble industrial area to a sprawling entertainment district that draws visitors from around the world.

And he is far from ungrateful. After all, the first MAPS project launched in the early 1990s paid for the Bricktown Canal and the ballpark.
 
Looking ahead, he wants to see Downtown grow and thrive, but in the interest of Bricktown and Downtown as a whole, the question he has asked, and will continue to ask, is: “How do we connect?”