The following is a letter from Tulsa builder/developer Jamie Jameson with his thoughts about the latest TMAPC public hearing of the PlaniTulsa comprehensive plan for Tulsa. PreserveMidtown agrees with his assessment of this meeting. Please read this letter and then write your own letter to TMAPC to show your thoughts about this plan. See plan at and make comments here www.planitulsa.org There will be a further TMAPC Hearing on March 23 (I’m not sure of the time – you can find this at incog.org). I hope very much you can plan to attend and speak at this – I recommend checking the PlaniTulsa web site to check in to speak, asap.
I will be [unavailable for the March 23 meeting]. I delayed [an event] so that I could be present at and speak at yesterday’s meeting, which I believed would be the last such hearing. As it was, so many people spoke – at length and to good purpose – that I didn’t get to speak. It was a well-run hearing in that many people had their say and the Commissioners took time to engage closely with speakers in detail. The Commissioners handled it pretty well, particularly Bill Leighty and Liz Wright who both asked incisive questions. All the fog of misinformation circulated in recent days evaporated after a series of close questioning by BIll Leighty at the very outset of the hearing. I think it is imperative that the official voice of the Pearl District is heard, from the President at the next hearing. Christine [Booth] did very well, at short notice at the first hearing, and I spoke at that meeting too. We both sat through yesterday’s 3.5 hour hearing, when we could have been doing our day jobs. We now need others to take up the slack.
It’s starkly clear that the homebuilders, realtors and the Chamber, all of whom showed up to complain yesterday, are mounting a serious effort to torpedo key features of PLANiTULSA. They give the impression of having lain in wait for two years.
It looks as if the strategy is to drag out, obfuscate, confuse, conflate, alienate, discredit and ultimately emasculate the Plan to suit a myopic view of their own narrow interests, at the expense of Tulsa and Tulsans. A tactic in this is (i) to show up at the tail-end of the process when normal people have made their contribution to the process, and are at their day jobs, (ii) to gradually wear everyone else out to a point where no one else shows up except them, and (iii) to connive and lobby behind closed doors. They are now variously asking for a 60 or more days delay for their ‘members’ to consider PLANiTULSA’s 200 pages. Never mind that everyone else has already read it. Perhaps – being charitable – they’re just slow readers.
The Chamber, of which I am a long-time and slightly embarrassed member in particular made itself look hopelessly out of touch: it sent a new and floundering employee along to ask for a delay with the flimsiest of rationales. It seemed pretty clear that it’s been ‘got at’ by the Home Builders, who merely succeeded in making the Chamber look stupid – to the extent that the audience laughed at the Chamber’s first utterances. Their representative left early. ‘Mission accomplished’. Engagement Over.
It seems to have escaped these organizations’ notice that their respective, individual members are also Tulsans, who have had the opportunity to engage at any point in the last two years with PLANiTULSA. In fact many individual members such as I have actually done so. I am hoping that the Commissioners, who are an intelligent group of mature people, see through this for the sham – and shame – that it is.
While these respective groups have every right – and indeed duty – to speak at hearings, their seemingly calculated absence from the PLANiTULSA discussion process until the last minute is at best negligent, and at worst cynical, irresponsible and reprehensible. Up to 6,000 other Tulsans like them spent more than two years working on this project, as individuals. Now these organizations think they can come in and over-ride it at the last minute with a torrent of proposed corrections (most of which have actually been accommodated – almost to a fault – by the PLANiTULSA team).
An inspired, progressive, constructive, mature, public process is threatening to turn into a tedious yet predictable struggle of unimaginative, vested interests wishing to preserve a crumbling status quo (characterized by back-room deals, with scant regard to the real world) versus Tulsa’s residents and the true interests of Tulsa and its economic and fiscal viability.
It’s enough to make me want to move to Portland, along with everyone else under 30: the vocabulary there is about progress, adaptation to a radically changing world, innovation, new ideas. Our public policies here in contrast seem orientated around protecting the interests and personal feelings of a bunch of good ole boys whose time has… gone. The intellectual and policy high ground has transferred to the neighborhoods and to hitherto sidelined planners. Philanthropists and tax-payers meanwhile pay for the intellectual deficit – in hard cash.
So I trust you and other neighborhoods will show up and speak on March 23. Whilst the critics of PLANiTULSA were heavily out-numbered yesterday some opponents still haven’t spoken, and will take up their right to do so at the next – and, I trust, final – hearing.
This is, sadly, a fight that in my view will determine whether Tulsa has much of a future.
A while back I discussed Cedar Rock Inn, an excellent example of adaptive reuse of an aged building. The Kennedy Mansion Bed & Breakfast is a second one. The home was built in 1925, by Dr. Samuel Kennedy, one of Tulsa’s first doctors. When he married Agnes Lombard, an Osage Indian, he acquired thousands of acres of land in what is now Osage County.
The Christophers lovingly restored the house to its original beauty, filling it with period antiques. My favorite features are the numerous, original fireplaces. Two of them are located in the guest bedrooms. An outdoor garden complete with pool, sunken garden and loggia has also been restored and is currently the site of many weddings and other outside celebrations.
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