OKC: Devon Tower, new tallest announced today

[schugg]

Will this be taller than OneKC place? 

[rxlexi]

damn, great looking tower Spartan.  Between that and the sneaky landing of an NBA team, KC has two major reasons to be jealous of OKC, and keep the pedal to the medal here.  God how the skyscraper nerd inside me would love to see that thing go up at 10th/main here 

[KansasCityCraka]

nvm

[GRID]

Congrats I hope it gets built.  That's a sharp looking building.  Kind of "dallasy" but it should look nice there.

We could have about five of those in our downtown or in downtown KCK had Sprint not decided to build behind a walmart.

It's awesome to see these local companies in places like OKC, Omaha etc that "want" to make an impact on their city and skyline.

Where is our local corporate building?  KC has to be the only town I know of that has nothing but multi tenant buildings downtown outside the rather short block tower.

It's not a big deal really.  I'm just still very disappointed in the total lack of interest our local corporate community has in our downtown area.

Thank god for hallmark, dst and about 50,000 (state, local and fed) government jobs.

I'm sure this project will have zero tax breaks right?

[Decious]

Will this be taller than OneKC place?   :-s

Yeah it will be almost 300 feet taller.  OneKC Place is a great looking building as well.

[GRID]

It will be 900' tall?  That's way too tall for OKC.  It would be way out of place there.  OKC has a decent skyline now.  After this is built it will look like OKC has one building.  Does OKC have anyting over 400' now?

BTW, that would be too tall for KC as well IMO even though KC has several buildings over 500'.  I would like to see KC add a few 600-700 footers though.

[Decious]

Yeah... 925 feet to be exact.  Here's a link that covers the details.

http://dougdawg.blogspot.com/2008/08/devon-tower.html

[GuyInLenexa]

I was in OKC yesterday, a lot of development seems to be going on there and in Norman.
This is quite an impressive building.  It will be taller than the tallest in Dallas (BOA Tower) four feet, but taller!
Anxious to see it begin to rise out of OKCs skyline.

[eomaha.com]

It will be taller than the tallest in Dallas (BOA Tower) four feet

I'm sure that is just as coincidental... as Omaha's FNC being 1 feet taller than One KC.

[Spartan65]

Yea, OKC has four towers over 400. the Chase Tower is 500 even, the Oklahoma Tower is just over 400, so are FNB and CityPlace I think (two Art Deco towers).

The major successes haven't stopped, either. OKC has sold 14,000 season tickets in 5 days, which beat ALL other NBA teams. OKC now has a waiting list for game tickets, which only 3 other teams in the entire league have.

Also since Devon, this major landmark bridge was announced. The city is building it in the C2S area south of downtown which is going to become the next hotspot for development.



This is the view of it from a few blocks away.

[rxlexi]

Spartan, is that a pedestrian bridge or will it carry auto traffic, and if so what size freeway?  It's certainly a slick design; something like that if it's on the scale of the Paseo project really blows away our 'landmark' bridge.  I get the feeling it's a much smaller project, however.

[Spartan65]

It's a pedestrian bridge over the new $800 mil Crosstown Expressway in downtown. It's 440 feet wide, don't know how tall, it's around 200 feet tall tho.

[Midtownkid]

Too bad they can't really get it to glow like that...or be seamless.  Renderings can be so misleading!  Still a really cool project. 

[Spartan65]

Actually it will glow just like that. They will use two different types of lighting. One will be the traditional lighting cast on the bridge, and another lighting scheme will be inside translucent panels inside the bridge's towering portion.

[trailerkid]

Maybe spartan can verify this, but I read that the Devon building is getting $150 M TIF.

But I thought KC was the one selling downtown to developers?

[AndrewN]

Actually, the Devon Energy created a tif district around the building.  The money will be used for public infrastructure improvements including a revamped Myriad Gardens and a school.  Devon wants to have huge huge impact on downtown OKC and they felt outside of building the new tower, a TIF district to help improve the area around the building would help OKC.

[Spartan65]

The $150 million in TIF funds is from the Devon project, not from OKC. None of the TIF money will be spent on the tower.

Devon is confused though, because there's already money in the MAPS for Kids fund for a Downtown Elementary School. It just hasn't happened yet because it's the last phase of MAPS for Kids since they're waiting for downtown's residential density to rise in 2 or 3 years.

The TIF money will go towards the Myriad Gardens, other green spaces, fixing up the west side of downtown, and it would be really cool to see some of it go towards streetcars down Sheridan Ave..