Midtown, Oklahoma City

Like other Midwest cities experiencing an urban revival, Oklahoma City’s Midtown neighborhood has big plans. The Midtown Redevelopment Corporation describes their ideal: a “lively, visually exciting, pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use urban environment, offering housing types that appeal to a variety of life styles, ages, and income levels.” Sound familiar? It does to Milhaus’ development team planning its newest mixed use project, LIFT, a 329-unit, five-story apartment building and 445 space parking garage at NW 10 and Shartel Avenue.

Already a healthy mix of businesses and residents, Midtown contains significant undeveloped land. David Leazenby, co-founder of Milhaus, says, “Midtown is an attractive opportunity for us because it’s similar in many ways to the Cole Noble District where Artistry is located in Indianapolis. The OKC downtown core is only a few blocks away and the neighborhood itself has a strong anchor in St. Anthony Hospital. As an emerging market, Midtown is attractive to us because our experience tells us it’s the kind of neighborhood where we know our product will add value and complement other investments.”

When considering the city as a whole, Indianapolis is both bigger and denser than Oklahoma City, and more fully developed. However, that lack of development can actually be an advantage. It can motivate citizens to take action. In Oklahoma City, the city rallies around new projects, pushes design farther, is more open to big city solutions like transit, park space and schools in the urban core. It is not a coincidence that the vacancy rate for Class A office space is non-existent in the central business district, or that the unemployment rate is only 4.5%, more than two points lower than the national average. People and jobs want to be downtown OKC and housing is following.

Another difference in these two cities is in their approach to attract and retain new residents. Whereas Indianapolis initially placed their energy on sports, athletic venues, and the Circle Center Mall, Oklahoma City has taken a different (and perhaps) more family-oriented approach to urban renewal. Much of the work Oklahoma City is doing downtown and Midtown is focused on raising the quality of life for residents. Investments in parks and public transportation make the area more livable. For example, the city recently renovated Myriad Botanical Gardens, a 17-acre park and botanical garden in the heart of downtown Oklahoma City with an event lawn, children’s garden, play areas, dog park, water features, fountains and trails. MAPS 3 initiated a Modern StreetCar transit option, recently approved by the Oklahoma City Council. Construction will begin in 2015 to connect Midtown to Downtown and Bricktown.

Oklahoma City is planting seeds for what is already proving to be a great interest in redevelopment. Leazenby says, “Although the approach is quite different, their end goal is similar to what we envision for Indianapolis’ urban neighborhoods. It will be interesting to see how the two approaches play out.”