I’ve been on a staycation of sorts this week because my kid’s school starts a week later than seemingly every other school in Oklahoma, but I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know our downtown apparently has a new master plan.
And an expensive one at that!
The thing is really fancy, hard to follow and – with it all being packaged in a giant PDF – a bit of information overload. You can view it below.
When I first opened the thing, my immediate reaction was, “Holy shit, that’s a lot of pages.”
Seriously, a 127-page PDF? Way to just dump it all on us!
I’m sure there are some good ideas buried in there, along with some bad ones, but I barely have time to read my own website, much less do something productive and learn about the Chamber’s utopian vision for our downtown urban core.
Fortunately, the city and consultants apparently knew nobody would read the PDF and made a little fact sheet on the website to go over what’s allegedly inside the document.
They also included a B.S. bingo vision statement:
As far as corporate B.S. goes, I’d give that vision statement a solid B. I’d like to see a few other fancy words like “catalytic” and “synergy” to complete it, but it’s not bad.
Anyway, after pondering the size and scope of the project, the second question that popped into my head was, “I wonder how much this thing cost?”
So, while binge-watching Stuck in the Middle with an 8-year-old, I asked the city to send over the cost and contracts.
Here’s what they sent back:
Yep, that’s right.
When it’s all said and done, Oklahoma City’s fancy new downtown master plan will apparently cost just under $850,000, with almost all of it being covered by the city and its taxpayers.
Now, if you’re wondering exactly how all that money breaks down, which consultants got what, what the amendments covered and how much was paid by the city versus other groups, I have some good news:
The city sent me all those contracts, too!
Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to read the master plan, much less the contracts explaining how much it cost.
I’m on staycation, people!
Although it’s more than I’ll ever get paid to create a big PDF, I’m not necessarily knocking the price tag here.
The company that produced it – Sasaki – apparently did a lot of research, talked to a bunch of Chamber of Commerce types and spent months studying everything. Good for them, I guess.
For nearly $850,000, I’d also go to great lengths to produce one hell of a PDF that fed the Chamber whatever they wanted to hear!
Anyway, we’ll probably have more about the plan – its pros and cons, highlights and lowlights, etc. – but in the meantime, if you have a couple of hours to kill and want to go through it and share your thoughts, leave a comment or shoot us an email.
Stay with The Lost Ogle. We’ll keep you advised, even while on staycation.
