News

Developer thinking big for Jenks

10.16.2009

by Kirby Lee Davis
The Journal Record
October 16, 2009

TULSA – After repeated delays, the first two buildings in RiverWalk Crossing’s $41 million, 125,000-square-foot second addition have finally begun to take shape along the scenic Arkansas River.

Making even faster progress is the 250-unit RiverWalk Apartments at the north edge of Jenks’ iconic shopping center, said City Planning Director Robert Bell.

But construction on the project many see redefining Jenks, the 420,000-square-foot mixed-use Village on Main, remains a victim of what seems to be a season of rain. Two months after developer Duane Phillips broke ground for his 22,000-square-foot starting point, the $4 million-plus Hillcrest Utica Park Clinic, that site behind the Main Street Lighthouse remains little more than soggy concrete slab.

While its walls will rise as weather permits, the project’s real construction efforts remain in the planning stages. Not content with pre-leasing efforts claiming more than 100,000 square feet in the retail, office, and multifamily project, Phillips continues to fine-tune developmental plans for the 20-acre complex.

Last weekend he entertained executives from the planning consultant firm Sasaki Associates of Boston, the firm that helped shape urban designs for the Beijing Olympics, the Oklahoma City National Memorial and many other commercial and civic projects around the world.

Sasaki Principal Fred Merrill said his firm would study not only concepts behind the Village, but how the project connects and amplifies the Oklahoma Aquarium, Arkansas River developments, downtown Jenks and other community elements.

In many ways, Merrill sees these efforts behind the Vision on Main much like tweaking a plan for Jenks’ overall development. Merrill said the firm hoped to help the project not only fit in with the existing neighborhoods and schools, but also augment them.

“You have an amazing opportunity here,” said Sasaki senior associate and urban designer Arben Arapi. “To have too small a vision would be a real tragedy. We just want to think big. We’re here to push them as far as we can push them until they say ‘ouch.’”

Hiring a six-figure name like Sasaki gives Phillips another tool for luring big-name tenants that might otherwise not consider Jenks. It also helps justify top-dollar leases in a struggling economy.

“Because of its size, Tulsa sometimes can fall under the radar of some types of tenants,” said CB Richard Ellis of Oklahoma retail specialist Mendy Parish. “Before they even will listen to all the unique features of the site, they automatically say, ‘We don’t want to be in the South, we don’t want to be in Oklahoma, we need 2 million in the MSA.’”

Employing a name like Sasaki, linked to several progressive, recognized projects across the country, can help educate firms on how the Village on Main will set itself apart from other Tulsa or Oklahoma developments.

“It’s a way to get their attention,” said Parish.

Outside of some plat enhancements for street changes, Bell said the anticipated Sasaki changes over the next three months would present few problems with already approved proposals.

“In the PUD, they were given the ability to create their own design guidelines based upon some sort of substantial conformity to what they were showing us in the pictures,” he said. “Those design guidelines, that’s really what they’re working on. They submit it to us, that becomes part of the PUD, then we enforce it. That’s kind of a neat setup.

“Based on what they showed us and the pictures we’ve seen, we’ve felt very comfortable allowing them to go to this extent because they will create probably something more elaborate than what we would be able to design,” said Bell.

By putting three or more months into further tweaking his sustainable, “new urbanism” designs, Phillips will enter the new year with most of Village on Main still preparing for infrastructure build-out. But that conforms to the construction schedule he’d already outlined for what he still calls a $60-million-plus development – although Bell said it could double that if Phillips lands some of the office tenants he’s pursuing.

That timetable keeps Village on Main in competition with another high-profile Jenks development, the slowly progressing River District project immediately south of Village on Main, on the other side of the Creek Turnpike.

Once targeted as a $1 billion complex filling 300 acres along the Arkansas River, the district was downsized over the past year to a still-impressive $600 million complex. Bell expects developer Lynn Mitchell to attack River District in phases, starting with 500,000 square feet of mixed-use space.

“They’re goal, from what I’m heard, is that they still want to be moving forward with planning and infrastructure by the first of the year,” he said. “Now admittedly they’ve got a long ways to go to accomplish that, but I think it’s doable.”

Arapi said Village on Main presented Sasaki with a rare opportunity – the ability to mold a large, open area directly connected to such a variety of neighborhoods and lifestyle influences.

Phillips sees it as his legacy, a gift to his hometown.

“They could have chopped it up and made a whole bunch of mini-cookie-cutter projects – and make a ton of money,” Merrill said. “The fact that they don’t want to do that is one reason why we’re here.”

Source: http://www.journalrecord.com/print.htm?recID=103486

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