Tulsa Struggles to Balance Development and Parking

As the Tulsa skyline takes another hit, the city council is considering a moratorium on creating surface parking lots. Newly elected councilor and downtown business owner, Blake Ewing, describes his motivation for introducing a moratorium on the demolition of existing buildings for surface parking:

"When you look at downtown, it has been stated over and over again that the surface parking lots are breaking up the flow," he said.

While the City of Tulsa embarks on a downtown parking master plan, Ewing hopes to employ a moratorium to prevent building owners from pre-empting any new parking policies as they come down the pike.

With an urbanist Councilor, a newly adopted comprehensive plan, and a new planning director, Tulsa may be poised to reverse an overzealous trend in parking development. City Planning Director, Dawn Warrick, concurs that preserving existing buildings should be a priority and that a strategy for developing appropriate parking solutions should be employed as soon as possible. Ewing points out the price of inaction over the decades:

"Compare Tulsa's skyline from 1960 and now. We had a better skyline then, and that's not OK."

Thanks to Jessica Brent