Three decades ago, Oklahoma’s capital city experienced one of the worst terrorist acts in U.S. history. In an event that shocked the nation, the bombing of downtown Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on the morning of April 19, 1995, killed 168 people and injured several hundred others.
As city leaders faced picking up the pieces, a ULI Advisory Services Panel and report became a guiding star and helped forge a path for the city’s downtown. This year, a philanthropic gift from a notable ULI member who chaired the panel almost 30 years ago is increasing access to the Institute’s land-use expertise for other cities around the country.
Starting from scratch
Eight months after the devastating bombing, Jim Klingbeil—founder and CEO emeritus of Klingbeil Capital Management, a national real estate company—chaired the 1995 ULI Advisory Services Panel alongside 12 other ULI members. The panel would have a far-reaching impact on the city and its residents.
Insights from the panel were distilled into a report that presented redevelopment strategies for the Homer Russell city’s downtown. After 9/11, panelist Lynne Sagalyn would go on to author Power at Ground Zero: Politics, Money, and the Remaking of Lower Manhattan, a book about the rebuilding of another U.S. site destroyed by terrorism, one of many other contributions ULI members have made in helping cities retool after disasters and drastic change.
Before the bombing, Oklahoma City had a population of about 462,000, spread over 620 square miles (1,606 sq km). “There were more cattle than there were people in the city,” Klingbeil says. Large and spread out, with ample vacant land ripe for development, Oklahoma City had a downtown made up of office buildings, with no apartments or housing, no schools, little retail, and no “action,” according to Klingbeil.
That had not been true in the first half of the 20th century. The city more than doubled its populace during the 1920s, and it had an extensive streetcar system and a bustling downtown. Oklahoma City even earned a mention in the popular 1946 song “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66.”
After the streetcar system went out of service in the late 1940s, to be replaced by buses, downtown Oklahoma City eventually became unfriendly to pedestrians—more a place to pass through and less of a destination. Retail moved out of downtown and into new shopping centers in the suburbs; buildings were demolished and replaced with parking lots.
In 1993, Mayor Ron Norick created the city’s first Metropolitan Area Projects (MAPS) capital improvement program, designed as a funding mechanism for major undertakings in the city through implementation of a temporary sales tax. It allowed projects to be paid for in cash, rather than by incurring debt. It was a start toward reviving the urban core.
The ULI Advisory Services Panel’s 1995 report recommended that the city encourage development of apartments downtown. The panel included three urban planners, all of whom urged city leaders to take advantage of the abundant land and create new parks. Bringing more people downtown outside workday hours would encourage more retail and entertainment uses after hours. The report also recommended that city leaders consider building up the Brickyard neighborhood, a former warehouse district that had fallen into decline by the 1980s and consisted mostly of abandoned buildings.
“Our job, and kind of the reason I took the chairmanship, was [that] we had to give them hope . . . we had to give them a future,” Klingbeil says of the city’s residents. “Because they were in bad shape before [terrorists] blew up the FBI building, but after that, [residents] were really depressed. They were just looking for hope. And [ULI] gave them a lot of hope. But it was tough going.”
Downtown renaissance
In 2004, when newly elected Oklahoma City mayor Mick Cornett arrived for his first day of work, he found his office empty—except for the 1995 ULI report on his desk. “I don’t remember anything else being there,” Cornett says. He describes the report as a fresh look at downtown, a roadmap to a revival badly needed for years. Although much work needed doing, he felt his predecessors had already done a tremendous job of planting seeds and setting the stage for great things.
“It’s so easy when you’re running a city on a daily basis to be thinking about tomorrow and not 10 years from tomorrow,” Cornett says. “I think that report forced us to sit down and take a look at what we wanted the city to become, what we wanted our downtown core to be.” In part, the report outlined how the federal government could be part of the next iteration of the area where the bombing took place, and how local government and the state could work together with private-sector partners.
At the time Cornett took office, Oklahoma City was still a very car-dependent city. During his time as mayor, he began promoting the idea that a city built for the automobile could rebuild itself for people.
As a result, Oklahoma City began spending money on additions that were people oriented—landscaped jogging paths, on-street parking, and better urban design. From 2010 to 2012, the city undertook a thorough excavation of downtown, digging up all the streets and redoing the entire urban core. Cornett believes that present-day Oklahoma City has one of the nation’s most modern, most walkable downtowns.
Unfortunately, a lasting imprint of the 1995 terrorist attack was that many Americans began thinking of Oklahoma City as “the city that was bombed.” When Cornett became mayor in 2004, almost a decade after that horrible day, he sought to change that association. “I was trying to build an economy, and I couldn’t build an economy on tragedy” he says.
Tapping into his background in communications, marketing, and branding, Cornett, a former broadcast journalist, thought about how he could start the rebranding. That led to bringing in an NBA franchise, the Oklahoma City Thunder, which would go on to play in the 2012 NBA finals. The city also relocated a portion of Interstate 40, a major thoroughfare running through the city, and built a new, landscaped six-lane street named Oklahoma City Boulevard downtown.
Another of Cornett’s most notable achievements while in office was his passage of MAPS 3, a $777 million capital improvements program that, like the original MAPS initiative from 1993, functions through a temporary sales tax of one cent. From 2010 to 2017, that tax revenue went toward debt-free projects intended to improve the quality of life for city residents.
“It’s so easy when you’re running a city on a daily basis to be thinking about tomorrow and not 10 years from tomorrow.”
Approved by voters in 2009, construction of the MAPS 3 projects has taken place over the last 12 years and includes a new public park, senior health and wellness centers, a whitewater rafting and kayaking center on the Oklahoma River, the Oklahoma City Streetcar, and a new convention center. The final project of the program is anticipated to be completed this year.
Cornett believes that to really measure Oklahoma City’s story, you have to go back more than 30 years. “We probably had the worst downtown, the worst economy in the country, in 1990,” Cornett says. “Today, we have one of the best downtowns and [one of] the best economies. Thirty years is a long time, but no city has come as far, as fast, as OKC.” He credits not only the foundational guidance of the ULI report but also the accomplishments of his predecessors and the city’s current leadership, as well as the city’s business community.
Funding the future
The impact of the 1995 panel in helping the city chart a path forward continues to resonate in Oklahoma City. Today, according to the latest census data, the city has a population of more than 700,000, a major leap from three decades earlier.
Downtown Oklahoma City is a vibrant, bustling area where more than 5,000 housing units have been developed, and both the public and private sectors have made significant investments. The city, recently named one of the best places to live by U.S. News & World Report, drew more than 24 million tourists in 2023, contributing $4.5 billion to the local economy.
Downtown Oklahoma City’s transformation over the last 30 years got important help from the work done by the 1995 panel and the report it produced. The panel—and others like it by ULI Advisory Services—is something Klingbeil sees as critically necessary to the organization. “I think the Advisory Services Program is probably the best thing ULI does,” says Klingbeil, who previously served as Chair of ULI and the ULI Foundation and currently serves as ULI Foundation Chair Emeritus.
The panels typically consist of seven to nine professionals, who spend a week convening and working together on solving complex problems around land use, in a process Klingbeil describes as grueling. “These people give up a week of their time, and I think it’s a real service.”
In June, seeing that more funding is needed for the panels, and inspired by the impact made in Oklahoma City, Klingbeil announced a $1 million donation to ULI’s Advisory Services Program through the Klingbeil Family Foundation. The gift will go to a $7.5 million endowment aimed at securing long-term funding for the Advisory Services Program and ensuring more communities can enlist ULI members’ expertise to address difficult land use and development challenges, regardless of cost.
The strong culture of giving at ULI is something that Klingbeil believes to be among the organization’s most valuable strengths. Apart from monetary donations, he sees the time commitment by members who serve on panels—especially ones who have served on numerous panels over the years—as ULI’s most important asset. “I think if you talk to the ULI people [who] have contributed a tremendous amount of time, you’d find that most of those people feel like they got more out of it than they put in,” Klingbeil says. “You just learn a lot by contributing a lot.”
