The Jenks Drillers
Nah, they will still be the Tulsa Drillers.
They will just play their baseball games in Jenks, where city officials and private developers seem to have sufficient intelligence and determination to achieve river development WITHOUT sticking the taxpayers with the bill.
Yesterday, Chuck Lamson the president of the Tulsa Drillers announced that the team had signed a non-binding letter of intent with the River District Development Group to create a 7,000-seat ballpark within a 300-acre multi-use site being developed next to the Oklahoma Aquarium and the existing River Walk complex.
The River District Development Group had previously announced plans to build the $1 Billion dollar complex featuring a town square, restaurants and cafes, 852,000 square feet of retail shops, 400,000 square feet of office space, 300 condominiums overlooking an 80-acre lake, 650 hotel rooms, a small convention hall and now a baseball park.
And the Jenks developers intended to do it without a penny of taxpayer money. They not only have not asked for tax dollars, they indicate they do not want them.
So why is it that Tulsa county tax payers are being asked to fork over almost $300 million to go with a little over $100 million of private funding for river development, mostly in the city of Tulsa?
Beats the heck out of me.
When developers in Jenks can raise a billion dollars in private funding and the best developers in Tulsa can come up with is just a bit over 1/10th that amount and then try to sucker the taxpayers of all of Tulsa County, including Jenks, for another $288 million it should be causing a lot of people to be asking a lot of questions.
The first of which is why are the city leaders and developers in Jenks so much smarter than those in Tulsa, where the city can not fix the streets, mow the weeds on city right-of-way or keep the lights on along its expressways?
Clearly you haven’t been down some of the roads in Jenks which are just as bad as Tulsa.
Further more, the river tax you speak of is not going to be spent on anything like this Jenks development. The tax is going to building two new low water dams (one is in Sand Springs- part of the reason it has be a county vote because the city of Tulsa is not allowed to build things in Sand Springs, one is a Tulsa/Jenks dam- again one that the city of Tulsa can not build alone because it has to connect to the Jenks side of the river- plus this is the only locations where dams will work according to the experts). The third dam is a rebuilding and bringing up to date Zink Dam. The tax would also go to channeling the river from around 41st to 71st, foot traffic only bridges across the river and river parks improvements. One part of the tax goes to the purchase of land on the river in Tulsa, Bixby and BA- This land will be resold at a profit to anyone that wants to do private development. These private developers would have to pay high prices for the land just like the group in Jenks has, They would have to spend there own money to build on that land, and you can be sure they will charge you to enjoy the retail, food and entertainment on there land. The private $111 million is only going to improve the River Parks- which last time I checked were free to use and owned by the County. No money from the publice tax or private donations will be used on private land, it is going to public areas that are free to the public.
And if you really believe the new Jenks group that there project will happen with or without a low water dam like they say then I hope you dont get fooled all the time because it is not going to happen without it. This is why they have set there ground breaking date for after the vote- if the vote fails this project in Jenks will not happen! They have had this thing for a few years and where just waiting for the county to put water in the river with low water dams. However, the good news is that this is just one of many sections of land on the river from SS to Bixby and BA that will be developed at no cost to you, but bring in more than is needed to fix all the other problems with increased sales tax and property tax revenue. We the people just have to put some water in the river.
Why is the proposed ‘River Sales Tax’ going to be used to build low-water dams when Vision 2025 tax funds were promised to build those?
Here’s a direct quote from the vision2025.info web site:
Vision 2025 funds will be utilized to construct two low water dams, which along with Zink Lake, will provide a series of lakes in the Arkansas River corridor. These low water dams will enhance the Tulsa area’s most visible physical asset by creating a series of urban lakes within the river channel.
The Jenks developers have flat stated that the project will go forward whether the new tax is approved or not. They support the tax proposal but deny any and all suggestion of a link between it and their project.
Who knows?
Maybe they are lying as did the Vision 2025 supporters when they evidently lied about the construction of two low water dams and here we are asked to pass yet ANOTHER tax to build them. Both the Vision 2025 tax and the proposed tax are county wide taxes.
Did not Broken Arrow come out in opposition to this tax?
I read/saw that somewhere. Supposedly there is no land suitable for development along the river there.
And as I pointed out in the post titled “The Big Stinky”, who is going to fund the almost $500 million required to move the sewage treatment plant which is right in the big middle of the proposed river development area in Tulsa?
Everyone with a brain knew that the small amount of money in 2025 for low water dams was just enough to do the studys to see if the dams would work. Please study these things before you vote or just don’t vote. The land in BA is listed and mapped for the project coming up for a vote Oct. 9th. And by the way, the Jenks group has said publicly that the investors only felt confident to proceed at this time because they felt very confident that the river tax will pass this fall. Again they don’t have to break ground for four or five months after the vote to still be on the timeline they revealed this week.
Just make sure that you turn the lights out in Tulsa if this river tax does not pass because I can tell you that the young professionals will be heading out the door if it doesn’t pass.
So Ryan, why to this day does the official Vision 2020 web site say, “Vision 2025 funds will be utilized to construct two low water dams”?
The Vision 2025 question that I voted upon allocated $5.6 Million for two low water dams. The studies and design work have all been completed and cost for all that was around a quarter million dollars. So where did the rest of the $5 million plus go?
Into the cost over-runs on the arena?
Or into someone’s pocket?
And when the River Tax is defeated, and it will be, don’t let the doorknob hit you on the way out…
I suppose we could build the low water dams as promised in 2025. It may take a bit longer. They should also be “as promised” or as initially envesioned, aka, the same as the Zink Dam is now. The dams they are envisioning building with this new plan are very different than they were thinking of building. This new play integrates all 3 dams. The Sand Springs dam is going to be higher than 2025 would have been allowing for water to be released during the day for the rest of the river. It will have features that will allow help the silt go through, it will have features that allow for fish to migrate, and it will be much safer and environmentally friendly than the old Zink Dam/2025 type dams.
I suppose if you want the 2025 dams, you will get those dams. Even those will cost more than originally hoped for simply because of the continued rising cost of materials, and because we did not get the large amount of federal matching funds that were hoped for. They could still be done. But to be fair, they will have to be of the old design because your argument is we have to follow what was intended in 2025. You cant cry foul about this new funding and want the new dams. Old funding, you get the old dams.
Ugh, excuse my typos.