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I just drove by the site this afternoon.  WOW!  It is looking great.  They are roughly 3/4ths complete with the demo.  I never thought that I would see this.

Lawton has needed someone to shake up the old guard for a long time.

My connections with Lawton have since moved from there, my uncle sold his car lot and my aunt retired from teaching and they moved to Lake Texoma. Even as long time Lawton residents had some issues with the way Lawton did things.

Yes. Bobby Mansell will be charged with the demolition costs. Of course anyone should expect Mansell to stall and not pay, which would force the city to apply a lien to the property. Word is Mansell has a number of other properties decaying to the point of having the same end result of Midtown Square. The guy has a lot of money regardless. The impression I get is this is all a pretty funny joke to him. However, in the end a growing number of people are sick and tired of Lawton being stuck as being a trashy, unprofessional, unethical hillbilly town. The "old guard" is fighting to keep Lawton stuck that way, but I think they're fighting a losing battle. Lawton is just a little bit too big a town to keep the "outsiders" held at bay forever. I'm rooting for the outsiders to come in and drop-kick the "old guard" right in the teeth.

Quote from: phernandez on 03/15/08, 19:10I hope bobby mansell gets ruined financially for all this crap.

Are they going to charge him with the demolition?

BUMP

The wrecking ball started swinging on the old Midtown Square property today. 13th Street from Gore Blvd to the South is closed for now while demolition continues. Motorists have been told to avoid the immediate area to cut down traffic back ups.

Nothing is going on at 82nd street. Not with the national economy in the toilet -especially in terms of real estate.

The news media has been concentrating in the excess, crimes and resulting implosion of the residential real estate market. However, we could see some big problems in many areas of the country in terms of commercial real estate. There is a lot of malls and shopping centers on the verge of foreclosure. Many of those properties have loans that are due to adjust around the end of May. In this environment major new retail construction will be a rare sight in most areas of the nation.

Lawton Urban Renewal Authority is still making slow progress on acquiring property in the phase 1A zone of the downtown redevelopment project. However, it will probably be at least another year before any kind of ground is broken on building anything new. Coca-Cola signed a 1 year lease a few weeks ago on the building at 2nd & Ferris. They're using that term to buy more time to move into a different Lawton Fort Sill area location.

So, the downtown project is pretty much going as I figured. It's a plan whose ambitious scope has caused it to drag well onto the next decade before we see anything happening. My most optimistic estimate, provided if the national economy improves later this year, is we'll see a new downtown shopping center opening by the end of 2011 at the earliest. It may be more like 2012 or 2013.

If it is, then it's really behind the scenes..

Tulsans need to invest in chains and a snow shovel and we'll be just fine.

The crews did a good job, early to respond (with the exception of that Monday).

For what the employees had at their disposal, yes.  They were running trucks early Monday, and put out scrapers Wed afternoon and Thursday to finish the cleanup.  Hell, they even were hand digging driveways after the plow came by.

I think is it a disservice to these employees to not give them better equipment to really do the job that they were tasked with.  Running two separate vehicles requiring twice the manpower, gas etc is not very cost effective as a taxpayer either.

I was hoping something behind the scenes was going on.  Oh well.