Bricktown sees fortunes on the rise with arrival of new businesses

If everyone in Oklahoma City opened a fortune cookie 15 years ago, accurate fortunes might have read something like, “Don’t relocate, good things are on the way.”

Considered a city in decline 20 years ago, Oklahoma City has recently experienced an incredible renaissance that has most metropolitan areas taking notes. Everyone should give their neighbor a high-five for the growth and attention this city is getting. Not only is Oklahoma City becoming a city where people want to live, and equally important, it’s where businesses want to be.

One of the areas most on the rise is Bricktown. Fifteen years ago, one could turn Sheridan into a golf driving range and nobody would complain. Today, not only are people walking the streets as if they live there (which they now do) but businesses are packed with locals and out-of-town guests. Just ask James Durocher.

“This is a great piece of property, a unique piece of real estate in Bricktown. The land is situated at I-235 and I-44," Durocher said recently.

A real estate broker with NAI Sullivan Group, Durocher closed on a property sold to SKH, L.L.C. for a brand new hotel to anchor the east side of Bricktown. The three-acre lot (now vacant) will be built into a seven-story, 125-room hotel near the crossing of I-44 and I-235. That’s not all.

Brad Baker, also of NAI Sullivan Group, closed on a property located in the Miller Jackson Building off the Bricktown Canal, which in March 2009 will be the new home of the Coyote Ugly Saloon, a national chain made famous in 2000’s hit film, “Coyote Ugly.” Oh yes, almost forgot, OKC can also call itself home to the newest member of the National Basketball Association. The OKC Thunder, I like the sound of that. I’m either anxious… or afraid to open another fortune cookie. What’s next? A city-wide diet?

Wednesday, 08 October 2008
By Patrick B. McGuigan-Sentinel Managing Editor

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