Saturday spottings (ex-boondocks)

The tone for the day was set at the Sears parts/repair depot, where I arrived at the counter right behind a woman with a broken chainsaw. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind not to try to find out how it was broken.

From there, I dropped into the area which last week was first described as The Triangle, and now there's a sign or two to indicate such. What's over there now, at least east of Oklahoma Avenue, is not much; it's hard to imagine this as a vibrant urban community, but then fifteen years ago it was hard to imagine the decrepit warehouse zone east of downtown as an entertainment district, either.

Southward, to visit Dear Old Dad, where I filled him in on some of what's going on downtown, since he hasn't been downtown in fifteen years. He did seem impressed, though he wondered just how much money the city was blowing on eye candy, and pointed toward "some damn lake at the Community College."

Well, it's not technically a lake: it's a retention pond, to address some of the drainage issues in that relatively low-lying area of town. They did put a fountain in one corner of it, though, so I guess that qualifies as eye candy.

And I slid across I-44 to take a look at South Lakes Park, a 160-acre tract being developed in the semi-far southwest corner of town, an area which is largely unpopulated for now but which very likely won't stay that way for long. For the past twenty or thirty years, parkland has been an afterthought; the landscape is scraped away, the roads are put in, the foundations are laid, and maybe someone thinks to save some green area at the last minute. It's probably a good thing that Oklahoma City is actually ahead of the game this time around.

And there will be development out there, apart from the extant town of Mustang. Count on it. I followed the new (and not quite complete) alignment of Oklahoma 152, which used to start at I-44 and SW 29th Street, then veered off down Newcastle Road parallel to a rail line, threaded through the hamlet of Wheatland, until it hit 74th and turned west. The new 152 follows Airport Road west of I-44, which eventually will be extended beyond its current terminus on SW 44th between MacArthur and Rockwell. And to my amazement, someone is clearing space for high-buck homes where the new 152 crosses 59th. This made more sense when I drove back north of Mustang on Morgan Road, which used to be just one more country road and is now starting to accumulate housing developments. (Incidentally, the junction of Morgan at I-40, which used to be barely adequate, is now arguably the worst intersection in Canadian County, and competitive with urban nail-biters like Pennsylvania at Memorial.)

Vast Right-Wing Conspirators may be interested to hear that this stretch of SW 44th goes past one of Halliburton's two city facilities, and that I came within half a mile of the other one (near Reno and Morgan).

Posted at 7:24 PM to City Scene