Last time we heard anything about Crossroads Mall, on the city’s south side, was when word got out that it had become the property of the Fed. At the time, I said basically one word: “Bulldozers.”

Now I’m not so sure. As is often the case with malls, while smaller stores paid rent to mall management, the anchor stores owned their sections outright. And one of the departed anchors has managed to find a buyer: Macy’s last month spun off its share of the property to something called Crossroads/150 LLC, for a tidy $1.5 million.

This particular something, reports OKCBiz, is managed by Richard Tanenbaum, who says he plans to retain it as an investment property. And I can’t really argue with him on this:

“It’s not the time to be buying anything,” Tanenbaum said with a laugh, “but, my goodness gracious, at 10 bucks a foot … It’s just one of those deals that you just can’t pass up.”

So: one down, three to go. Crossroads Maiden Lane LLC, the Fed’s entity, owns two of the anchor slots — JCPenney and Montgomery Ward (later Steve & Barry’s) — while Dillard’s retains their location.

I still can’t imagine what might happen to this place that would make it profitable, but I still am loath to bet against Richard Tanenbaum.

Yeah, everything’s coated with a thin layer of ice, except for what’s coated with a thick layer of ice, but forget that for the moment. Tovah Martin is coming to town:

The beauty of gardens is that they mature. This is a lecture about horticultural preservation, stewardship, and how gardeners grapple with change. We address the challenges of bringing landscapes into the next generation. Whether you have inherited a landscape or crated a garden over decades and now face mature trees and shrubs that require preemptive pruning or relocation, we explore the issues great and small. We tackle such sticky wickets as rehabilitating overgrown boxwood hedges and coping with plants that were once considered exotics but have now been unmasked as invasives. This is lecture about bringing yesterday’s gardens into tomorrow and the issues that we all face in this process. But we also talk about plant preservation and heirloom varieties, honoring the people who have worked to preserve vintage ornamentals so those plants with a past can become the superstars of future gardens.

“Trowels & Tomorrow: Garden Stewardship” is Sunday, February 14, at the Educational Center at the OKC Zoo. Starting time is 2 pm.

Aaron Renn, in the process of explaining Richard Florida’s “creative class” shtick, finds some deeper truths:

Florida’s simplified thesis is that successful cities are about talent, technology, and tolerance. The last point is usually taken to mean a tolerance for gays and various “bohemian” types. But tolerance isn’t about non-discrimination ordinances and it isn’t about gays. Tolerance is a mindset.

The dictionary definition of tolerance is “sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one’s own”. From this is clear that most advocates for “progressive” policies of the type advocated by Florida really aren’t tolerating anything. They might be about allowing differences, but it is seldom about allowing views or actions that are in actual conflict with their own values. Indeed, progressives can be as intolerant as anyone for beliefs or actions that differ from their orthodoxy.

We need tolerance properly so-called. We need an environment where we are willing to put up with things we don’t like in return for the same freedom for ourselves. We need cities where “live and let live” is the motto. Rules that stifle this in order to produce a perpetual suburban style family friendly or least common denominator view of what a city should be are ultimately counter-productive. They sap the city of its animating power.

This explains, among other things, why the contemporary/wacky/WTF (choose one) architecture going up west of MidTown is so important: they stand athwart the “A neighborhood should look like this” concept and shout, “Oh, yeah?” Anyone can build a startlingly-modern house way the hell out at 199th and Whatever, but putting it right smack dab in the middle of town is a serious statement.

Given the tendency to overplan occasionally exhibited in this town — nobody has any idea what Core to Shore will eventually look like, but every office in City Hall has some sort of model — I’m definitely up for some seemingly-wretched excess. Oh, and a few non-discrimination ordinances might be nice.

The Black Hole of Retail at 63rd and May seems to have been repopulated; last year a Half Price Books outlet took over the old Hollywood Video space — imagine that, books replacing video — and now Ballengers Furniture, a place where I have spent way too much money, is moving into the space vacated by CompUSA way back when. Praise be unto JAH.

Speaking of locations on May, my non-automatic car wash of choice, the old National Pride wash in the Village, has apparently swallowed its pride and closed its doors, except of course that it doesn’t have any doors. I have tentatively settled on the Xtreme (!) Wash at 38th and Meridian as its replacement; it exceeds the usual cleanliness standard, the mechanicals are friendly — no coin changer, you just shove in bills as needed — and they have one of these on the premises, which suggests they might actually pay attention to water quality.

Snark of the day: at the meat counter, from a woman who was finicky about filet mignon. She found one she liked, and then pointed to a tray about two feet away for her second. Said the butcher, “Good stuff, but that’s the prime. It’s five dollars more per pound.”

“Oh, he’s not worth five dollars,” she said.

Yeah, we all laughed; comic timing, I decided, outweighed the appearance of misandry. And having bought nothing over four dollars a pound from their display case, I figured I probably wasn’t worth it either.

Later, sighted across a parking lot, this was chalked (shoe-polished, more likely, but you get the idea) on the windows of a van: “RIP,” a girl’s name, “We Love You,” and her dates.

Three months and three days apart.

The skies, already darkening, seemed to be so much more so all of a sudden.

I had gotten about three miles away when The Spy unexpectedly served up Kirsty MacColl’s unjustly-forgotten “Walking Down Madison.”

“From the sharks in the penthouse
To the rats in the basement
It’s not that far…”

This marked the transition from “somewhat weepy” to “totally lost it.”

Now materializing: OKC’s Dine Out for Haiti campaign, running (mostly) Sunday through Tuesday, in which ten percent of sales from participating restaurants will be donated to the American Red Cross International Disaster Relief Fund for Haiti.

That’s what it says, anyway. Here’s the list of eateries; rather a lot of the Big Names are participating on one day, though none of them on all three.

Of course, if you prefer alternate channels for donations, by all means use them.

This week, the Neighborhood Alliance dispatched an email: “Is this the image we want around our neighborhoods?”

The issue: electronic signage, and a proposed city ordinance to regulate their size and placement. The new rules would provide for three “levels” of signs:

· Level 1 allows static messages to be displayed for at least eight seconds. It would be the only type of [electronic message display] permitted in residential areas, except for along major arterial roads.

· Level 2 allows text and graphics that appear to move or change in size. Messages may scroll across the sign.

· Level 3 allows animated graphics and full-motion video with no restrictions of message length.

There are also size limitations: level 1, for instance, is limited to 100 square feet. The Alliance wants this cut to 75 square feet, and a ban in areas where design review is required; also, they want neighborhoods to be informed if any such sign is going to be constructed within 300 feet of its official boundaries.

Ward 4 Councilman Pete White explains the reason for the new rule:

“The idea is to bring the ordinance into the 21st century and get an ordinance that anybody could read and see if they’re able to get a particular sign,” White said. “We’re trying to get rid of this administrative quagmire that was created.”

I’m not quite sure what I think of this. There’s a full-fledged Level 3 sign at billboard level along I-44’s north loop, and it doesn’t bother me at all; I suspect I’d be more annoyed, though, were it closer to eye level, or closer to my house — though that presumably wouldn’t happen, under either the previous ordinance or the new one.

And hardly any of the EMD signs I’ve seen have even a sliver of the gritty urban character of good old-fashioned neon, which makes me wonder just how much Tyranny of the New factor is involved here.

The Thunder beat the Knicks last night, and most observers believe it was the result of Oklahoma City’s superior defense.

At least some of the Knicks, however, believe it was the result of Oklahoma City’s dearly departed:

For two days, several players had trouble sleeping because they were convinced that their downtown hotel is haunted.

“I definitely believe it,” Jared Jeffries said. “The place is haunted. It’s scary.”

Eddy Curry claims he slept for only two hours Sunday night because he couldn’t stop thinking about ghosts roaming the hotel.

Jeffries scored eight points, about twice his average so far this season. Curry did not play (coach’s decision).

For years, guests staying at the Skirvin Hilton have reported ghost sightings and strange noises. Legend has it that sometime in the 1930s, a woman jumped to her death while holding her baby in her hands.

“They said it happened on the 10th floor and I’m the only one staying on the 10th floor,” Curry said. “That’s why I spent most of my time in (Nate Robinson’s) room. I definitely believe there are ghosts in that hotel.”

Robinson had 19 points, about half again his average so far this season.

Next game with the Knicks is at Madison Square Garden; they won’t be back here until next season. Wonder where they’ll stay?

(Tweeted by FanFeedr.)

The Oklahoma City Police Department is now posting the official Jail Blotter on a daily basis; the most recent 30 days are available, in PDF format. Not searchable, but at least decently readable.

This is in compliance with 51 O.S. 24A.8. Incidentally, the date of birth is included for each person named in the blotter, although, as Dr Joey Senat notes:

Oklahoma City and Oklahoma County officials have recently refused to disclose the birth dates of their government employees, claiming it would be an unwarranted invasion of privacy.

So long as those employees stay out of jail, I guess.

It took two years and six weeks, from groundbreaking to ribbon-cutting, to build the Empire State Building.

For some reason, we seem to have forgotten how to do this sort of thing with any alacrity:

It looks like the time to build a big skyscraper in America is doubling every 35 years.

Another 70 years will be two more cycles of doubling, at which point the time to construct a skyscraper will — at the time construction starts — be 40 years … and will double ever 35 years.

A Bizarro version of Moore’s Law, to be sure. Are they building them from the top down or something?

Admittedly, it’s been more than 70 years since Oklahoma City’s Great Skyscraper Race, but I suspect we can come up with some speed if we have to: the 900-foot Devon Tower was started two months ago and is supposed to be finished in a mere 38 months.

(Spotted by Tam.)

The official total today at Will Rogers World Airport was 14.1 inches, which I think qualifies as a Storm of the Century, as it surpassed both the 12.3 inches that fell over three days in January 1988 and the 11.4 inches that fell on 19 March 1924. (Records go back to the 1890s.)

Typically, the heaviest snow is in a narrow band, and it drops off quickly a few miles either side of it; I’m estimating about 10 inches here at Surlywood, which is about ten miles from the airport unless you actually have to drive there.

For those people who were dreaming of a white Christmas: okay, you got it. It’ll probably be twenty years until you get another one, so try to enjoy it.

There had been some thought that the entire MAPS 3 package was dead in the water: not all the proposals easily lent themselves to “Yeah, we really ought to do that,” there was loud and vocal opposition for once, and the weather on election day was fairly terrible.

Renzi Stone suggests that the proponents, having discovered that the opposition wasn’t going to go away quietly, doubled down:

[T]he union (perhaps inadvertently) woke up a business and Chamber community that may have taken MAPS passage for granted. The organized opposition actually united the “yes” coalition.

On the other hand, it wasn’t that organized, says Dan Lovejoy:

The opposition was undisciplined in its message, negative toward the city, and pessimistic overall. Its visual appeals were very poor. The “Not This Maps” signs were almost illegible — black signs with red and white text. Who wants to be affiliated with this dark imagery, with this negativity toward your own city?

I heard one radio ad in which the announcer had the thickest southeastern Oklahoma accent one could possibly imagine — it was really more of a parody than a real dialect. It didn’t speak to aspiration, and it certainly didn’t speak to urban voters. I don’t know who they thought their audience was, but they missed. Overall, the NO alliance depended on negativity — they didn’t offer any meaningful alternative.

Me, I like southeastern-Oklahoma accents, but I suppose they don’t play well on (semi)-big-city radio.

In the case where something truly horrid is about to be undertaken, not offering a meaningful alternative can be considered a Good Thing: if the Republicrats propose to poison the wells with arsenic, the Demopublicans need not respond with a counteroffer to use formaldehyde instead. (Extrapolate this to Real Life however you wish.) But the opposition wasn’t in any position to make the argument that MAPS 3 was truly horrid, only that it might be ill-timed in light of the less-than-robust economy, especially since they insisted that the vast sums involved be spent, not on these pet projects, but on their own pet projects.

And as it turned out, the weather didn’t seem to stop anyone anyway. You want to see weather-impacted voting, you go back to this week in 2007 when the city was seeking approval of new bond issues in the midst of a major ice storm. Five percent of the electorate, maybe.

Yes, folks, we will continue taxing ourselves a whole cent for another eight years or so to pay for some civic goodies.

Unofficial total, with all 271 precincts reporting: Yes 40,956 (54.3%); No: 34,465 (45.7%).

To quote Nick Roberts (who wrote this before the vote):

The entire city will enjoy the system of hiking and bicycle trails. Each section of the city that gets a senior city will benefit from that. Businesses on the west side of town will benefit from more expo shows at the Fairgrounds and the entire city will benefit from more sales tax from the expo center and the convention center. The south side, particularly Capitol Hill, will benefit from the stadium seats to be placed on the south side of the river. The whole center city will benefit from 5-6 miles of streetcar track. This could connect C2S, Bricktown, the Medical District/OHC area, Capitol area, Uptown, Heritage Hills, MidTown, Downtown/Arts District, and back to C2S. And the entire center city, anything between I-44 and I-240, will benefit from a downtown renaissance. Before MAPS, how fashionable was it to live in neighborhoods like Heritage Hills, Mesta Park, Gatewood, Jefferson Park, The Paseo, et all? The answer is not very en vogue. Because of MAPS, the entire city is en vogue. You can’t put a pricetag on that.

It wasn’t going to be a landslide: everyone knew that. The first MAPS package, back in 1993, passed with 53 percent of the vote. But try to find someone today who says he voted against it.

At 4:57 pm, I cast the 597th ballot in my precinct. Not enormously huge turnout, but pretty decent. (“Sometimes we’re lucky to get 50,” said one poll worker.)

I won’t even speculate on how the measure fared; I have to figure that both sides had their own get-out-the-vote efforts, and my mailbox will back me up on this.

Generations Healthcare, it says in the paper, is offering free informational seminars this month on the subject of Medicare. In an effort to make attendees health-conscious, they’ve selected the locations carefully:

Dec. 4 — Panera Bread, 10600 S Pennsylvania.
Dec. 9 — Starbucks, 3616 N May.
Dec. 10 — Krispy Kreme, 1024 SW 74th.
Dec. 17 — Denny’s, 1617 W I-240 Service Road.
Dec. 22 — Krispy Kreme, 1024 SW 74th.
Dec. 29 — Krispy Kreme, 13500 N Pennsylvania.
Dec. 30 — Dunkin’ Donuts, 1600 S Sunnylane.
Dec. 31 — Starbucks, 3616 N May.

Each session starts at 9:30 am and will run for approximately one hour.

MartzMimic, commenting before a sea of Ogles, explains why he’s supporting the MAPS 3 package:

In each of the previous proposals — including last year’s vote to improve the Ford Center and build a practice facility for the Thunder — our city leaders have actually delivered what they said they would deliver. Too many people seem to forget what Oklahoma City was like prior to MAPS.

Downtown certainly wasn’t a place a pretty girl could go plaster shark posters in relative safety.

Nick Roberts has a whole Top Ten, from which I single out Number Three:

Embarrass the Stimulus. The Stimulus does not work because people in Washington, DC do not know what needs OKC or any town has. Even if they knew what projects the people in Pittsburgh and Minneapolis supported, here in OKC we got nothing from the Stimulus. Is there a guarantee the Stimulus will work? No, in fact precedent is way against it. Precedent is however in favor of MAPS. If you want to make a political point against government waste and pet projects, vote for MAPS. Let’s prove a powerful point to Washington: special projects are best left to local leaders NOT distant politicians.

Actually, we got a few bucks here and there, inasmuch as most of the funds seem to be spent on state government, and OKC has been the state capital ever since we didn’t actually steal the state seal. But not much of it is going to be spent on stimulating actual private investment, which is the whole point of MAPS. (Okay, “satisfying some people’s Edifice Complex” is up there somewhere, but it’s not at the top.)

I still have issues with the methodology in place around here, but I remain unpersuaded by the opposition.

The guys opposed to the MAPS 3 package left a card on my front door, which I duly read. Never let it be said I pass up free blogfodder, especially when it invites high levels of snark.

The opening paragraph seems sane enough:

At a time when money is tight, taxes need to pay for public safety and infrastructure improvement, not another convention center, 70-acre central park and other projects that will cost over ¾ of a billion dollars.

The dollar figure, I suppose, is intended to intimidate us with its sheer size, and after all, they’ll be collecting this tax — the same tax they’re already collecting for something else — for seven years and nine months. And I concede, $777 million is a fair chunk of change. Then again, the city’s budget for FY 2009-10 is just this side of $840 million, a number even scarier, and in a far shorter period of time yet.

It would also be nice if you didn’t notice that MAPS funds have never been spent on the essentials: the whole idea, ever since Ron Norick came up with the premise back in the Bad Old Days, was to fund stuff that was never going to be covered in the budget, without jeopardizing the occasional bond issues by massively increasing the city’s debt load. Since the city’s credit rating is solid, they presumably were at least somewhat successful.

Since providers of infrastructure are not mentioned among the opponents, and the police and firefighter organizations are, it’s hard not to conclude that the opposition is based simply on “Where’s ours?” This is a legitimate political position, but it’s not one I’m likely to find persuasive.

And farther down the page, Ward 5 Councilman Brian Walters mumbles the following:

“There is growing support against this MAPS proposal.”

Even if you’re susceptible to the Bandwagon Effect, which I’m not, you might be tempted to chuckle at Walters’ mangled syntax. You want “support against,” you’re looking at something like a bridge abutment. Maybe this is what they mean by “infrastructure.”

In my erstwhile capacity as a gadget freak in this part of the world, it was probably inevitable that I would someday meet Linda Soundtrak, the TV face of the electronics chain that bore her name. (Well, actually, she took the store’s name as a stage name, but that’s not important.) Not everyone was as crazy about her as I was:

Linda Soundtrak was the most annoying pitch person alive at a time when being an annoying pitch person was an art form. But don’t you miss her?

Well, yes. And while people still revile her, I’m looking forward to her return: when she wasn’t being Linda Soundtrak, she was calm, almost demure, and incredibly focused, and she occasionally had time to chat up some of us wandering about on the sales floor. She won’t be doing that this time around — she’ll come in once in a while to record a few spots for the reopened store’s new owner, sort of like Tom Park — but sixteen years without Linda is quite enough, thank you very much. (And if nothing else, this should demonstrate that no, that’s someone else doing the far-more-annoying 1-800-2SELLHOMES ads.)

Not all of us are destined to be gritty-but-suave urbanites:

I didn’t really like living in a loft, but I’m glad I did it, mostly so I never have to want to do it again. It isn’t nearly as romantic and adventurous as it sounds. All that brick and concrete left me cold, not to mention the eccentric tenant (or two) we had to deal with. It’s no wonder during this time I started dating a man who drove a pickup and rode horses.

No, she didn’t move to a ranch or anything like that, but I suppose we’ve all been sold pretty much the same bill of goods: the very definition of the Urban Experience requires us to live over a storefront. (See “mixed-use development.”) One Black Friday would cure me of that notion.

Yours truly, about this time last fall:

I live in one of those districts with fairly strict [building and zoning] requirements; I’m thinking that it wouldn’t hurt this town, and might help it, to try a little experiment with Almost Anything Goes. I’ve visited the Okasian House — it was on the 2007 Architecture Tour — and I’d love to see other contemporary homes cheek by jowl with Craftsman houses, just for sheer jaw-dropping variety.

Here’s something you’ll see on the 2010 Architecture Tour:

By no particular coincidence, Brian Fitzsimmons, who designed the Okasian House, is responsible for this one as well, a block away at 7th and Francis. The Urban Planning Commission hashed over the plans for several sessions before finally giving design approval: the sticking point, apparently, was that cantilevered upper section, which played hell with the definition of “setback.” More interesting to me, though, is the construction technique for those concrete walls: instead of relying on the usual Styrofoam forms, they poured these directly in place. (Out back, in fact, there’s a test wall, used as proof of concept.) The view from that upper section is fabulous. For now, we’re calling this the Lovallo House, after owner Bill Lovallo.

Farther northwest, the tried-and-failed, tried-and-failed-again Windsor Hills moviehouse is being tried again, this time operated by B&B Theatres, the small Missouri-based chain that operates the Reno 8 cinema in El Reno. Ten screens are promised. This stretch of 23rd Street, west of Meridian, is becoming increasingly Latino, which makes me wonder if maybe they’ll run some Mexican films now and then; the young ladies handing out flyers couldn’t say.

Construction on the Northwest Distressway between Blackwelder and Pennsylvania continues, and not being sure exactly what they’re doing, I can’t tell you whether they’ll be done in time for the Black Friday debacle that usually takes place on the way to Penn Square. They’ve added a second left-turn lane into the mall, opposite the 50 Penn Place entrance eastbound, and at the moment they seem to be widening the westbound roadway for the benefit of traffic entering I-44 west. Traffic exiting I-44 at the Distressway, however, is facing the same set of hurdles as always: there’s apparently nothing that can be done about that other than what I do already, which is (1) exit at Classen and (2) pray.

Last year I put up an itemized list of where my property-tax money was going, according to the County Assessor’s official breakdown, and I figured I’d do it again this year. Figures in [brackets] are for last year, and they’re of course lower.

• City of Oklahoma City: $130.71 [$125.46]
• Oklahoma City Public Schools: $517.11 [$439.83]
• Metro Tech Center: $136.73 [$129.49]
• Oklahoma County general: $113.81 [$94.29]
• Countywide school levy: $36.64 [$34.70]
• County Health Department: $22.92 [$21.71]
• Metropolitan Library System: $46.02 [$43.58]
• Total: $1003.94 [$889.06]

This is about as much as they could raise it without running afoul of either the cap law or the patience of the taxpayers, and I’m not so sure about the latter, especially since the notices haven’t gone out yet.

The actual rate chart is here. Many of the individual levies are actually the same as last year, though the OCPS levy is up 11.3 percent.

Apparently The Powers That Be think they’ll need it to pass the MAPS 3 package.

The proposals for MAPS 3 were announced over a month ago, with attendant remarks by Mick Cornett:

Mayor Cornett urged citizens to withhold judgment on the MAPS proposal as he and the Council explain the eight projects in detail over the next two-and-a-half months. The Mayor announced that each of the projects will be the focus of regular press conferences starting in October.

“Today’s announcement is exciting, but it’s also a lot to take in,” said Cornett. “We will spend the next two-and-a-half months fully informing the citizens of the benefits of these projects. No one who wants to see our City’s momentum continue should be complacent just because MAPS and MAPS for Kids have been successful. These MAPS projects must stand on their own, and the Council and I believe they will.

“We look forward to what will be a very public discussion.”

Five weeks later, where’s the full information? On Wednesday, Hizzoner presided at the Skirvin over the first of a “series of luncheons.” Whatever information was disclosed at that time, we don’t know: attendance was limited to Chamber of Commerce members (who forked over $30) and however many nonmembers were allowed in (at $35). And the followup in the Oklahoman was sketchy in the extreme.

Two more such luncheons are planned, both at the Petroleum Club, just in case anyone thought the Skirvin was too likely to be invaded by street rabble.

Doug Loudenback points out that there are lots of genuine issues which must be addressed:

Since the September 30 City Council vote, any number of news articles reporting on various aspects of MAPS 3 could have been, and would have been expected to have been, investigated and published. Examples: Issues concerning the vague ballot and the non-binding City Council resolution, including the city’s claim that “log rolling” is now prohibited in municipal sales tax elections; issues concerning whether a new convention center is desirable; issues concerning the location of the proposed Convention Center, even if desirable; issues concerning city-unions not supporting MAPS 3; and so on.

Topics like the above are newsworthy, regardless of one’s disposition to favor, or disfavor, MAPS 3. They are also newsworthy topics which have been, thus far, shrouded with silence in the Oklahoman.

Meanwhile, the Journal Record is aware of the information gap. As transcribed by Blair Humphreys:

At Oklahoma City University, political science department chairman Richard Johnson said the MAPS 3 campaign needs to do a better job of informing constituents. “Unless the supporters do a better job of getting out in front of this, they really risk having it fail,” Johnson said.

“People have felt really good about the MAPS projects generally and getting a reasonable return on their dollar. But there’s not really enough out there yet. The public really needs to be educated about MAPS 3 and what’s in it — something like the need for an expansion of the Civic Center, for example. The benefits really need to be laid out for people to motivate them to vote.”

All the previous MAPS deals were, for the most part, out there in the open, warts and all. I can only conclude that this package must have so many warts that its proponents want to keep the camera away as long as possible. Unfortunately, that sort of thing works only in Hollywood — and, occasionally, in Tulsa.

I mentioned the foreclosure of Crossroads Mall way back in the spring, but didn’t go into the gory details: I merely predicted the arrival of the bulldozers. Then this story cropped up this week (hat tip: McGehee), and suddenly it was news again:

Crossroads Mall, half-empty after anchor stores Macy’s, JC Penney, Montgomery Ward and Dillard’s all pulled out, was brought out of foreclosure in April with $77 million in debt, according to Ann Marie Randolph at the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s office. It is now up for sale for $24 million.

Montgomery Ward, you’ll remember, died way back in 2001, so this situation has been brewing for a long time. JCPenney has regrouped, with new stores to the south and east, but neither Macy’s nor Dillard’s has sought a new location.

And you care about this dead mall, because you own it:

The Fed’s $29 billion bailout of Bear Stearns was secured by a portfolio of Bear assets that included $5.5 billion in commercial loans, including the note on Crossroads Mall that went into default.

In case you want the dots connected, the Oklahoman’s Richard Mize has done the drawing for you:

Price Edwards is listing the mall for mall owner Maiden Lane LLC, an entity of Maiden Lane Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities Trust. It wound up with the mall after Arkansas-based Midwest Mall Properties LLC lost it to foreclosure late last year.

Maiden Lane is a “special purpose vehicle” created in April 2008 by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to facilitate the merger of Bear Stearns Cos. Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Maiden Lane owns Crossroads Mall because former owner Macerich Co. refinanced $61.2 million with Bear Stearns in 2006. But since Maiden Lane is a creature of the Federal Reserve, it was the Fed that took title when Maiden Lane paid $11.24 million for the property at a sheriff’s sale April 30.

I still think: bulldozers. Except for right around that oil well on the premises.

A few weeks back, whoever mans (or womans, I suppose) the Twitter account for the Oklahoma Gazette solicited questions for the 30th Anniversary issue, out yesterday. I toyed with a few, and after rejecting “Has anyone ever caught Carol Smaglinski in the drive-thru at KFC?” and “What would happen if Chicken-Fried News was turned over to the Lost Ogles?” came up with this one:

Does the Shopgirl have a real expense account, or does she have to pay for all those tchotchkes herself?

Said Jenny Coon Peterson, who writes the column correctly styled as “ShopGirl”:

“Ha, expense account. What is that again? We’re an independent weekly, folks, not Vogue.”

But no, she’s not shelling out for the stuff either:

“I actually don’t allow myself to buy a single thing when I’m on the ShopGirl prowl, or my column would quickly change to BrokeGirl and then BankruptcyGirl. Instead, I visit each shop, talk to owners and managers, and write about the products so you can buy them.”

Actually, “BrokeGirl” might make a pretty good column. Then again, I follow the tweets of Miss Elle, who writes Broke & Beautiful on the Web.

And no, they didn’t use the word “tchotchkes” in the actual paper, probably because it would have eaten up valuable space to explain it.

Andrew Littleton is moving to Nashville, but one thing he’ll never forget about Oklahoma City is the “authentic-ish” Mexican joints along SW 29th Street:

Ever since the day I had a $3 breakfast for lunch at Sydney’s and helped to unplug the fan so they could plug in the cash register to complete my purchase, I fell in love with this stretch of road. Sure, there have been moments of fear. Like the time the drug dealer dudes started ramming their $40,000 tricked-out Cadillacs like they were bumper cars. Or, the time the meth lady accused me of stealing her car (my custom Volkswagen Beetle) and then chased me back to my office. Or, of course, the time I ate at the Golden Touch Grill. But those moments are fleeting as I think of all the great food. Flautas and enchiladas at Los Desvelados, dollar tacos at Max Burger, the burger I got carded to eat at the place that turned out to be a shady beer bar, and the time my friend Dirk nearly died from the heat after shouting “muy caliente el diablo!” about how hot he wanted his pork chile verde from the place across the street from Los Desvelados.

Now that’s hot.

Disclosure: I (briefly) worked in fast food on 29th in the 1970s. Back then it was a burger joint; today it’s a pizza chain.

From last summer:

The embattled and controversial [Brent] Rinehart received only 21 percent of the vote and failed to make a runoff in the Republican primary.

“Too many hurdles. Mountain too high. Too many battles,” Rinehart said. “You hope throughout everything that the public sees and understands and so you do your best, and I’ve done my best.”

In case you were looking for a definition of “best”:

Former Oklahoma County Commissioner Brent Rinehart pleaded guilty today to a misdemeanor count of accepting a campaign contribution in excess of $5,000.

He was given a three year deferred sentence. He also was fined $1,000.

Rinehart was charged with multiple felonies, including money laundering and fraud related to his 2004 campaign finances.

Apparently boiling in oil wasn’t even considered. Pity.

The list of building permits in the Saturday Oklahoman is ordered by estimated cost, so inevitably this was the first item:

Devon World Headquarters LLC, 101 N. Harvey Ave., parking, add-on, $45,000,000.

This refers, of course, not to the big drill bit in the sky itself, but the neighboring parking garage. The Tower itself, slightly scaled down from the original plans — we’re now looking at 50 stories, 850 feet, 1.8 million square feet of space — will be completed in, they say, late 2012, at a cost somewhere in the vicinity of $750 million.

Still, the sheer size of this project dwarfs everything else in town. The second item on the building-permits list is a $500k house near Council and Memorial.

I’m still wondering if there’s a street address assigned to the Tower. Wikipedia says 280 West Sheridan, but that can’t be right: that would put it on top of the north end of the Myriad Botanical Gardens. 289 or 301 or 333, I’d believe.

There’s the Bataan Death March, and then there’s parking at the Harkins:

If I am going to let’s say, an eight o’clock movie, I need to arrive to the theater at six so that maybe I’ll have the chance to get a parking spot that’s within two miles of the front door. Look, I’m not parking in that damn lot that’s back behind Bass Pro. I’m just not. It’s the principle of the matter. What’s that? They have a shuttle I can ride? See, I drove a car so that I wouldn’t have to be shoved up against some slightly overweight guy that covered his entire body in Axe Body Spray, even if it’s just for three minutes. No thanks on the bus ride. And I’m not parking in the lot where you use your ticket to get out for free. I’m too dumb to remember to save my ticket and I’d have to pay the five anyway. So don’t even suggest that.

Actually, that latter lot, where you use your ticket to get out for free, is where I always park, and I never forget to get my ticket validated, because I am at heart a cheap essobee who is unwilling to kiss a five-spot goodbye.

I wonder what he’d say if the ceiling fell in on him.

Mayor Cornett’s new day job at ad agency Ackerman McQueen caused some consternation hither and yon, mostly because of potential conflicts of interest: talk-show host Mark Shannon said flatly, “His very employment with Ackerman McQueen creates the appearance of wrong-doing.” I submit that anywhere The Mick might put down his briefcase would introduce at least some theoretical potential for mischief, but A/M’s sheer ubiquity multiplies the potential several zillion-fold: if you graphed everywhere the agency has influence in this town and connected all the dots, you’d come up with something you could sell on eBay as Japanese tentacle porn. Nobody is saying that either Cornett or A/M is actually up to something, but as Paul said to the Thessalonians: “Avoid even the appearance of evil.”

Michael Bates was all over this earlier; I mention it here because there’s a question which logically proceeds from the comments, beginning at the point where I noted that last year Oklahoma City voters turned down a charter change which would double the salaries of the Mayor and the Council. Hizzoner currently makes a whopping $24,000 a year in his official position. (God only knows what Cornett is being paid as an executive VP of A/M.) To which Bates replied:

It’s difficult to know how much to pay an elected official. It needs to be enough for them to make it a full-time job, but not so much they want to make a career of it.

Council members get $12,000 a year, basically minimum wage. By comparison, state legislators, who are explicitly part-time — they’re supposed to have the year’s work wrapped up by the last Friday in May — pull down $38,400, plus per diem during session.

My own thinking here is something like this: I don’t want these guys paid so much that I’d want to quit my own job and run for office purely for financial reasons. (Unless, of course, I thought I’d actually win, which I probably would not; Sam Bowman is pretty popular here in Ward 2.) And I suspect my response to graft is typical: I want less of it, unless I have an opportunity to participate. I suppose I should be expecting a letter from Paul any day now.

“We’re cooler than you think,” says jenX67 of her hometown and mine. “We have noise.”

Apart from the BNSF, which doesn’t come within two miles of me, I hear most of the same things up here at the palatial estate at Surlywood, though all the choppers sound alike to me, and I have no neighbors with $40k hot tubs. At least, not outside.

Still, this gives me an excuse to reprint something from the spring of 2001:

The train goes by.

I don’t really hear it, even at two in the morning, but just the same, I know the train goes by. There’s an east-west freight line that approaches to within 600 yards of my bedroom window, and it crosses section-line roads half a mile from me in either direction, so the train, as a safety measure, will sound its horn. It doesn’t sound quite like anything else. The occasional police siren, the storm-warning horns, the yelp of the ambulance — all these things will rouse me from my fitful semi-slumber, not because they’re any louder, but because they announce that something is wrong, something must be done quickly, something will never be the same again.

But when the train goes by, even if I hear it, I don’t really hear it; it’s part of the aural landscape, part of the regular routine, a reassurance that the world has not come to an end, that shipping and business and life go on. “All is well,” as the town crier used to say.

And yes, I have hardwood floors.

With MAPS 3 the talk of the town, I figured it was time to digest some of the fine print in the ShapardResearch poll conducted for the Gazette and KWTV earlier in the month. (PDF fans can read the whole thing here.) Not entirely random observations:

• Whether they like the proposed projects or not, people lurve the Mayor; even the political independents, who have the least use for him, give Mick Cornett 61 percent approval.
• Somehow, somewhere, they found thirteen liberal Republicans for the poll.
• Conservative Democrats seem to be a bit less sanguine about the projects than conservative Republicans.
• The convention center is definitely the least-liked of all the projects, and not just by me. Dealbreaker? Too early to tell.
• Ward 2, where I live, was tied for the highest support for the streetcar system (57.1 percent), though were it to pass, it’s unlikely that any of the initial routes would make it more than a block or two into Ward 2.
• Nobody’s quite sure how to finance a new county jail, which isn’t on the MAPS 3 list — but they’re sure they don’t want it to be paid for by an increase in the property tax.

The city and the official cheering committee will presumably start coughing up some details in the next few weeks.