10 YEARS LATER: Projects put city on MAPS -  12/7/2003

The Daily Oklahoman

In England and Holland, they're writing about MAPS. In Alabama and Virginia, they're trying to duplicate it. Metropolitan Area Projects has come to represent a community effort to address quality of life and self-image with one massive reinvestment in the inner-city.

And it started a decade ago this month, with Oklahoma City voters deciding to take a chance. On Dec. 14, 1993, residents who had turned down one tax after another for nearly 20 years narrowly voted for a five-year MAPS sales tax that leaders promised would turn around the city's fortunes.

Rick Horrow, a Florida sports attorney who specializes in promoting arena and ballpark projects, credits Oklahoma City with inspiring a wave of such initiatives nationwide. Oklahoma City was not the first to build a canal, ballpark, arena, downtown transit system or library, nor was it the first to improve its river, convention center, fair park or performance hall.

But Horrow, who helped promote the 1993 campaign, insists it was the first to tackle them all at once. "MAPS was absolutely, unequivocally unprecedented," Horrow said. "It set the gold standard in every way in terms of regional infrastructure development and the profound community impact that followed."
Tulsa leaders tried three times to pass their own version of MAPS before getting voter approval in September. Blake Wade, chairman of the Oklahoma Centennial Commission, said MAPS sparked a renewed interest in downtowns across the state.

New self-image
Ray Ackerman, who was chairman of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce and oversaw early "visioning" retreats leading to the 1993 election, said polls in the early 1990s showed only 17 percent of residents had a positive image of their community. Even worse, 61 percent had a negative image.

"If you asked people why they stayed here, they said they thought we had a good quality of life," Ackerman said. "But they also thought the grass was greener on the other side of the fence. They didn't have any pride." That sort of image problem hurt efforts to lure tourists, conventions and industry, Ackerman said, because residents are the ones who sell a town.

The impact of MAPS is visible throughout downtown, where investment is expected to top billion in the next few years. Permanent job creation credited to MAPS: more than 1,000. Ralph McCalmont, interim director of the Oklahoma Department of Tourism, said MAPS has turned downtown into a destination. The Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce reports that 6.2 million people attended downtown events last year.

That number is expected to increase by millions because of the recent opening of Bass Pro Shops and completion next year of a 16-screen Harkins Theaters — both MAPS spin-offs. "If you look at the bookings we have for the next couple of years, they bode really well for us," McCalmont said.

"Downtown before offered very little to assist us in tourism - downtown Oklahoma City is now a special draw for the whole state." McCalmont said spin-offs from MAPS, including the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Bass Pro Shops and at least two hotels, have transformed the city's image among locals and visitors.

Missouri developer John Q. Hammons, whose MAPS-inspired hotel investments are about to top  00 million, is among those who say Oklahoma City is getting more respect. "People realize it's a bigger city than they once thought it was," Hammons said. Horrow, who has worked for at least two dozen cities attempting similar initiatives, said Oklahoma City has become an international laboratory for public improvements.

"Oklahoma City is in the top five or six upcoming regions on everybody's mind," Horrow said. "Rest assured, the nation and world believes in Oklahoma City and its dynamic future... and it will only get better."