When they arrive in 2010, the country's mayors will see a city whose transformation is credited to voters' approval of the Metropolitan Area Projects program in 1993 and the MAPS for Kids program that followed.
The MAPS program included construction of a ballpark, arena, canal and library, and renovation of the convention center and music hall — all downtown.
The city MAPS for Kids program is funding an overhaul of city schools, with every campus renovated or rebuilt.
Studies indicate investment downtown following MAPS totals $2 billion and includes six new hotels, more than 1,000 new residences and dozens of restaurants and clubs. Response to MAPS for Kids includes the development of more than four dozen new homes around the new Douglas High School in the once-blighted John F. Kennedy neighborhood east of downtown.
Yet the transformation won't be over in 2010, and nowhere will that be more apparent than along the new Interstate 40 being built between downtown and the Oklahoma River. The highway isn't expected to be open until 2012.
"I think the city will look peculiar,” Mayor Mick Cornett said. "You will have an empty 10-lane interstate running through downtown.”
Don't be too surprised if construction cranes still dot the skyline in 2010. Brett Hamm, president of Downtown Oklahoma City Inc., predicts housing construction will continue in Deep Deuce, the Flat Iron District and in MidTown.
A 200-room Hampton Inn, now under construction, will open in Bricktown. And while the hotel will increase downtown's room count to 1,615, it's still short of a strategic plan goal of 2,250 by 2010. Hamm expects the city will get closer to 2,250 rooms with construction of up to two hotels in the Oklahoma Health Center on the east fringe of downtown.
And at least five separate downtown high-rise projects are now under consideration among developers and in corporate boardrooms.
Oklahoma City University, the University of Oklahoma and the University of Central of Oklahoma have announced plans to build boathouses to complement the Chesapeake Boathouse on the Oklahoma River.
Cornett expects visiting mayors may be most interested in the final phase of school improvements with MAPS for Kids.
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