Boulevard fight represents divide between traditional road design, modern urban planning

This is how it has been since the advent of the Interstate Highway System in 1956. When the state's highway engineers sought in the mid-1990s to rebuild Interstate 40 south of downtown, they approached the project with the same concerns and forcefully pushed for relocating it a few blocks south of the central business district along an old rail line.

Times, however, were changing. City leaders, including Mayors Ron Norick and Kirk Humphreys, fought against the new alignment, arguing roads are about more than moving traffic — they can help, and hurt, development of the inner city.

The city lost that fight. As part of the plan, the state Transportation Department included a boulevard that would replace the old highway alignment and maintain access to downtown.

Now, as state highway engineers are about to let out construction bids for the road, they're encountering a buzz-saw of criticism that the road will kill development south of the road by Classen Boulevard and will recreate the old highway barriers that blighted the area a half-century ago.

The highway engineers and city engineers, including City Manager Jim Couch, don't indicate in interviews that they understand why people are opposing plans to rebuild five blocks of the boulevard as an elevated roadway. State highway engineers, in particular, note they're only proceeding with plans promised to the public in 1998.

But let's go back to 1998. Lower Bricktown did not exist. Devon Energy Center did not exist. The Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark and the Bricktown Canal did not exist. There was no Chesapeake Energy Arena, no plans for a new convention center, no plans for a “Core to Shore park,” and what we now know as Film Row was then the city's skid row.

Even when the designs for the new highway and boulevard were unveiled, Humphreys and the city council fought it for months afterward.