What lies ahead

Taking stock of the issues, trends and key players poised to shape Tulsa in the coming year and beyond

What does 2014 hold for Tulsa?
No one has an ironclad conception of what’s ahead for T-Town or any burg — no matter what they say. Nonetheless, a healthy dose of speculation never hurt anyone. Here are some of the things we might expect this year given key local dynamics and how they entangle with critical national trends.

ONE // A return to “making”

The manufacturing revolution spawned by dramatically lower costs for electrical power and for other inputs required to produce physical things — a consequence of the “new gas” revolution and its impact on power prices — is rolling into town.

This dynamic is abetted and amplified by a hot bevy of transformations in the way objects, entire physical systems, are produced — a change pushed by the maturation of what some call rapid prototyping or 3-D printing, advanced digital design methods and accelerating use of novel, “engineered” materials. I spoke recently with David Greer, who simultaneously heads up the renowned info security/cyber systems program at The University of Tulsa and Tulsa's new Community Supercomputer project. David told me about a fascinating new ensemble effort that Oklahoma Innovation Institute — a local consortium of all area universities, some leading-edge technology firms, businessman Barry Davis’ venture-capital operation and some of our biggest philanthropic outfits — are sporting. The Project aims to accelerate the outfitting of small and medium-sized metro area companies with access to new 3-D manufacturing, design, employee training and new-wave production techniques.

This project is part of the embryonic but portentous return of the production of “things” to the U.S. economy. Epic enterprises like General Electric and Apple Inc., and smaller but strategic ones like Elon Musk’s pioneering Space X venture and Tesla, his revolutionary electric car gambit, are reanimating domestic production lines and re-domesticating pieces of the product design and manufacturing process.

As it happens, there is a giant advanced manufacturing initiative, crafted by the U.S. Department of Commerce, to accelerate the return of “making” to our shores and to help U.S. manufacturers exploit emerging technologies in physical production, materials, bio-systems crafting and aerospace. The new local advanced manufacturing initiative being ramrodded by Greer and others is seeking new federal funding and wants to mark T-Town as a front-line player in this new realm. And Tulsa is well-positioned  with our savvy oil patch production/industrial fabrication culture, our new supercomputing asset, OSU's downtown (tax payer-supported) Helmerich Advanced Manufacturing research facility and our still small, but increasingly renowned Fab Lab.

TWO // Council dominance at City Hall

Some City Hall watchers spy a movement on the part of the City Council to lead a strong push for new initiatives in land use planning, service provision, the cost and character of some aspects of police and fire services and perhaps the city’s complex budgeting process itself.

The past year has seen a dramatic shift in initiative taking. To be more specific, the impetus for the recently approved capital package and major elements in it — including the new rapid bus transit element, the 36th Street North small area development package, and a sidewalks/pedestrian trail gambit — came not from the Mayor's Office but from actions undertaken by the City Council. The movers and shakers are Blake Ewing, G. T. Bynum and Jack Henderson. And while this still-emerging council “cadre” doesn’t always hang together and doesn’t win every battle it wages when there’s a conflict with the Mayor’s Office, they seem to have a deep bias for action. Their concerted action to change the character of the recently approved capital package and to add a number of economic development, advanced transportation and mobility-related items is simply the most tangible evidence of a new dynamic.

A second avenue: efforts on the part of Ewing and, to some extent, Henderson to actually execute pieces of PlaniTulsa. This is manifested in the inclusion of a promised effort to improve Tulsa’s bus system with additional operating funds, a continuing struggle over downtown parking, and fights on land use policy in the city core.

THREE // Tulsa art entrepôt accelerates

We are witnessing accelerating consolidation of Tulsa’s emerging role as a music, art and gallery exhibition enclave. This new and rapidly emerging super space is powered by a dazzling array of new art galleries and performance spaces, a re-animated Jazz Hall of Fame, the new Hardesty Arts Center, the 108 Contemporary Gallery, the Woody Guthrie Archive, aggressive programming from Living Arts, and a slew of new eateries and related facilities now in play in the Art District/Mathew Brady Corridor.

Many of these new pieces have some connection to philanthropic investments made by the George Kaiser Family Foundation, but there are other smaller pieces that have a life of their own. There is a strong rumor afoot that the Kaiser Foundation and allies want to fashion a set of concepts for the next stage of the art zone. If previous plans are indicative, there will be an opportunity for folks outside of the inner circle to participate in envisioning the future of what already looks like one of the most promising new art districts in all of America.

FOUR // Medical flagship?

Tulsa has become a dark horse leader in an astonishing array of high-end health care and biomedical practices and may become a hub in what OU Tulsa president Gerald Clancy calls the “phonemics revolution,” a convergence of smartphone technology, giant health care data sets, computing power and genetics that looks likely to deeply alter medical practice, doctor usage, the work of allied professions and the crazy costs of many medical things.

There is a sick irony associated with Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin’s rejection of the Medicaid expansion track, a “street” that would have provided many hundreds of thousands of Oklahomans with unfettered access to the Obamacare insurance initiative. Fallin’s rejection posture may simply require more local ingenuity that includes the futurist phonemics thrust, but goes well beyond to game-changing medical education, prevention and behavioral medicine innovations.

FIVE // New crime strategy

The two “quad” killing episodes during 2013 — one near 61st Street and Peoria Avenue and the other at Fairview Apartments in north Tulsa — have induced a good deal of head scratching. Why are these multi-kill events taking place? Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan and Mayor Dewey Bartlett succeeded together with a whole cadre of north-side neighborhood activists in rapidly resolving the still haunting 2012 Good Friday killings — a ruthless conflation of obsession and hate killings in which two now-convicted assailants were recently sentenced to multiple life terms without parole. But the question remains: Will Jordan, Bartlett and some of the veterans of TPD come up with a new strategy for dealing with all this seemingly drug- and gang-related crime?

Crime and policing scholar David Kennedy and others have worked with local police departments and mayors to cobble together aggressive gang intervention strategies that arguably can forestall gun violence. In the months to come, will Bartlett and Jordan — or whoever heads up TPD — unpack this question?

SIX // A bolder presence for Greenwood

Downtown Tulsa is clearly in the grip of a gigantic, quite unexpected growth spurt. Residential housing, eateries and the rise of the Art Corridor on Mathew B. Brady Street is all the evidence a rational observer needs to know something fantastic is afoot. But the missing part of the equation so far has been any salient, real role for black/minority businesspeople. For a long time, local observers assumed this was a key mission of Tulsa’s Greenwood Chamber of Commerce — an organization that’s been asleep at the wheel arguably for at least a half a decade even though the operation brokered deals to do the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park and apparently pondered other projects. All effort tethered to the Greenwood District, it’s interface with the Blue Dome area and the Mathew B. Brady Arts District.

The Greenwood Chamber is now under new management — veteran board member Art Williams is the interim chief, and Thomas Boxley is an energetic newcomer on the board. They and others are trying to re-mobilize, to spark up the energy and critical diversity that could once again make the Greenwood area a kinetic part of the downtown scene.

SEVEN // Internet play that pays

Tulsan Harry Willis is trying to reinvent Internet radio. With Apple’s recent launch of iTunes Radio, a whole range of reliable, easy ways of accessing the signals of conventional radio stations and Internet-only outfits has emerged. Internet radio is an alternative universe of news, music, interviews, business information and other streams available for anyone with a rudimentary smartphone, a laptop or tablet device. But the problem has been the business model — creating viable revenue streams from advertising, subscribers and other sources that could make these ether-world audio ventures profitable players in the world of media.

Harry's idea is quite simple and powerful: He wants to tightly link his IDLRadio with Tulsa brick-and-mortar space, in search of a regime that might spark sustained advertising revenues from real-world eateries, arts and entertainment spots, and downtown retail and commercial operations that might want a new, relatively inexpensive avenue for promoting their services, goods, hours and features. It will be interesting to see how Willis and his IDLRadio venture fare in 2014. Lots of people are watching closely.

EIGHT // Print comes alive

On another front — one that, apart from this brief note, someone with real detachment and less bias should tackle — is the continuing health and evolution of the alternative print world in Tulsa. Of course, the paper you’re reading right now — The Tulsa Voice — is the newest entrant in that realm, attempting to occupy and re-imagine the space left vacant by the shuttering of Urban Tulsa Weekly.

Other outlets continue to evolve and grow, including the long-form literary journal This Land Press, the Tahlequah-based monthly entertainment magazine Currentland, and the Oklahoma Eagle, a paper historically aimed at African-American readers that is now attempting to broaden its market and the range of topics associated with its weekly offerings. (Full disclosure: I’m currently the managing editor of the Eagle.) Change is often met with skepticism, but it yields additional options for consumers. In this instance, it will be interesting to watch the ways a more varied and energetic competition will enliven the alternative media landscape in Tulsa.

NINE // Courting creativity

Last year saw the creation of a local film and music board. The brainchild of City Councilor Ewing, and a notion endorsed by Mayor Bartlett and the rest of the Council, the Tulsa Film and Music Office now has a physical space and a part-time executive director.

Having a city-based film and music board that promotes Tulsa for commercial film shootings and offers up other incentives is hardly a new idea. Oklahoma’s been doing it for many years through a statewide film and music commission — which most recently led to the filming of Tulsa native Tracy Letts’ “August: Osage County” almost entirely in Oklahoma. But Tulsa probably needs an additional push if it wants to be a bigger player in this arena — hence the local group’s conception.

The strategic question: what is it that Tulsa can do that the state hasn’t done in the past? And, more importantly, what imaginative incentives and/or incubator assets can our community make available to film, music, digital game and animation teams who can often take their pick of where to bring job-rich projects? A stout strategy is essential.

TEN // New ways to watch

Cable “cord cutting” continues and consumption of immersive and increasingly sophisticated television series redefines entertainment. There is a local angle to this phenomenon. Stay tuned for more on this next month.