A midwestern Manhattan, in Tulsa?

BLDGBLOG reported on an entry from Brand Avenue concerning, of all things, an extraordinary development being tossed around for Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa is a scant 80 miles west of dear Siloam Springs.

Tulsa Channels is being proposed by local business leaders a with the help of Vancouver based Bing Thom architects. I’ll let you click through the above links to get a better idea of this very bold proposal, as evidenced by the photograph of this model on the Channels website:

I can imagine some people I know who live or have lived in the Tulsa area finding this proposal quite laugable. However, the city is considered the cultural center of Oklahoma (whatever that’s worth to you) and rests among some beautiful tree-covered hills on the edge of the Ozarks.

In some ways I’m a little disappointed some of this money wouldn’t be used to revive downtown, which in my experience is about as desolate as any I’ve ever been in. However, I am aware of some other efforts in the city already geared towards downtown revival. Perhaps these revitalization efforts will actually work.