America’s Tallest Building…In Oklahoma?
Ladies and gentlemen, I have breaking news I think will be important to you. It has just come to my attention that Oklahoma, otherwise known as the Sooner State — as in, ‘sooner or later, everyone will be talking about Oklahoma’ — could eventually be home to America’s tallest skyscraper. Yes, it’s true. A state well-known for its prairies, tornados, and a funny shape that looks sort of like a meat cleaver with a broken handle, could have a building taller than anything in New York or Chicago.
Take that, Frank Sinatra. Maybe Chicago is your kind of town. Maybe you think that you can make it anywhere because you made it in the Big Apple. But how about Oklahoma City? It’s the city that seems to sleep just fine, except when its mother-in-law comes for a visit. But it’s still good enough to tempt at least one land developer to put a 1,907-foot-tall building smack in the middle of it.
Of Course It Has an Impressive Name
Any plan to put a huge skyscraper in the middle of a wide-open prairie best-known for its stellar performance as the lead in the Dust Bowl is undeniably ambitious. Such a plan would need an equally ambitious name. No worries, dear friends. I give you The Legends Tower, the centrepiece of The Boardwalk at Bricktown project.
Did you notice I used ‘centrepiece’ instead of ‘centerpiece’? That’s because the former is highly snooty as well as being the preferred spelling among Canadians, Aussies, and Brits — which makes it better. ‘Centrepiece’ would be the only appropriate way to describe the plans now being entertained in the highly sophisticated urban centre (see, I did it again!) that is Oklahoma City.
It’s enough to make the New York City Council jealous that the Big Apple doesn’t have a city centre. Not only that, The Legends Tower would be taller than One World Trade Center (notice the trailer-trash spelling of ‘center’) if it’s ever actually built. But New Yorker’s can still take comfort in the fact that they aren’t Chicagoans.
A Real Estate Potpourri
So let’s say The Legends Tower rises from the Oklahoma dust to become the architectural cowlick of the Mid-west. Then what? How will its 5 million square feet of space be used? Rumor has it that the building will be a mixed-use property, which is the real estate equivalent of the potpourri bag you once found in your mother’s underwear drawer when you were still too young to understand why it was there.
Developers plan to divide the floor space into hotel rooms, condos, rental apartments, retail shops, and restaurants. It all sounds very high-end, even though the developers claim that rents will range from “market-rate to affordable” — whatever that means.
In Oklahoma City, I’m guessing that affordability is based on a different standard than, let’s say, Dubai. Unless the Sooner State is somehow hiding a groundswell of wealth previously unknown to the rest of the world, I can’t cross that line into a reality in which space in The Legends Tower fits the average budget among Oklahoma residents. But maybe it’s just me. Maybe I just don’t know the dust capital of the world as well as I think I do.
Good sportsmanship which, ironically, has nothing to do with actually being good at any sport, demands that I hold no ill will toward the Oklahoma City or the state of Oklahoma for their daring plan to put a skyscraper on the prairie. So, the best of luck to you both. While I wait to see if the plan comes to fruition, I might be better off spending my time investigating why my mother put potpourri in her underwear drawer so many years ago.
