2023 State of the City

AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY

Thank you, Sean. I deeply appreciate your leadership, as well as the entire team at the Chamber, including your board and the dynamic staff led by Christy Gillenwater. The Greater Oklahoma City Chamber is a vital partner for the City, as everyone in this room knows. I’m also specifically grateful for this annual platform to address Oklahoma City’s challenges and opportunities. This is my fifth State of the City address, and every year, we get work done in this room. Today will be no different.

Thank you all for being here in-person or for watching online. Your engagement today is a commitment to our future. You’re not here to be passive, you’re here to take what we discuss out of this room and into this city. When we conclude, you won’t just know what’s next for OKC, I’m expecting you to help make it happen. There is no big city in America that is more mission-focused than ours, and the State of the City address is one of the most important opportunities we have each year to stay on track.

This is my fifth State of the City, and the common thread has been the city’s seemingly unstoppable momentum, even in the face of unprecedented challenge. It was sparked thirty years ago with the passage of MAPS and it has been renewed time and again. A lot of people told me when I decided to do this that complacency would be our greatest enemy, and I took that to heart. So, we haven’t rested on our laurels these last five years. In fact, I think we’ve worked twice as hard, and as a result, we are absolutely rolling right now. We are entrenched as America’s 20th-largest city, and since the 2020 Census we’re the 6th-fastest growing top 20 city. Our official population is 694,800, but that number was actually as of last summer. At our recent rate of growth, there is no doubt that we have passed 700,000 this year, and that’s a real milestone in our city’s history. That means Oklahoma City has nearly doubled in population in my lifetime. Our economy is still strong, our unemployment is still low, our city’s sales tax receipts are still healthy, our bond rating is still the highest level, and our residents still tell us in every poll and every election that they remain optimistic about our future and pleased with our direction. In fact, in our city’s most recent scientific citizen survey, we found that just under 70 percent of our residents think we are heading in the right direction and only 12 percent think we are not.

Our residents have reason to feel this good. Just think about how this mission-focused city has methodically worked through a to-do list since 2017.

In 2017, our voters approved nearly a billion dollars for core infrastructure, including nearly $800 million just for street repairs, the largest ever investment in streets. That same election, our voters approved the permanent funding for the hiring of over 120 new police officers. In 2019, by a record margin, our voters made a statement that they wanted to invest in quality of life, especially human needs and in our neighborhoods. That was the $1.1 billion for the 16 projects of MAPS 4. Then, last year the voters of Oklahoma County committed $260 million to build a much-needed new county jail. That’s outside my jurisdiction, but we’re pleased to see that commitment and that work progressing. 

And finally, since we all last gathered, the voters of Oklahoma City Public Schools committed $1 billion to school infrastructure to address desperate needs in a district where the average building age is 72 years. That’s also outside my jurisdiction, but that was an all-hands-on-deck moment and I dropped everything in those final weeks to campaign and so did a lot of people in this room. That bond issue was the biggest commitment to public education in our city’s history, and I’m proud of our residents for supporting it. 

So, just since 2017, think about the boxes we’ve checked – Core infrastructure, especially streets. Public safety. Quality of life. Education. That is what it looks like to methodically execute a plan. This is what I mean when I say we are a mission-focused city. We are the most strategic and effective city in the country, and we know it. And that’s why in 2023, the state of our city is confident. Confident because we know how to develop a vision, rally our people around it and then execute it. And that ability to get things done and take care of vital priorities as we have the last five years is freeing us to do what we love most – dream big. More on that in a few minutes.

But first, a brief update on some ongoing priorities.

I’ll start with some core city service updates, and I’ll begin that review by honoring the team that makes it happen. It starts with the City Council – Bradley Carter, James Cooper, Barbara Peck, Todd Stone, Matt Hinkle, JoBeth Hamon, Nikki Nice and Mark Stonecipher. And then the City Manager – Craig Freeman – who leads a team of 5,000 city employees. Our work is also informed by a team of over 400 volunteers that serve on at least 58 ongoing and active boards, commissions, committees, authorities and trusts. Recently, WalletHub ranked OKC as the number one best-run top 50 city in America. Let’s thank all of these public servants for their work.

As I mentioned, we’ve been working through implementation of a massive street resurfacing initiative the last several years. From that nearly $800 million commitment to streets, the initiative known as Better Streets, Safer City has now completed 194 projects, has 88 currently underway and 150 projects still planned. In total, that’s over 430 projects. It is improving the overall condition of our streets more dramatically than any past initiative, something very needed in a city over 620 square miles that is one of the largest by land mass in the United States.

We are also continuing to make unprecedented progress on public transit. Our downtown Streetcar welcomed its one-millionth rider in the last year. Later this year, we plan to open the city’s first Bus Rapid Transit line, which will be known as the Rapid. The Rapid will go up Classen and Northwest Expressway, from downtown to Meridian. I describe this as the closest thing we’ll ever get to a subway. With more frequency than ever before, these new, attractive buses will pull up to train-style platforms along a route that 40,000 residents can easily walk to. Riders will be able to move with reliable high frequency and on a very simple and predictable line between downtown, Heritage Hills, Mesta Park, the Plaza and Asian Districts, Oklahoma City University, Putnam Heights, Belle Isle, Penn Square Mall, The Oak, 50 Penn Place, Integris and to all points in between.

As our growth continues and more residents work to escape traffic, we have to plan for and offer these alternatives. The next step will be our Regional Transit Authority. Chaired by Governor Brad Henry, who is joined in representing OKC by Mary Melon-Tully and Aaron Curry, the RTA is a partnership with Edmond and Norman that promises to deliver a plan to construct our region’s first commuter rail, linking these three cities. And we’re still working with Amtrak and the state to implement a new connection north, as funded by the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Public safety remains the city government’s highest funded priority and since we last gathered, the City Council delivered the largest raise in city history to our police officers and firefighters. Meanwhile, we continue to work to implement the 39 recommendations of the Law Enforcement Policy Task Force that was created in the summer of 2020. Crime rates have continued their multiyear decline, and since we last gathered, the 2022 homicide rate represented a 20 percent decline from 2021. Sadly, this year we honored the life of OCPD Sgt. Meagan Burke, an outstanding officer and person who lost her life in a car accident while returning home from her shift.

Staying on the topic of core services, we continue to focus unprecedented resources and strategy toward the issue of homelessness. First, some data to show you where we’re at. When compared to other large cities, we rank low in the number of people experiencing homelessness. Among the top 50 cities, we rank 38th per capita. This is a ranking you want to be at the bottom of, so 38th out of 50 is good. And our homelessness numbers have stayed basically the same for over a decade, even while our overall population has grown significantly. This year’s count was 1,436 people experiencing homelessness in Oklahoma City. A decade ago, in 2014, that same count was 1,481.

That relative success is a testament to the longtime work of our service provider community, which has been innovative and proactive this last decade. But even with our good ranking, within that static overall number we have seen some increase specifically in our unsheltered population. To respond to that, we have recently developed the Key to Home initiative. This effort is taking encampments one by one and bringing support services to the people living there, many of whom are chronically homeless. These services address mental health and substance abuse, and provide case management to relocate that person to housing and keep them there. With full funding, this effort is envisioned to house 500 individuals and reduce the unsheltered population by 75 percent. The city has already piloted this program in closing three encampments, and a fourth is underway this week. So far, 90 percent of the individuals have accepted housing and services and all but one has remained in that housing. This $12.5 million effort is a public-private partnership. The City is bringing about half the money to the table, and philanthropy is being approached to provide the other half. Year after year, it has held true that 85 percent of the people experiencing homelessness are from Oklahoma City or elsewhere in Oklahoma. They are our neighbors, they have some enormous challenges we can hardly imagine, and programs like Key to Home meet the need.

Finally, closing on the topic of city services, this year we welcomed Kelly Williams, our city’s first Chief Innovation Officer, as we continue to work to ensure that we are providing services in the best way possible.

Let me shift now to a quick look at our economy, which is historically strong. Our most recent data shows that Oklahoma City’s GDP now represents 41 percent of the entire state’s GDP. And our unemployment rate is 2.7 percent, which means we have been below 4 percent for two years now. Our rate has been so low for so long that I think we take it for granted, but people who have been here since the 1980s know what high unemployment looks like. This has been a wonderful run.

We continue to see amazing diversification of the economy. Last year I talked a lot about the film industry, which this past year saw the opening of our city’s first Film & Creative Industries Office.

Our visitor economy continues to grow. The economic impact of this convention center surged 93 percent from 2021 to 2022 and this building was in use 317 days last year. We’re setting passenger records at Will Rogers World Airport, which highlights the need for the recent expansion and improvements we've had there, as the airport is often our first impression.

Meanwhile, our aviation sector continues to be strong. Our work on the Tinker expansion project continues, and the over 5,000 employees at the FAA continues to be a source of pride. Pratt & Whitney also announced a $255 million investment in OKC.

One of the most exciting new economic developments we’ve seen in the past year is the growth in biotech. Since we last gathered, the federal government awarded a $35 million grant to OKC to support the growth of our biotech sector. I recently toured the Wheeler Bio facility in downtown. Just literally a few blocks north of here, they’ll be manufacturing pharmaceuticals at the cutting edge of medicine, in the heart of downtown Oklahoma City. It’s really amazing and it shows the growing diversification of our economy. 

On the real estate development side, we have cranes moving all over town. Never in our city’s history have we had so many ongoing projects underway or being discussed with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars. A special congratulations to BancFirst for completing the reimagining of our city’s second-tallest tower.

In everything we do, we continue to remain focused on “one OKC,” the belief that everyone in our community must be a part of our story and that all are welcome here. Earlier, I mentioned our over 400 volunteers who serve on our city’s boards. It is vital that those boards look like our city. But when I took office they were 90 percent white and 80 percent male. That wasn’t representative of our whole city. This has been and remains a long-term project for me, but as we sit here today, over the last five years we have more than doubled the percentage of overall board seats that are held by women and we have tripled the overall percentage of seats that are held by people of color.

Since we last gathered, the Human Rights Commission was reinstated after a quarter-century absence. Led by chair Valerie Couch, they are already engaged in programming and discussions that will promote a better city for all. We have continued our work to welcome all people to Oklahoma City, and in the face of revived bigotries in some corners of this country, we have especially reiterated our support for the LGBTQ community and the Jewish community.

There have been some exciting developments for some communities within our city this year that are worth recalling today. A few months ago, our city’s first Asian Chamber of Commerce launched. And a longtime dream was realized when our own Mexican consulate opened with much fanfare and a visit from the Mexican foreign minister, perhaps the highest-ranking diplomat to ever visit our city. The Latino community continues to thrive in OKC.

Now, for the rest of our time together today, we’re going to talk about our city’s quality of life. Much has been said for the last quarter-century about the advancements in our quality of life. Just last month Fortune Magazine said we were the number three best city for families to live in out of all top 50 American cities. That encompasses a lot of criteria but certainly we wouldn’t be there without our quality-of-life improvements. And yet more happens every year. It’s hard to keep up with it all but I’ll try today.

Just last week, thanks to the support of the voters in 2017, we opened the Willa D. Johnson Recreation Center near N.E. 10th and Martin Luther King. This was the first multigenerational rec center our city has opened in 40 years and it is spectacular 

We cut the ribbon on a new pedestrian bridge over Northwest Expressway that provides a critical link for our trails system and we broke ground on a $14 million addition that will bring our world-class trails system to 100 total miles.

Another project approved in 2017 was the nearly $30 million upgrade to Hall of Fame Stadium, the home of the Women’s College World Series. This event just gets bigger every year, and now brings a $25 million economic impact. OKC is proud to truly be the World Capital of Softball. And now we’re also the home of our city’s first major league women’s professional sports team, the OKC Spark. The Spark began playing their home games at Hall of Fame Stadium this month and have drawn thousands of fans each night. The Women’s Premier Soccer League is based in OKC and hosted its 25th anniversary league meeting here this year. We also welcomed our city’s first professional rodeo team, the Oklahoma Freedom that competes in PBR.

The Zoo is about to open another major attraction, the $25 million Expedition Africa. The Myriad Gardens reopened the Crystal Bridge after an $11 million renovation. The Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine opened and will be a major draw for Catholic pilgrims in the years to come. First Americans Museum continues to win awards and the Chickasaw Nation broke ground this past year on the $400 million OKANA development around FAM. Oklahoma City continues to emerge as a national capital for Native and Indigenous people thanks to the catalyst investment we made in FAM and longstanding events like Sovereignty Symposium. The Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum continues to help us have better conversations, and they introduced a new video this year to introduce the events of 1995 to older elementary and middle school kids. The hosts of the video are my kids, George and Maggie. Check it out at the Memorial web site.

The arts continue to thrive. We cut the ribbon on a major update to the Civic Center Music Hall, also approved by the voters in 2017. We debuted the monumental “Light as a Feather” across the street in Scissortail Park in honor of the late Robbie Kienzle, our city’s arts liaison. We were named the best city for public art in the entire country for the second year in a row by USA Today. And here’s a breaking public art story. Just outside this room – check it out when you leave – hangs the gigantic spin art collaboration between Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips and British artist Damien Hirst, one of the most famous artists in the world. Just yesterday, we found out it was named one of the top 100 public arts projects in the world.

Our food scene is exploding. A few years ago I started posting the pictures of the meals that my family and I eat around town and now I think there are people who follow me on Instagram just because they think I’m a food blogger. National observers continue to discover our amazing food scene and this year, we reached a new milestone when Chef Andrew Black of Grey Sweater and Black Walnut won our city’s first competitive James Beard Award for Best Chef in the Southwest. And Ma Der Lao in Plaza District was named to Bon Appetit’s top 50 new restaurants. And we were named by an international publication as the number 87th best food city in the world. Florence, Italy was number one on this list. These honors follow years of national recognitions for OKC restaurants. This is absolutely a golden age for our culinary scene. And when it’s not sold out, order a Holt My Beer to go with your meal.

A quick update on MAPS. MAPS 3 is winding down, 14 years after the voters’ approval. This past year, we opened the second half of our remarkable Scissortail Park. This is a real jewel and it was exciting to finally have all 70 acres open. We have two senior wellness centers left – one in Northeast and one far South, and they will open this calendar year. Another MAPS 3 project – the whitewater facility at the center of RiverSport - has had another banner year attracting national and international events. When the Mayor of Oklahoma City is routinely zooming with the President of the International Canoe Federation in Germany, you can say without question that OKC is one of the world capitals for canoe/kayak and paddle sports in general. You know, when you look at this investment, the softball stadium, our arena investments through the years, it’s really validating. Every single time we have made a commitment to sports infrastructure, we have been richly rewarded with unique events, an elevated brand and economic impact, and we have every reason to believe there are more rewards to come.

As MAPS 3 winds down, MAPS 4 is ramping up. Earlier this year, we broke ground on the first MAPS 4 project – the Fairgrounds Coliseum. This facility will maintain our place as the horse show capital of the world. And there are 15 more MAPS 4 projects coming behind it. And with strong sales tax receipts we were able this past year to add $100 million to the initiative, bringing it to $1.1 billion. Just to remind you, through MAPS 4, we will enjoy dramatic parks improvements citywide, youth soccer upgrades, Oklahoma River investments, state-of-the-art youth centers, a fifth senior wellness center, mental health and addiction facilities, a new home for Palomar, more Bus Rapid Transit lines – this time to the Northeast and South, sidewalks, bike lanes, trails and streetlights, truly affordable housing to address homelessness, a multipurpose stadium, a new animal shelter, a diversion hub for justice-involved individuals, the Clara Luper Civil Rights Center, beautification along our major corridors, the Henrietta B. Foster Center for Northeast Small Business and Entrepreneurship, and major investments at the Innovation District. Most of those projects will include public art, as well. And on top of it all, thanks to innovative planning, we will enjoy perpetual operating and maintenance dollars to support many of these MAPS 4 projects.

And of course, MAPS 4 included necessary funding to maintain our current downtown arena. This was smart and important. Our current arena will be our city’s arena for years to come, and you have to maintain it. Seats get old, scoreboards get old, elevators break. Thank goodness for MAPS 4 being there to address those issues. But that particular MAPS 4 project was not looking toward the next chapter. And the next chapter in our city’s story is what we will discuss today.

I often conceptualize our city’s capital investments in two buckets, and I even utilized those categories today. Core infrastructure and quality of life. It’s perfectly reasonable to think that the core infrastructure investments rank higher than the quality-of-life investments, but we actually ran a community experiment over several decades to test that theory. We didn’t invest in our quality of life for decades and by the 1990s, we were facing an existential crisis. MAPS - the ultimate quality of life initiative - was launched out of desperation to save a city that was dying. In the wake of the MAPS investment in quality of life, our population and our economy have soared. And so, Oklahoma City has tried not investing in quality of life and we’ve tried investing in quality of life through MAPS. The results are in for each of the two approaches and they speak for themselves. 

So, after MAPS, we have viewed core infrastructure and quality of life infrastructure as equal priorities. Yes, let’s fix roads and drainage, build water pipelines, police stations and fire stations. But let’s also build trails, and community centers, arenas, stadiums and ballparks. We can do both. We have to do both. And the success we have enjoyed as a result of making quality of life investments has given us the financial opportunity to expand the definition of quality of life and support people at all socioeconomic levels, in all parts of the city, facing all kinds of challenges. The Oklahoma City of the 1980s didn’t have the financial resources to address the human needs you heard me describe moments ago when I listed the MAPS 4 projects. We’re able to do them now, because, starting in 1993, we first invested in quality-of-life infrastructure that expanded our economy and put us in this financial position.

This is why Oklahoma City invests in quality of life. Investing in quality of life is not superficial or trivial. It is existential. And for a century, the building at the center of this community’s strategic investments in quality of life has been our arena. Across three venues and nearly one hundred years, the arena has been the centerpiece of community pride. The arena is where we have come together. The arena is where we host the events and people who define Oklahoma City as a major American city. And since the arrival of the Thunder, for literally billions of people around the world, the arena is Oklahoma City and perhaps all they will ever know about our city. More than any other single building, Oklahoma City’s arena has defined our city’s progress, and as our city has grown, our arena has evolved to meet our aspirations for who we want to be. The story of our city’s arena is one of relentless change, improvement and reinvestment, and that story extends back 96 years.

1927. In 1927, Oklahoma City was the 80th-largest city in the United States by population and the home of 91,000 people. In that time, downtown was saturated with railroad tracks, especially around the area of what we now call the Civic Center Music Hall. In 1927, the voters of Oklahoma City approved a bond issue to acquire that land from the railroads, with an eye towards building the city’s first major venue for concerts, sporting events and conventions.

1937. Since the initial vote to approve funding for the venue I just described, the Oklahoma City oil field had been discovered and now Oklahoma City was suddenly the nation’s 43rd-largest city with 185,000 people. The city’s population doubled in a decade. In 1935, another bond issue vote passed to add more funding to the project, and now the budget was a staggering $1,250,000. On October 4th, 1937, in the midst of the Great Depression, Oklahoma City opened what was then called Municipal Auditorium, ten years after funding for the project had first been approved by voters.

Its opening in 1937 was cause for incredible civic pride, and thousands turned out on opening day. This Chamber released a publication with the kind of florid language that seemed to characterize the time. 

I quote, “As you know more (about Oklahoma City), your pride will grow more—you will feel the lure of this city of vitality… You are in a city whose skyline has changed with kaleidoscopic frequency unlike the static picture of older, settled communities which look backward rather than to the future… 

“Our new city is one of drama, peopled by citizens who believe in their community… a city which is attracting national interest as a convention, sports, agriculture, oil and business center…a city which is now rounding out the finishing touches of transforming a midtown railroad right-of-way into one of the most modern and complete civic centers of the nation.”

Municipal Auditorium later became Civic Center Music Hall, and it may be hard for us to imagine now, but it was once the city’s basketball arena. Let me tell you a quick story. This past NBA season, every player’s uniform bore a number 6 in honor of legendary Boston Celtic Bill Russell. In 1954, at our Municipal Auditorium, Bill Russell led his No. 17-ranked University of San Francisco team to an upset championship in the All College Tournament. In a pre-television era, Bill Russell was still a bit of an unknown, especially playing way out in San Francisco. One of San Francisco’s opponents in Oklahoma City was George Washington University. The soon-to-be-famous Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach had played his college ball at George Washington for the coach who was still there and was still Red’s friend. That coach told Red after playing Bill Russell in Oklahoma City that Red had to get Russell on the Celtics.

Bill Russell would go on to win 11 NBA titles with Red Auerbach and the Celtics. Basketball history made right here in OKC, because we built a building.

Municipal Auditorium also hosted a young Elvis Presley for shows in 1955 and 1956, while “Heartbreak Hotel” was still number one on the charts. Through the years, Municipal Auditorium or Civic Center has hosted everything from “Hamilton” to Pavarotti, Seinfeld to Baryshnikov, Johnny Cash to the Grateful Dead. But within a generation of its 1937 opening, the people of Oklahoma City had decided it was time for something more.

1962. Oklahoma City was the 37th-largest city in the United States with 324,000 people. And in that year, exactly 25 years after the opening of Municipal Auditorium, the voters of Oklahoma City approved funding for a new arena and convention center.

1972. Oklahoma City was still the 37th-largest city in the United States, now with 366,000 people. And ten years after the voters first approved the funding for the new arena, the Myriad opened at a cost of $23 million, 18 times the cost of the previous venue. On Sunday, November 5th, 1972, 8,000 residents showed up at the opening of the incomparable Myriad. Speakers at the ceremony called the building a “visionary achievement” and the “beacon of a new adventure” for Oklahoma City. Three days after opening, the Myriad hosted its first basketball game, an American Basketball Association regular season game between the Dallas Chaparrals and the Memphis Tams. Students of NBA history know that the ABA merged with the NBA in 1976, which means that this 1972 ABA game was, we presume, the first regular season major league professional basketball game played in Oklahoma City.

Through the years, the Myriad would go on to host NBA exhibition games, minor league basketball – including a championship season for the Cavalry, minor league hockey, national tennis tournaments, presidential speeches, and concerts that still cause Baby Boomers to gaze into the distance with longing. Tina Turner, Queen, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, the Beastie Boys, Bon Jovi, Sonny and Cher, Michael Jackson, KISS, Prince, Neil Diamond, Van Halen, Billy Joel, Metallica, The Police, Public Enemy, the Rolling Stones, and Run DMC all graced the Myriad stage. And even old Elvis returned one last time to play the Myriad, a year before his death. For a generation of residents, the Myriad made this city feel like a real city. And yet, in less than a generation, the day arrived when a new vision was needed.

1993. Oklahoma City was now the 29th-largest city in the United States, with 444,000 people. And 21 years after the opening of the Myriad, the voters approved a new downtown arena.

2002. Oklahoma City was still the 29th-largest city in the United States,

Now with 506,000 people. And nine years after the voters approved the funding, the Ford Center arrived. On Saturday, June 8, 2002, the doors of the new arena opened, and like the Myriad before it, it has been a draw for comedy shows, championship boxing and rodeo, NCAA basketball, and the greatest names in entertainment – Paul McCartney, Elton John, Tim McGraw, Jay Z, Britney Spears, Reba McEntire, Lady Gaga, Pink, Coldplay, Andrea Bocelli, Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, Kendrick Lamar, James Taylor, Justin Timberlake, and who can ever forget a legendary weekend of 24-hour Garth Brooks concerts.

But this time, when those new arena doors opened 21 years ago, little did we know all the doors that were finally opening for our city. For the first time, the trajectory of the city’s growth and its investment in a new arena aligned to position Oklahoma City for its next defining moment, our arrival as a big league city. That new arena, Ford Center, which of course became Chesapeake Energy Arena, which became Paycom Center, gave us the building we needed to seize an opportunity unlike anything before. The NBA came in 2005, first as an audition, and then for real in 2008, with the arrival of our Thunder. And nothing would ever be the same. 

Look, I’m a student of American city identity, and there’s an unavoidable reality, whether you like it or not, that American cities fall into two categories – those who have major league professional sports teams and those that do not. Those who have them enjoy an entirely different identity than the other cities. We are given opportunities the other cities are not, and they can only look on in envy. If you doubt this statement, I ask you to recall that we’ve run this experiment already as well, two different ways. The explosion in population and economic development and opportunity that we have seen since the Thunder came to play in our arena in 2008 stands in stark contrast to the world that we knew before. Do you realize that when the Thunder arrived we were the 31st largest city in the country, and now we are 20th just 15 years later? This is no coincidence. The evidence is right in front of us, and it extends to every aspect of life in Oklahoma City, much of which has nothing to do with basketball.

But let’s look first at the direct impact of having an NBA team. Obviously, when there is a Thunder game or a concert, our city is bustling. Districts that didn’t even exist in 2008 are full of people eating at some of the best restaurants in the country. People are staying at over 20 downtown hotels. We had exactly one downtown hotel 25 years ago. Our reports peg the annual direct economic impact of NBA basketball at over $600 million and 3,000 jobs. And then tens of millions more are generated by the non-basketball concerts and events at the arena.

Inside the arena on those nights, we are united in a way we never had been before. People come from Northeast OKC, South OKC, Northwest OKC, and they cheer for the same team, a team that wears OKC on its jersey and stands on the same court as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen that building when the Thunder go on a ten-point run in the fourth quarter of a playoff game. 

And we’re about to see those winning days again, because of a masterful rebuild that has positioned our team as one of the hottest young squads in the league. Once again, we’re about to feel that energy.

This next chapter on the court will be something we enjoy with our families, as we have for 15 years. Families in our community have measured their kids’ growth in Thunder seasons. We’ve already had someone grow up in those stands and become an NBA star himself - Trae Young.

It’s been something special for all of us with young kids to enjoy those moments together. That’s certainly been the experience in the Holt household. Being together at a Thunder game is one of our favorite things. By the way, we are of course joined today by Rachel, George and Maggie, as well as my dad and cousins. Let’s embarrass them together, shall we?

While on the topic of families and the Thunder, let me pay respect to a different kind of family that has sprung up in this new world we entered in 2008. I’m speaking of the community that comes together inside those 18,000 seats - our arena family.

Mike Howard started working as an usher for Hornets games and concerts back in 2007. He was there opening night for the Thunder in 2008, stationed at the entrance to Section 118. He has been in that arena for over 600 Thunder games and quite a few concerts as well. He got to know the people in his sections so well he has attended their kids’ sporting events. A few years ago, he relocated to the second level, but many of his season ticket holders from the first level still come up to visit him.

Coincidentally, Mike’s original assignment was in my section, and now I’m in a different section on the second level and he’s there, too. The Holts have been with Mike for 15 years. Mike says he keeps doing this because he likes people and he likes the relationships he has created at the arena. What Mike does at the arena is actually a side hustle. His day job is with the City of Oklahoma City. He works at our rec centers. Mike is sitting with the Holts at our table today. Let’s hear it for Mike and all the folks who are part of the arena family.

There are dozens of Mikes in our arena every night at those games, and there are thousands of fans who have a Mike in their life. From October to April, and sometimes all the way to June, that bond is the purest manifestation of community.

Let’s look at some other benefits of this relationship with major league professional sports. Today on your chairs the Thunder left you their latest Community Impact Report. Do you know how many dozens of ribbon cuttings I have personally attended through the years for basketball courts, futsal courts, reading rooms and other generosity by this team and its players? Heck, I even cut a ribbon on a Paul George fishing dock. You can’t drive half a mile in this town without seeing a logo or a name that reminds you of the Thunder’s philanthropy. And that’s just the capital projects. Their shopping sprees and book bus giveaways and nonprofit donations and food donations and mentorship programs and scholarships and documentaries and public appearances sometimes change lives and at the very least, raise the morale of our community. Their support of veterans has been consistent and impactful. The way they lift up communities within our city, highlighting the civil rights movement or our Native and Indigenous community. Even their annual City Edition jersey has helped tell our story to the world and to ourselves. I can’t imagine that there’s a better NBA team for community involvement and support.

And the Thunder are our global ambassadors. Our players implicitly tell a story every time they take the court or give an interview or show up at Fashion Week in Paris. They remind people that Oklahoma City is a global city worth paying attention to. In the last two years, I’ve had the opportunity to be in Jerusalem and Venice. And the fact there were Oklahoma City t-shirts and hats on sale in both those cities - and in pretty much every other city on the planet - is priceless and impossible to achieve any other way. 

This national and international credibility that comes with a major league sports team lifts everything in our city. You don’t even have to care about basketball to appreciate the significance. The brand of being a big league city has affected everything from food to art to our city’s financial ability to help those who need it. And the economic development we now see - with cranes all over town - also flows from that credibility. No one talks to national investors and job creators about Oklahoma City more than me, and I can tell you, in most cases they wouldn’t have even thought to talk to me if we didn’t have a major league professional sports team. That is the reality of American life, and since 2008, we have thrived in that reality.

This revolution was made possible by the latest in a series of aspirational commitments that started with that first vote for our Municipal Auditorium in 1927.

For a century, our city’s arena has been the defining infrastructure piece for our city’s quality of life. That journey from Municipal Auditorium to the Myriad to what we now know as Paycom Center has never been static. Never once have we said, “we’re done.” It has always been a story of vision and aspiration and reinvestment and an implicit understanding that we can never stand still.

2023. The year now upon us. Oklahoma City is the 20th-largest city in the United States and our population is over 700,000. It has been 30 years since we last approved a new arena and 21 years since it opened.

It is 2023, and in the relentless and unforgiving competition between American cities, our downtown arena is simply not what it used to be. As we’ve just covered, this isn’t a new phenomenon for us. We’ve had to face that reality multiple times before, with almost clockwork regularity. Our current downtown arena once represented us well in the world of entertainment and sports, but those days fade, and at this point we’re mostly succeeding on sheer grit. Our management team at the arena is doing a great job marketing us for concerts and shows, but the building itself is a growing liability.

Let me share some important comparisons…

As we sit here today, Paycom Center is sitting right at the average age of all NBA arenas. 21 years is about the average. A new arena seems to open every year, and several teams are currently planning new ones, so that average age probably won’t get too much higher, but our arena will keep getting older. Other than Madison Square Garden, the oldest of all NBA arenas is just 32 years old. Ours is 21 and if you paid any attention a few moments ago to the pace of our history, you know that a new arena would not open for years, even if we started planning today. Without action soon, we’ll eventually be sitting on one of the oldest arenas in the NBA.

Another comparison. Paycom Center is the second-cheapest arena in the NBA, having received at this point a total investment of around $200 million. I know that sounds like a lot of money, but to give you some sense of perspective, the most recent NBA arena to open was Chase Center in San Francisco in 2019. It cost $1.4 billion. The year before that saw the opening of Fiserv Forum, home of the Milwaukee Bucks. That cost $524 million. The next NBA arena to open will be the new Los Angeles Clippers arena, slated to open next year. It will cost $2 billion. The Philadelphia 76ers recently announced new plans for an arena expected to cost $1.3 billion. After the Clippers arena opens, a third of all NBA arenas will have construction costs that were originally in excess of at least $475 million, a number that is more than twice what we have invested in our arena.

We’re not in the junior NBA, we’re in the real deal, and these are our peers. But if those comparisons are sobering, I don’t even want to tell you about the billion-dollar arenas that exist or are planned in American cities that don’t have an NBA team. In fact, there are 18 metropolitan statistical areas larger than Oklahoma City that don’t have an NBA team, and several of them have existing or planned arenas that dwarf ours. I don’t want to give them any ideas so I won’t mention their names, but use Google and your imagination. We always have to remember three things – There are a dozen North American cities that used to have an NBA team, there are 18 metros bigger than ours that would like to have a team, and remember how we got this team.

Let’s look at another comparison. Of all the arenas in the NBA, ours ranks dead last in total square footage. Our arena is 586,000 square feet, but 22 current NBA arenas are larger than 750,000 square feet and the largest are nearly twice our size. The square footage of an arena is critical because your arena’s square footage defines the revenue opportunities for the NBA team or concert promoters. Size equals opportunity. Let’s be real, the teams and promoters who use your arena want to make money, and they can make more money in every other NBA arena, just because of the square footage.

These are data points and data points are important, but sometimes I think maybe the most powerful comparison is the eye test. Every few days I’ll run into someone who has traveled to another NBA city and has seen their arena, and they want to tell me how they “get it” now. They didn’t study Excel spreadsheets, they just used their eyes. They can see where that money went. When you see a modern new NBA arena, you don’t even need to go inside. You look up and you go “Oh.” The modern NBA arenas, whether they are brand new or they have had a major upgrade, are simply on another level.

So, by NBA and national concert standards, our arena is too small, it has too little investment in it, and it is trending towards being too old. And on top of that, we’re the NBA’s third smallest market and there are 18 U.S. markets larger than ours that don’t have an NBA team. In the long run, this is not a tenable situation.

The group of cities that host the NBA and big-time concerts operate in a hyper-competitive and unforgiving environment. In 2008, we fully entered that world. The stakes changed, and our subjective personal views about the adequacies or inadequacies of arenas suddenly became largely irrelevant. We now had to play by rules we could not dictate and no one would care to hear our excuses. The only choice was and is to compete.

All of this I just described would matter in any case, but I’m having this conversation with you right now for another important reason as well. On May 10th of this year, the long-term lease we signed in 2008 with our Oklahoma City Thunder expired. I shared this with you last year, and as I also shared last year, our Thunder agreed to a three-year extension to talk about our future. We’re in that short term lease now. Obviously, we want a long-term relationship that secures our Thunder for a generation, but we can’t accomplish that without a modern NBA arena.

And so, knowing what our arena has meant to our city for a century, the consistent commitments we have made over those 96 years to meet our city’s arena aspirations, knowing what it has meant to our community to have an arena that could attract the NBA and the best concerts, understanding that our long-term relationship with major league professional sports requires a timely recommitment, and knowing that opening an arena this decade will require almost immediate approval and planning, I came here today to say this to you - It is time to plan for a new arena and 2023 is the year to make that commitment.

A year ago, when I told you of the three-year renewal, I stated that the City Manager and I would begin meeting with the Thunder leadership to discuss the future. And over the course of the last year, we have done just that, many times and on a regular basis. In the leadership of our Oklahoma City Thunder, we have trusted partners as we contemplate and develop this new commitment. I want to be clear how important this has been and will continue to be. We are not sitting on opposite sides of the table. The leaders of the team, led by Clay Bennett, are longtime Oklahoma City champions and they understand what is possible and what isn’t. We understand they have to operate within the demanding structure of the global business they brought to our city, and they understand our dynamics as well. They are working shoulder to shoulder with us every day to find a path forward that secures this long-term relationship for another generation. Unlike 15 years ago, no one has to thread a needle to make this happen. We have a team that wants to be here for the long haul and our city just has to do what great cities do. We have to invest in ourselves.

I can report to you today that we are close to a jointly agreeable proposal that will construct a new downtown arena that meets the modern standards of the NBA and the concert industry. We believe we can and must present this agreement before the end of summer, with an election before the end of 2023.

It is worth noting that more time has gone into this conversation than any of the previous similar conversations that occurred in 2005 and 2008. In 2005, the discussions to relocate the Hornets to Oklahoma City lasted mere weeks and the City Council had only a few days to consider the main points of the agreement. In 2008, the City Council and the public only had two weeks to consider the main points of an arena upgrade package before it was sent to the voters. Those were unique circumstances. Fortunately, here, we had more time here and we have used it. It has already been a full year since I shared this with you, and I’ve heard a lot of perspectives from City Councilmembers, city leaders and residents alike, and we’ve had a lot of opportunity to incorporate those perspectives into our discussions. And we still have several months for more discussion.

Though an agreement remains to be finalized and much remains fluid, I can still share some important takeaways that we believe will hold true.

We believe our new arena can be funded without raising tax rates above their current levels. We believe we can accomplish this vital project simply by paying the exact same sales tax rate we pay today. No tax increase will be necessary. The public funding necessary to build the new arena will be supplemented by remaining MAPS 4 dollars that are already earmarked for the downtown arena, as I mentioned last year. And for the first time in city history, these public funding commitments will be joined by a significant financial contribution from the ownership of the Oklahoma City Thunder. 

You’ve heard me speak today about the way our city’s new arenas have inspired us in the past. All of us in today’s process are committed to a building that inspires like never before, that raises the bar for public spaces and the user experience.

The architectural ambitions of this new arena will exceed anything our residents have ever experienced. Remember the pride you felt seeing this convention center or Scissortail Park for the first time? This arena will meet that standard, and finally people will stand outside of our arena and marvel. This building will make a statement that we are truly prepared to be a top 20 city. And we are committed to using this arena to tell our city’s story and the story of its people. This won’t be a cookie cutter arena. This will be uniquely ours. The same thoughtfulness and care that the Thunder models in its community work will be reflected in this building.

The bar will also be raised inside the building. Obviously, the square footage will be much larger, but everything about the user experience will change. I remind you, only two current NBA arenas were built before their cities had an NBA team. Ours is one. This new arena will in many ways be our first NBA arena. It will be designed for basketball, with far more seats in the lower bowl, better sight lines for everyone and unprecedented proximity all the way to the last row.

In response to a successful vote and the commitment of a new arena by the people of Oklahoma City, we will secure a long-term lease with the Oklahoma City Thunder and the NBA, longer than the initial commitment we received in 2008. Our status as a big league city will be secure for another generation. On the court, we’ll get to see Shai, Giddey, Chet, Jalen and Dort realize their full potential, but even more importantly, we’ll get to see the version of our Thunder team that comes next, and the one that comes after that, and the one after that. We will secure this team for such a span of time that I can tell you today that a superstar who will play for our city in this new arena, in the next lease term, isn’t even born yet. And yet, Sam Presti is probably already holding the draft pick to get him.

With this new lease, we will secure for another generation the direct and indirect economic impacts that come from the team, the city identity, the global platform, the philanthropy, and all the other ancillary benefits that we have talked about today. And, with an arena of this caliber, we’ll dominate in the concert business as well.

And perhaps most special of all, we will still come together as “one OKC” to cheer our team, with a passion that unites us as a community. We will give Mike a high five as we come down the aisle, we will celebrate with our co-workers the morning after a big win, we will run to social media to see what everyone just said about that buzzer-beater. Families will make memories together, kids will dream, and one day we’ll hoist a trophy in Scissortail Park.

More details of an arena agreement will come. I’m not keeping them from you, they’re just not finalized yet. We’ll need to button some things up, get feedback from our City Council and ultimately from you. As always, you’ll have the final say as to whether our city’s renaissance will continue.

35 years after approving the funding for Municipal Auditorium, our residents approved the funding for the Myriad. 31 years after approving the funding for the Myriad, our voters approved the funding for the Ford Center. And now, that was 30 years ago. For the last century, every three decades, Oklahoma City residents have made the decision to build a new arena, because our aspirations and our growth and the realities of national competition have demanded it.

We didn’t come this far since 1927 to stop now. We have the same obligation and opportunity as our ancestors to leave this city better than we found it. I don’t think for a moment that the residents of 1927, 1962 or 1993 had more vision than us. This is our generation’s chance to leave our legacy on Oklahoma City’s renaissance story. And all we have to do is invest in ourselves, as we have done so many times before.

We will have a final agreement and proposal for you by the end of this summer. The people in this room and many thousands more will champion this vision across our city. The mission-focused voters of this city will approve it as they have before, because they believe in Oklahoma City. And before the end of this year, we will have secured our future.

I told you at the beginning that we get work done at these gatherings, and I think I kept my word. This was a weighty discussion. Thank you for your engagement today, and now you’re part of this. We have a job to do in the months ahead and let’s get to it. Thank you for coming, thank you for the honor of being your mayor, and thank you for believing in our city’s future.