Exerpt from BatesLine from 2003, that I felt hit the nail on the head as far as how Midtown development is viewed...

--

* There's a crisis because the suburbs now have retail, and suburbanites don't have to come into Tulsa to do their shopping. Sales tax revenues in Tulsa may not recover when the economy does. This threatens our city's ability to provide basic services.

* We need to build new attractions, and all of them should be in downtown Tulsa. We think housing downtown is a silly idea. No one wants to live there.

* Neighborhood empowerment and historic preservation zoning is an obstacle to achieving our aims.

* Commercial zones in midtown are too narrow for us to build cookie-cutter suburban stores in Midtown neighborhoods (and we don't know how to build anything else). So we should widen these zones and designate them specifically as redevelopment targets.

* We need more high rises, so we should "assemble" much of Brookside between Riverside and Peoria (through government condemnation) to allow high rises to be built there.

* We need to scare the voters into going along with this approach.

Haha.

You have to know that by now Bates is completely discredited as just a hypocritical rightwing Chrisitan Republican party hack.

His continued support of DelGiorno after his exposure as a hypocrite, thief, sexist, racist pig. His flip flop on LaFortune for personal political gain. His failure to disclose his personal paid positions in campiagns he was placing his support behind in newspaper and blog articles. His several personal articles and on air comments that are offensive based on religion, sex, or race. His articles are filled with partial truths and innuendo he never retracts anything shown to be wrong. Worst of all to me was his "outing" of the names of the children of political opponents.

It's really disgusting, he's a big part of the poisoned political atmosphere that gripped Tulsa for two or three years, it was never based in much fact and his and his cronies' support of a candidate in Tulsa is now pretty much the kiss of death, even for his "buddy" Medlock.