Urban Renewal
The Pei Plan
In 1964 Oklahoma City hired the celebrated architect I.M. Pei to reinvent its downtown. Over the next decade and a half, urban renewal cleared roughly 530 buildings across the core, about 40 percent of downtown, to make way for a modern district anchored by a 100 million dollar shopping galleria. The galleria was never built. Much of the cleared land became surface parking for a generation, and by 1988 a city councilman was calling downtown dead and admitting the city had helped kill it.
- Started
- 1964
- Ended
- 1988
- Downtown buildings demolished
- ~530
- Collapse speed
- Gradual
- Preventability
- Medium
- Lesson transfer
- Universal
- Last reviewed
- 2026-07-24
Narrative
The story
The ambition
By the early 1960s Oklahoma City's downtown business leaders were worried. Companies said they could not find room to expand in the old core, shoppers were drifting to new suburban parking lots and stores, and the federal government was offering money to cities willing to clear and rebuild. So the city embraced urban renewal and hired one of the era's rising architects, I.M. Pei, to imagine a new downtown. Pei toured the city in April 1964 and, by one account, concluded that "the city is too big." In December 1964 he presented a model showing how downtown might look in 1989, a modern district of superblocks and towers organized around a 100 million dollar regional shopping galleria, with hotels, offices, gardens, and thousands of new parking spaces.
The rise
On September 7, 1965 the city council adopted the plan, and an urban renewal authority went to work with federal funds and the power of eminent domain behind it. Through the late 1960s and 1970s the wrecking balls swung across the core. Contractors leveled 447 buildings and private owners tore down roughly 75 more, some 530 in all, across about 220 acres, close to 40 percent of downtown. Landmarks went with them: the Criterion Theater in 1973, the Baum Building, and in 1977 the Biltmore Hotel, which was dynamited. On the cleared ground the city did build real things, including a convention center, new corporate towers, and eventually the Pei-designed Myriad Botanical Gardens.
The cracks
The trouble was that demolition ran far ahead of construction. The plan's centerpiece, the 100 million dollar galleria, depended on a private developer who never came, and the federal urban renewal money the whole program leaned on was cut back in the mid-1970s. At the same time the retail base the plan meant to revive was already leaving. Shoppers and stores moved to suburban malls such as Penn Square and Crossroads, and downtown's anchor, the John A. Brown's department store, announced in 1974 that it would leave to make way for a shopping center that was never built.
The collapse
What the plan produced across much of downtown was emptiness. Cleared blocks, including the galleria site, sat as surface parking lots for years and then decades. As familiar buildings kept falling and nothing rose to replace them, public support drained away. By the late 1980s the program was effectively abandoned, and in 1988 city councilman I.G. Purser put the result plainly: "Downtown is dead, and we helped kill it."
The aftermath
Oklahoma City stayed away from grand downtown plans through the rest of the 1980s. The turn came in 1993, when voters approved the Metropolitan Area Projects initiative, known as MAPS, a one-cent sales tax that funded a new wave of public investment, and the city rebuilt again after the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The Pei plan's physical legacy is mixed. The Myriad Botanical Gardens is well regarded, but for a generation the dominant image of downtown was cleared lots and parking. The journalist and historian Steve Lackmeyer later observed that Oklahoma City had not boasted of Pei's work there in decades, and that those who remembered it were generally critical of an unfinished vision.
The lessons
Clearing is easy; rebuilding is not. The Pei plan is a study in sequencing risk. It demolished a working, if aging, downtown on the assumption that a modern one would follow, then found that the private redevelopment and the federal money it depended on could not be summoned on command. Superblocks and parking replaced streets and storefronts, and the act of clearing accelerated the very retail flight it was meant to reverse. The transferable lesson is not that ambition or good design is dangerous, but that you should not destroy the thing you have until the thing meant to replace it is actually secured. A program that front-loads demolition and back-loads its financing and its tenants is one funding cut away from leaving a hole where a downtown used to be.
Causal timeline
Failure Anatomy
- 1964
- 1965
- 1975
- 1988
- 1993
Recovery on different terms
Downtown revived only with the voter-approved MAPS initiative in 1993 and the rebuilding that followed the 1995 Murrah Federal Building bombing, not through the Pei plan. [9]
Structured analysis
What Went Wrong
Root causes
Demolition ran ahead of redevelopment. Urban renewal cleared some 530 buildings across roughly 220 acres of downtown, but the centerpiece galleria and much of the promised rebuilding never came, so the plan produced cleared land far faster than it produced a new downtown. [3] [5]
Built on federal money and a developer that never arrived. The redevelopment depended on federal urban renewal funding and on a private developer for the 100 million dollar galleria; the funding was cut back in the mid-1970s and the developer never materialized, stranding the cleared land. [5] [7]
Contributing factors
Betting on downtown retail as it fled to the suburbs. The plan aimed to revive downtown shopping just as stores and customers were moving to suburban malls like Penn Square and Crossroads, and the demolition accelerated that flight rather than reversing it. [6]
Support drained as landmarks fell. As beloved buildings such as the Criterion Theater and the Biltmore Hotel were torn down with little rising to replace them, public support for the program eroded, and officials later conceded it had gone wrong. [4] [8]
Immediate trigger
Federal urban renewal money dried up. The mid-1970s cutbacks in federal urban renewal funding removed the financial engine of the program while much of downtown had already been cleared, halting the redevelopment momentum the plan assumed. [7]
Visible symptoms
Parking lots where a downtown had been. The galleria site and other cleared blocks sat as surface parking for decades with no redevelopment demand materializing, and by 1988 a councilman declared downtown dead. [5] [8]
Warning signs
The anchor store left for the suburbs. In 1974 the John A. Brown's department store, downtown's retail anchor, announced it would leave for a suburban-style center never built, an early sign the retail base the plan counted on was already gone. [6]
Landmarks falling with nothing to replace them. The demolition of the Criterion Theater in 1973 and the dynamiting of the Biltmore Hotel in 1977 drew growing criticism that the program was destroying downtown's fabric faster than it could rebuild it. [4]
Affected groups
Contested
Disputed points
Interpretations where credible accounts genuinely differ, presented as disputes, not settled facts.
Was the Pei Plan a failure or a mixed legacy? The dominant verdict from local historians and officials is that clearance-led renewal hollowed out downtown for a generation. But the plan also delivered the well-regarded Myriad Botanical Gardens, and the land it cleared eventually hosted the MAPS-era revival, so a minority reading treats it as a painful first step rather than a pure loss. [5] [9] [10] [11]
MixedKeep reading
Related failures
Evidence
Claims & sources
Every numbered marker in the analysis links to the claim it rests on, and each claim to its sources.
- [1]
Oklahoma City hired architect I.M. Pei in 1964, and after he toured the city (reportedly concluding "the city is too big") he presented a model in December 1964; the city council formally adopted the Pei Plan on September 7, 1965.
- [2]
The plan reorganized downtown into superblocks and centered on a 100 million dollar regional shopping galleria surrounded by towers, hotels, gardens, and expanded parking.
- [3]
Urban renewal demolished roughly 530 downtown buildings (447 by contractors and about 75 by private owners) across some 220 acres, close to 40 percent of downtown, mostly between the early and late 1970s.
- [4]
Demolished landmarks included the Criterion Theater (1973) and the Baum Building, and the Biltmore Hotel was dynamited in 1977.
- [5]
The plan's centerpiece galleria was never built, and its site and other cleared blocks sat as surface parking lots for decades.
- [6]
Downtown retail collapsed as stores and shoppers moved to suburban malls such as Penn Square and Crossroads, and the John A. Brown's department store left downtown (announced 1974) for a center that was never built.
- [7]
The program depended on federal urban renewal funding, which was cut back in the mid-1970s, and it went largely dormant in the late 1980s amid funding cuts, a depressed economy, and lost public support.
High Reported explanation Urban Renewal | The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture Downtown Revitalization: Oklahoma City - [8]
By 1988 the plan was effectively abandoned, and city councilman I.G. Purser said of downtown, "Downtown is dead, and we helped kill it."
- [9]
Downtown Oklahoma City began to recover only with the voter-approved MAPS (Metropolitan Area Projects) initiative in 1993 and the rebuilding that followed the 1995 Murrah Federal Building bombing.
- [10]
The Pei-designed Myriad Botanical Gardens, built on the site of the demolished Biltmore Hotel, endured as a well-regarded product of the plan.
- [11]
Local historians and journalists, notably Steve Lackmeyer, later judged the plan a top-down, unfinished vision whose superblocks harmed downtown pedestrian activity and retail.
Sources
Urban Renewal | The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture
Oklahoma Historical Society · 2010-01-15
How one architect reshaped Oklahoma City's skyline
The Oklahoman · 2024-04-28
Lost OKC
405 Magazine · 2015-11-24
I.M. Pei Plan
Retro Metro OKC (Oklahoma City/County Historical Society)
Downtown Revitalization: Oklahoma City
MetroJacksonville · 2012-10-17