Capitol Rebuild: Oklahoma City
If a Capital City makes a sound in the prairies, does anyone hear it?
You’ve spent all summer celebrating your first NBA Championship. What else could you ask for? Well, OKC, welcome to Capitol Rebuild.
How Did the Capitol End Up There?
Everyone knows about the historic Guthrie–Oklahoma City rivalry, so I can skip that part, right? Right?
Guthrie and Oklahoma City are separated by a mere 30 miles and have been rivals since the Great Land Run of 1889 (more on that in a moment). Guthrie snagged the early prize of becoming the capital of the Oklahoma Territory in 1890. Congress even wrote into law that Guthrie would remain the capital until 1913. That seemed pretty ironclad….until it wasn’t.
When Theodore Roosevelt signed the Oklahoma Enabling Act of 1906, it gave Oklahomans the right to vote on their capital city. Guthrie, Oklahoma City, and Shawnee were on the ballot. The people overwhelmingly chose Oklahoma City.
And that’s when things got spicy. From “Swiping the Steal – Guthrie vs Oklahoma City for the State Capital,”
Governor Charles Haskell, believing Guthrie to be “a nest of Republican vipers,” staged a middle-of-the-night heist of the state seal and moved it to the rowdier, more Southern-flavored Oklahoma City. Guthrie loyalists were outraged, calling OKC nothing more than a vulgar cow town.
Guthrie fought back in court for over a year, taking the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices ended up on the side of Oklahoma City by ruling that the Enabling Act gave the new state the right to decide its own capital. For more than a year during the legal fight, state business was conducted out of the Huckins Hotel in downtown Oklahoma City (where I’m sure everything was always handled with the most amount of dignity and ethical fortitude).
Work began on a permanent capitol in 1914 and was designed by the prolific firm Layton, Smith & Forsyth. They ended up designing on more than 100 public buildings in the city (so you know who to blame if you don’t liked a historic building in OKC). The original blueprints called for a dome, but budget cuts forced them to cut that glorious aspect and the building opened domeless.
Fast forward to Oklahoma City’s centennial. Lawmakers astutely realized that nothing says “100 years” quite like finally putting a glorious dome on their sad dome-less capitol. Fortunately for all of us capitol lovers, the original builders in 1914 had over-engineered the foundation so a dome could be added someday. So in 2002 the Oklahoma State Capitol got the crown it was always meant to have: a gleaming new dome.
OKC is the only capital that housed a working oil field at its capitol building.
We will just ignore the Ten Commandments monument.
The Arc
On April 21, 1889, the population of Oklahoma City was unknown as it wasn’t a city and there were no population records. One day later, on April 22, it had a population between 6-10,000 people? How? Well it was the Great Land Run of 1889.
We have to first back up a few decades to President Lincoln’s strategy during the Civil War to create more opportunities for land ownership with the Homestead Act, which allowed residents to occupy “idle” tracts of land, ie land where Native Americans were located. This created the “opportunity” for new towns to be created in hours.
The day of the Land Run came and literally thousands of people rushed across the border of Oklahoma when they were given the signal, all trying to find their own piece of the 12,000 land tracts that were made available in the state, with a focus on Oklahoma City and Guthrie. Of course, not everyone played it fair and waited outside of the state’s borders as a lot of folks went into Oklahoma early and found a hiding spot until the Land Run started. Those people came to be known as “Sooners”, which is now the University of Oklahoma’s mascot. Such a wonderful thing to celebrate.
My Experiences with Oklahoma City
None. It’s on the top of my list of places to see an NBA game and experience the atmosphere.
What’s Working
Civic Infrastructure
Oklahoma City is unique in that (1) the Mayor is a partisan position and (2) they have had a Republican Mayor since 1987. So obviously the first thing we are going to discuss about a city that has had Republican leadership for almost forty years is a …tax program? The Metropolitan Area Projects Plan (MAPS), is a one cent sales tax program that was initially voted into approval by residents in 1993. It funds capital projects that are part of the ballot (so it’s not a slush fund), funding doesn’t go into the city’s general fund, there are dedicated staff to work on the projects (so they aren’t having to do other things) and there is a citizen oversight committee on top of the program. It has funded everything from renovations to Downtown, supporting the construction of the Thunder’s arena, creating a riverfront, and improving facilities for homeless and mental services. Despite the fact that the projects have extended from one mayor to another, the popularity of the program and its governance have ensured that a new mayor doesn’t mean a new strategy.
Place
I can’t lie. I watched over an hour of Instagram videos of Riversport. I have never been whitewater rafting and I’m sure the part of my brain that is responsible for telling me “you are 47 years old and you should not be doing this” would kick in if I was at Riversport, but having a recreational facility in Downtown with whitewater activities, skiing, and rowing is pretty incredible. Riversport is the US Olympic and Paralympic training site and will also be the LA28 site for canoe slalom (which is an awesome event).
Scissortail Park replaced 70 acres of industrial land and is located right across the street from where the Thunder play. It has all of the amenities that great downtown parks have. Like everything in Oklahoma City, it was funded through the MAPS.
Arts & Culture
The First Americans Museum, opened in 2021, is a truly impressive project that shares the story of Oklahoma’s 39 tribal nations through immersive exhibits, performances, and culinary traditions. The museum places Indigenous history at the center of Oklahoma’s identity rather than at its margins.
The Civic Center Music Hall and the larger Oklahoma City Performing Arts Center, refurbished through the original MAPS program in the 1990s, show how deliberate civic investment can sustain a thriving arts ecosystem. The MAPS-funded improvements helped modernize facilities that now host the city’s opera, ballet, and symphony, along with traveling Broadway shows and community productions.
Bridging these two assets is Oklahoma Contemporary, a new arts center that opened in 2020 with a mission to make contemporary art accessible to all. It has rotating exhibitions, education programs, and a growing reputation for experimental work. This is a signal that OKC’s cultural ambitions extend beyond preservation into innovation.
There is something magical when a city only has one professional sports team (and not because they lost the others), particularly when they embrace it like Oklahoma City has done with the Thunder. It creates an amazing atmosphere for gamedays and something for the entire community to connect over. It’s as close to college sports loyalty and experience as you can get (and it doesn’t hurt when your team just won the championship and is set up better than any team for the next five to ten years. Maybe I’ll start a separate series on capital city sports).
What’s Not Working
What’s Oklahoma City?
If you grabbed 50 Gen Z professionals and asked them to describe Oklahoma City, you’d probably get 50 pauses and stares and then maybe a few answers that don’t have anything to do with basketball. Oklahoma City does not have the brand of a Santa Fe or even Little Rock. It’s hard to grow a city if no one knows what the opportunity is.
No One Can Rely on Transit
This is becoming something of a dead horse in this series, but I can’t emphasize enough the importance of better transit. When young people move from big cities to smaller cities, the first thing they notice and complain about is the lack of transit. The majority of buses in OKC stop running at 7pm on weekdays and 6pm on weekends, making it a requirement to own a car if you work in the evenings. Oklahoma City did launch its first BRT line, which is a nice feat. But one shiny transit asset doesn’t help an entire city’s transit needs.
Lack of Neighborhood Investments
MAPS is an amazing policy success that has demonstrated the power of investment in a consistent economic development strategy. However, the majority of the projects have been focused in Downtown as a way to draw people to the city. This obviously ignores the infrastructure needs of residents in non-downtown communities. The MAPS 4 program does seem to be responding to this criticism by having a considerable amount of funding for neighborhood parks, sidewalks, and community centers. But the signature projects are still in Downtown. One of the risks of having a sales tax program that has to be voted on by the residents is if they see that funding benefiting them.
Capitol Score
Capitol Score is my subjective ranking (using a 10 point scale) on how the city stacks up with regards to place, innovation, arts & culture, and overall livability. A perfect score isn’t the goal, improvement is.
Oklahoma City’s Capitol Score is 6.0
Oklahoma City has a Capital Score Potential of 8.0
Three Wishes from the Policy Genie
Just a quick note here. This is just me throwing ideas on the wall based on my limited knowledge of what’s happening. There are likely many many things that need improvement and the folks on the ground will always know more.
Get Rid of I-40 and Embrace the River
Highway to Boulevard projects are hard. But when you’re a town that is literally going to have a global spotlight on your river, maybe you shouldn’t have a highway block access to said river? Particularly when that highway does is connect three (!) north-south interstates? We would need to come up with a replacement of this kids coloring sheet…maybe some great views of people enjoying a river?
The Oklahoma River runs through the heart of OKC, both Downtown and the neighborhoods, and is extremely underutilized. It should be the asset that connects the entire city.
Talk, Learn, and Partner with Tulsa
There are so many exciting things happening in Tulsa with innovation and economic development. OKC could either try and replicate its momentum and ultimately cannibalize, or work closely with Tulsa to see what OKC can do to complement it. Tough choice, I know. There are definitely assets, particularly the scale of OKC’s economy and the river, that could leverage what is going on in Tulsa. This requires (1) a strong state economic development strategy that can force collaboration and (2) said state economic development strategy sees the value in investing in its cities. I’m not going to hold my breath on this one.
Lean Into….Something
OKC needs an identify. It could be the river. It could be its food. It could be lots of things. But it needs to hang its hat on a reason for people to move, visit, and stay there.
What’s Happening in Oklahoma City?
Ryan Walters is 'demanding' the Oklahoma Supreme Court allow his agency to buy Bibles and Oklahoma schools rank 50th in the nation in latest education quality study
No comment necessary
I’m a Red-State Mayor. Diversity Is Not Reverse Bigotry.
Great leadership from Mayor Holt. Mayor Holt should have a larger national platform as a purple city Mayor.
Lack of Affordable Housing Prices Out Oklahoma Renters and City adopts far-reaching plan to trigger affordable housing
Regardless of what’s in this plan, it’s probably not enough. Unfortunately, the housing conversation seems to have left the national spotlight once the election was over.
Final Thoughts
Oklahoma City is….fine? I mean, I think it will continue to see growth as an affordable option to Austin and Dallas. The insane national policy decision to double down on the oil and natural gas industries will benefit Oklahoma at large and likely lead to short-term economic growth in OKC. There is a solid base of place, arts, culture, and recreation. But until OKC has a clear identity of what it wants to be and how that separates it from the rest of the country, there isn’t going to be a reason to revisit its place on the Capitol Score rankings.
Capitol Rankings
Capitol score (Capitol potential)
Phoenix, 7.9 (8.4)
Indianapolis, 7.4 (9.7)
Santa Fe, 6.9 (8.5)
Des Moines, 6.7 (8.2)
Montpelier, 6.1 (6.3)
Oklahoma City, 6.0 (8.0)
Olympia, 5.6 (6.7)
Little Rock, 4.9 (7.4)
Trenton, 4.3 (6.8)
Harrisburg, 4.3 (6.1)
Next up, we travel north into the smoky halls of Albany.