How about it deviates from what's normal?

It's a good idea.

All right, everybody.

Go ahead and get started.

It is five o'clock.

And we've got two items on the agenda, and there might be some lengthy discussions.

So we're gonna get go ahead and get started with the City Council Conference for Tuesday, July 22nd, 2025.

The first item on the agenda is a presentation and discussion on the RDG Main Street Campus Master Plan and a request from Lamont International School, currently located on the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Property.

And I think we have Thank you, Mayor.

Yes.

Well, it's good to be good to be here with you.

So why is this why is this site important?

I'm going to elaborate a little bit on some of these things, but but one that's very important is that it really has the chance to be a bridge between the east and west sides of town.

This site has uh a really unique opportunity to help to bridge that gap.

Um the schemes that some of you have already seen, at least in in earlier forms, um, can uh accommodate a pretty large amount or a reasonable amount of the um of the growth that Norman uh will experience over the the next 20 years.

Um it's an opportunity to develop at urban density.

Uh we can we we've got some freedom here to think about different housing forms, at least uh in concept, and some of those forms are uh speak to the need of affordability to um to uh smaller lots, to to multifamily development, and uh and and frankly, a place that people can move to and not necessarily be in the university environment, which which is a great thing, but um but but it's it's it's it's a little different from that.

Uh it reinforced it's it's important in terms of reinforcing core Norman.

Um it reduces the pressure to uh try to create density on historic neighborhoods around it, uh which I which I think is actually a significant thing as well.

And there are a variety of other community goals that it can meet.

Um for example, the arts community in Norman has really had their eyes on the chapel for a number of years, and that is uh we we don't know what the building is like inside or whether that's doable, but it's something that uh that um is is a part of all of these concepts.

Um we um there are people of different views of this site, but but I actually see it as being a site that is um a very good one uh in in a lot of ways.

Um as you can see on the left, there are a lot of assets around it.

Um the community park, uh Sutton preserve, uh the uh convenience of a Walmart and and other commercial around it, the proximity to downtown, um all of which make this um an interesting site for development and um and a lot better than other big sites that I've seen in other in other places.

It has a lot of interior features as well that range from the sunken area that we talked about earlier to the streams and green corridors to historic buildings that again we don't know exactly what their condition is, but but are resources to work with.

So just in terms of approaching it from a diagrammatic point of view, it's a very interesting place to look at.

So as we thought about the site and about its various features and characteristics and so forth, we were guided, not necessarily writing them all down, but guided by some basic principles.

One is that this has to be a site that's something different, that's uh that that is iconic, that has special features that maybe don't exist anywhere else in Norman.

Um I mentioned, and we're going to look at a diagram of this in a minute, the the interesting possibility of being an east-west bridge.

Um we were trying as a target to accommodate somewhere between five and eight percent of the 20 to 25 year housing demand.

Um that means that if you thought about this being a 10-year or 15-year build out, that it would it would be about 10 to 15 percent of the total production of the city during that period, which is quite a bit.

Uh, that it should provide a great neighborhood experience, that it respond should respond to to people's preferences and needs.

Not everybody wants to live in five-story buildings.

Um there's there are there are variety of different things that happen at different stages in people's um life.

Although we'd say probably the largest mod the largest markets for this are going to be younger households, uh singles, empty nesters, uh people in those ranges, and not necessarily families with a lot of kids who are going to need big yards.

That's that's we're we're at a higher density than that.

Um, although there are people who like that density too.

Um, that it should connect to the surroundings, that it should it should not be an enclave, but it should it should relate to surrounding neighborhoods.

Um it should be part of a community greenway that includes the soccer fields and and the um and and Sutton Preserve.

Uh it should respect history, it should manage stormwater, which is significant issue here.

Um it should complement both of the commercial districts on either end of it, 12th Avenue Northeast and downtown, and it should provide, if at all possible, a home for the arts.

So I just wanted to quickly focus in on one of those.

And um and the central big public areas, Sutton Preserve, um, the uh soccer fields and the state property are great resources, but they're also a bit of a wall.

And um and and they do in a certain way because they're hard to get across, they do create something of a of a geographic barrier.

So that makes this site in redevelopment a very important one to look at for making those kinds of connections.

And you can see that in a way, the way that neighborhoods are structured, there's a natural um convergence on the Griffin site as well.

So really excited about about how this site can work as a as a unifying influence.

Uh, we've talked earlier about the uh the residential building block, about using small lots as a way of both building density and providing an accommodation for a lot of different kinds of housing and a lot of individual preferences, from single family detached to attach to townhomes.

Um we went through five different um concepts for it.

Um again, uh many of you have have seen these, although probably none of you have seen number five because it was an attempt to take everybody's ideas and pull them all together into one uh to uh use a phrase that's in parlance right now, one big beautiful plan.

I'm not sure that that's necessarily what it is, but um but but there it is.

And we um so we we chose um options three and five as being probably the two that represent different somewhat different approaches to the site that are um that are really refinements of some of the other ideas in the um in the earlier documents.

Um these accommodate, depending upon which option we we looked at somewhere between 1300 and 1800 housing units.

Um these accommodate depending upon which option we we we we looked at somewhere between 1300 and 1800 housing units um so that that is hitting right in our five to six percent to eight percent uh proportion of of of total uh total development um I commented 18 specific kinds of features that are included in different um in different combinations in um in these plans um some of which will stick sometimes there they they appear in one and not not another but they're all interesting um ideas some of which we've been involved in designing others are in my collection of photographs that um that uh you you you go to and take a look at when you when you visit um I'm lucky enough to have two kids and four grandchildren in Los Angeles and every time I go there I see something new and something different that um that that you can use um so here are views uh that we've developed of of concepts three and and five um so uh so at um just to go clockwise in this one from the uh uh from the upper left clockwise is uh taking an aerial view as if you were standing at the roundabout and looking up a central mall that uh that is the organizing um uh influence of this uh of of this particular concept so we do think and and uh wrote about this in the the paper that the main street access and continuing that feature is very very important whether it's a canal or something else who knows but uh but but that um that processional uh connection is is is really is really a key element and that's what you see um in in that um in that drawing um on the upper right uh we're looking the other direction toward um the uh center uh that includes the um uh the chapel uh some of the residential neighborhoods the uh and and looking then uh toward toward the promenade um in the uh lower right uh go looking at through one of the residential streets toward uh in the other direction toward the the roundabout with the detention basin uh behind and then uh on the left the um uh the idea of the square that would be off the off the promenade which is in the foreground uh with primary commercial and mixed use type of of development um uh around that so uh uh a um I think a concept that's kind of appealing and orderly from a graphic point of view although that doesn't necessarily mean much uh concept five is a little messier than that um but that's okay too so in concept five um there's a little bit of a different arrangement of things um first of all the the the big difference here is that um most of the multifamily is lower scale three story walk ups as opposed to more expensive higher buildings that require parking structures so this concept is entirely surface parked and it's entirely uh lower rise lower scale uh units but uh but in but in an urban framework so from the um from the uh upper left here uh same concept of a central feature but in this case uh it's not water but it's but it's it's more of a mall or more of a of a of a ground area um you can see what that would look like on the left in in this is in Playa Vista in Los Angeles it's very similar uh idea in the right sort of a uh a wheeler scaled um mixed use work live sell kind of um kind of environment um here we're looking uh from uh a uh uh a detention uh or retention area along Bishop Creek uh up up the up toward the um toward toward the north toward Robinson Street uh in the lower right again a residential street and then um and then looking in the opposite direction from the sunken area uh which which uh as you remember we we use as sort of semi-private neighborhood park uh where kids can set up a uh volunteer wiffle ball diamond and so forth and so on uh something that occurs about five blocks from my house and uh looking toward the um uh toward the chapel and arts district and then beyond that to what could or maybe won't be a uh production studio um it's kind of a separate unit from everything else so um some maintenance of the existing school or anything like that is is does is does not violate this this concept at all um so um finally last slide will be implementation steps so we've laid out

And looking toward the toward the chapel and arts district, and then beyond that to what could or maybe won't be a production studio.

It's kind of a separate unit from everything else.

So maintenance of the existing school or anything like that is does not violate this concept at all.

So finally, last slide will be implementation steps.

Starting out with establishing a partnership between the state and the city.

Four is identifying the development entity, and there are a couple of ways to go.