At lunch yesterday I took advantage of the perfect sunny cool weather and put on my big funny looking high spf hat and took a stroll over to the east side of downtown to see what was happening. It has been a long cold winter and I hadn’t been exploring as much as what I usually do.

The east side is booming with condo construction. Find Out More about condo conversions here. Both new and conversions. Downtown Tulsa is now a cool place to be ever since the BOK Arena went in several years ago. I don’t know what came first after that, cool bars or condos but it is amazing the housing that is being built that accompanies the explosion of bars and restaurants. It wasn’t that many years ago that Michael Buble at a concert here joked that he left his hotel to check out the local action and all he he saw were tumbleweeds blowing down the street.

There is growing pains of course. The city has again started enforcing parking laws and the residents downtown are complaining. I’m told that parking in not prime areas averages about $70 per month. It may not sound like much to you big city folks but people in Oklahoma think that free parking is somehow in the Bill of Rights. A codicil of the Second Amendment I think.

The other thing is that the smaller the condo the bigger the dogs the owners have and there is not enough places for the dogs to go relieve themselves and I see people trying to coax their oversize dogs into small planters so the dogs can do their business. Something is going to have to give on that.

Anyway, it is great to see new construction going on downtown and people moving in and making it their home. I really do think that a strong downtown is vital to any city.