Residents, Business Owners Concerned As City Moves to Acquire Land for MAPS 3

By Jon Jordan, NEWS 9

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Oklahoma City leaders are moving forward with the MAPS 3 initiative. This week the city council voted 7 to 1 to declare hundreds of acres just south of downtown for urban renewal, which could include taking land by eminent domain.

The land the city has chosen to blight covers the area of the 'core to shore' project. It is far more land than people anticipated, leaving them to wonder if their businesses and homes will be here in future.

"It just throws our future up in the air," David Wommer with A.R.K. Ramos said.

That's because for 64 years this is where A.R.K. Ramos has called home, a business now located in the 692 acres of land the city has chosen to blight for potential re-development which could force businesses like A.R.K. Ramos to move.

"It would be a financial setback, certainly," said Wommer. "It would be a huge cost to move this type of facility."

Assistant City Manager Cathy O'Conner says the city does not plan to acquire all the land, but enough property for the city to build two of the MAPS 3 projects; the downtown park and new convention center, as well as the option for private development.

"We could have taken the area just for the convention center and just for the park, not the whole 692," City Councilman, Ward 5, Brian Walters said.

Walters was the lone dissenter among the city council members.

"Just because someone considers it an eyesore doesn't give them the right to that property away from them," Walters said.

If businesses like A.R.K. Ramos must move, whether they will get what their property is worth, the city would only say this:

"They will get what an appraiser says their property is worth, what one of the three commissioners says their property is worth, or what a judge and jury says their property is worth," O'Conner said.

And as far as determining what area of the 692 acres will actually be redeveloped, the city's urban redevelopment authority is developing a plan for the area and will present that to the city council in the coming weeks.