New Life Coming To Old Downtown Tulsa Otasco

Tuesday, July 31st 2018, 3:58 pm

By: News On 6

There are big plans for the building next to Tulsa’s City Hall.

The old Otasco building in downtown Tulsa is about to get new life. The developer behind the project in downtown Tulsa says the plan includes a rooftop restaurant and plenty of places to shop.

Built in the 1970s and once home to Otasco Auto Parts, the building at 2nd and Cincinnati has seen better days.

Since 1993, it has been a refurbishing shop specializing in office furniture.

“In the early 90s, that made a lot of sense because nothing was going on downtown,” said real estate developer Jeff Scott.

Scott, who also owns Blue Dome Village, is spending $2.5 million to rehab it into what he says make much more sense for Tulsa now.

He says there will be about 16,000-square-feet of retail space and there will be a rooftop restaurant with quite a view of downtown Tulsa.

“With a little bit of money, well, quite a little bit of money, we can turn it into something special right next to City Hall,” said Scott. “We’re right here within a five-minute walk of two-and-a-half to three million feet of office space.”

What is currently a surface parking lot will be a landscaped courtyard, hoping to chip away at what Scott calls too many surface parking lots downtown and instead promote more walkability.

Scott says that now is the time to bring this project on-line with all that is happening downtown.

He says he finds it amazing that when he talks about this corner, Tulsans know about the PAC and City Hall, but “when I talk about the northeast corner, they cannot see this building in their mind’s eye because it’s just such a plain building. So, I think we are going to bring attention to the building.”

They are hoping to have this under construction late this year and have tenants moved in by fall of 2019.

There are also some exciting plans for alleys in the area, possibly with some pop-up shops and artist space.