OKC MAPS PROJECTS – 25 YEARS
Tourism The 2009 MAPS report detailed many of the initial tourist attractions added to the downtown area in the early years of the MAPS projects. These include both public MAPS projects and numerous private venues and events. Figure 47 summarizes visitation and visitation numbers at several key attractions in the downtown study area. Estimates suggest that 10-12 million visitors attend and participate in a range of events and attractions in the study area each year. MAPS Attractions . The most important contribution of MAPS to downtown tourism is likely the creation and development of the Bricktown entertainment district. General visits to Bricktown are the largest single source of visitation to the study area. Estimates suggest that 6 million visits are made to Bricktown annually, roughly half of total visits to the area. Among the MAPS sports venues, Chesapeake Energy arena is the most-visited individual MAPS venue, attracting an average of 1.2 million visitors annually in the 2015 to 2017 period. Along with a traditionally sold-out NBA schedule, the arena remains a popular national concert stop. The Bricktown Ballpark hosted approximately 600,000 visits annually in the 2015 to 2017 period. The ballpark draws more than 450,000 annually for baseball games, with the remainder attending other events and activities. Cox Convention Center visitation roughly equals that of baseball at the ballpark, drawing an average of nearly 450,000 visitors annually in recent years. The construction of the new downtown convention center and accompanying convention hotel is expected to allow for significant enhancement of the city’s stature as a national convention destination. The renovations and enhancements at the Civic Center Music Hall have been well received by patrons. The Music Hall has averaged almost 350,000 visits annually in recent years. A record number of visitors exceeding 419,000 were hosted in 2017. Activities along the Oklahoma River continue to draw a range of visitors. A small set of sponsored events at the River attracted approximately 50,000 visitors annually the past five years. In addition, the water taxis on the Bricktown Canal draw more than 100,000 riders annually. The Ron J. Norick Library remains a key education-related destination in the downtown area. The library has attracted approximately 300,000 in-person visitors annually the past decade. Unlike most branch locations, home-address analysis finds that visitors to the downtown library are distributed widely across the city rather than living primarily near downtown. In-person visits to the library have remained relatively steady despite the ongoing shift in circulation numbers toward digital versions of books. The physical presence of the downtown library also fills numerous support needs of the broader city library system including administrative, finance, operations, and human resource functions. The downtown library houses special collections including the Genealogy Collection, Holocaust Collection, and Oklahoma Collection. Numerous reference items including historical documents, microform collections, and government publications are similarly available for reference use only within the downtown library. The downtown library location has low-cost meeting rooms and classrooms available to the public, with 1,132 room reservations made in fiscal year 2018.
84
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online