Del City’s Challenges and Opportunities

As a resident of Del City it is easy to become excited and also distraught with some of the changes going on.  For those not familiar with Del City, it is a suburb of about 25,000 people completely surrounded by Oklahoma City, Midwest City, and Tinker AFB.  This city use to be about 30,000 before an F-5 tornado came through on May 3, 1999 and destroyed nearly a thousand homes on the Southeastern edge.  Many of these people never moved back and those that did bought their neighbor’s lots and rebuilt homes that were twice the size of what they had.  Although the city has been rebuilt, there are fewer homes around.  This city was built in 1948 as a place for the growing Tinker AFB.  Back then both Midwest City and Del City was thrown together in a very short time.  Many of the homes were very cheap and small.  Because Del City is completely surrounded there are very few places to build new homes.  Real Estate is hard to come by that is not in a flood plane.

In the above picture we see a very large apartment complex that was built late 1970’s early 1980’s time frame.  This apartment complex covers several city blocks as you can see on this map.

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There is a creek that runs right behind it and usually does not flood but about five years ago it did.  We had so much rain that the whole city was flooded and this creek overflowed its banks right into many of the buildings of this complex.  This flood caused many of the buildings to become inhabitable and the city condemned them one at a time as tenants complained.  It is not clear why the owners did not repair the damage.  Surely they had insurance as I would think it would be mandated by law.  This complex has been filled with mold and many local news stories have been published about it.

I have some good memories visiting friends in this apartment complex back in the 1980’s so it is sad to see this happen. I drove through the parts that were not chained off and took a few pictures to see the condition.  I found this sign on each of the doors as you would go inside.

The writing has been on the wall for a long time.  Each time I would drive by here I would see another building boarded up with chain link fence around it with warning signs.  I may be wrong but I think the city had big plans for this property though I am sure they would never admit this.  If you have been down Sooner Road in the last five or six years you may have noticed the transformation.  When I left Oklahoma in 1989 to join the Air Force Sooner Road was a no mans land as a dividing line between Midwest City, Del City and Tinker AFB.  That tornado was the beginning of a rennaissance of this area.  Many of the old buildings were destroyed and the vacant lands have been developed.  Sooner Road has been growing from N.E. 10th street all the way down to S.E. 104th Street.  Since Del City’s side has been limited in development due to being at the end of Tinker’s runway they can use all the land they can get.  This apartment complex sits at some of the most valuable real estate in Del City being at S.E. 29th and Sooner Road.  This intersection has a lot of traffic and is ripe for development.  The Northwest corner is off limits due to the Tinker Runway but the Southwest corner is right where this condemned complex sits. 

You may have noticed that Del City has decided to develop Sooner Road South of I-40 across from the new Wal-Mart store.  I say some incredible renderings of new hotels, restaurants and shopping center.  This is very close to the forbidden zone of the Tinker runway.  With this apartment complex being demolished, this opens up some very valuable land at one of the busiest intersections in the Eastern half of the metro area.  Sooner Road has become such a desirable place to build that the Mid-Del school system has announce they are going to close Sooner Rose elementary at S.E. 15th and Sooner behind the Home Depot due to heavy traffic.  This will open up another valuable corner for development but Midwest City will reap the benefits of this area since it is on their side of the street.  Sooner Road has almost every hole filled from S.E. 29th Street down to 74th.  With the addition of the new Mercy Heart Hospital at I-240 and Sooner, this area is getting crowded.

The amazing thing about all this change is that it took an F-5 tornado to get things moving.  After the miles of total destruction throughout the metro it would have seemed at the time that no one would have built anything back.  On another front, Del City is finally moving thier City Hall out of their old 60+ year old building located here at 4517 S.E. 29th Street.

They are taking over the old Exchange National bank building on S.E. 15th Street.

This building was built in the 1980’s as the Exchange National Bank Del City branch and then changed to the Fraternal Order of Police building.  Recently we have seen signs up saying this is going to be the new City Hall building.  The old Del City Police department located on Epperly Drive is going to move to the old City Hall location after they tear it down.  Here is a picture of the old (current) Del City Police department.

This old facility I am told will eventually become a Senior center.  I am not sure about the accuracy of this as I heard about it on the OKCTalk web site.  You can read about this here.  I grew up in Del City and have been sad to see it become a place of rent houses and people that do not care about their homes.  It is nice to see the city trying to improve on this and I think the current mayor Brian Linley is owed a lot of credit for much of the improvement.  I still live in Del City and plan to stay unless something major happens.  Getting rid of apartment complexes, especially ones that have a lot of crime in them is a good first start.  If you were to look at a map of the Oklahoma City metro area you would be surprised to see how the small town of Del City is somehow embedded deep into the center of the city.  It gives the impression that Del City is more of the stereotypical inner city environment you see on television.  Unfortunately this stereotype is becoming more and more true as time passes.  I have heard gun shots at my house more than once.  I often jokingly refer to my neighborhood as “The Hood” to my wife’s irritation but there are times I feel this way.  It gets so old sitting in my own home with people driving up and down my street playing those loud stereos where the booming shakes the dishes in my own home.   Sometimes they will park in their driveway and let it play for an hour.  There is a man across the street that plays his home stereo so loud that I can hear it in the back of my house at 1:00 AM. Let’s hope this leadership team is able to turn things around.  Getting some commercial development will mean more tax dollars and a greater ability to combat some of these things.

Tags: crime, Del City, development