Local Oklahoma City residents have been aware of the individual spaces that have popped up along North Walker Avenue in the Midtown district recently. What they probably don’t know is that this has been an intentional multi-year effort, specifically master-planning and infilling the street with local and small complementary businesses to create a pedestrian-friendly mini-district.

In addition to creating a walkable shopping and entertainment street, the goal was also to build upon the existing diversity of building design on the street so that each new element added is still different, creating a natural progression of unique voices as it might have been done by different property owners over long periods of time. In the end, there is a uniformity of scale, yet a diversity and expression of individualism in the storefronts and individual designs. Historically, streets were often shaped by organic or “accidental” density, so to speak. The intention of the North Walker development is to continue with this pattern.

Most of the improvements to the area relate to the public realm – sidewalks, streetscapes, parking reconfiguration, addition of the plaza near the roundabout, etc.  Placemaking drove this investment, not the hope of immediate financial gain.