5—The Mentality
A culture of short-term thinking
In 2016, the City of Tulsa and federal agencies installed a high-water mark from the 1986 flood across from Wind River Crossing, a South Tulsa subdivision in the Arkansas River floodplain.1 Within hours, developer Alan Staab emailed Councilor Phil Lakin to have the sign removed:23
You and I know that the city has worked hard to insure [sic] that damages from flooding in our community will not occur in the future. … My builders are particularly concerned about the millions of dollars of investment that they have made in homes and lots that could be at risk should potential buyers develop concerns about future flooding after viewing this sign.
That evening, Staab notified Lakin that he had “covered the sign with a camo duffel bag until we can get the city to decide to remove or relocate the sign.”
Lakin forwarded the request to the office of then-Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr.
“The developers in far south Tulsa are warning of a major unintended consequence of yesterday's sign unveiling,” Lakin wrote. “They make a very good point.”
Within days, the mayor’s office had the sign removed.
Executive Homes advertises that Wind River Crossing “features some of our deepest city lots, and is perfect for those wanting to install the pool of their dreams.”
April 25, 2023, I asked Lakin why he thought it was a good idea to remove the sign when we know the river will flood again.
Lakin replied that “the floods that could happen now are completely different” from the 1986 flood. As the basis for this claim, he cited “a wide variety of changes that have occurred in the riverbed, that have occurred in the neighborhoods, that have occurred to the building standards, and so many other things.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“I’m getting a lot of my information from the people who know about—the engineers who know about it, and the people who manage the emergencies,” Lakin said. “And they’re telling me, verifiably, that the river, and the neighborhoods, and the flood areas, and the flood risk, is completely different.”
“And what do you mean by different?” I asked.
“So, what happened back then is far more unlikely to occur now,”4 Lakin said. “That’s what I mean.”
“Based on what?” I asked.
“The river is different, okay?” Lakin said. “The building standards for the neighborhoods are different, or we’ve added—so the foundations are higher than they were. There’s flood mitigation that goes on through there. So there’s a—there was an entire, a floodplain that is now not a floodplain because it’s been engineered so that the floodplain is no longer there.”56
Ron Flanagan, a nationally recognized floodplain manager who worked with the city for more than 50 years, called Lakin’s characterization of the flood risk “absolute bullshit.”
“There have been no changes in the Arkansas River as far as capacity—it’s just not true,” Flanagan said in a phone interview. “It’s going to flood again, and the interesting thing is the excuses that they’re going to have next time. … They have done nothing to justify that kind of a claim.”
Flanagan said a culture of short-term thinking dominates the City of Tulsa and breeds denial about the Arkansas River.
“Who cares what happens 60 years or 30 years or 20 years down the road, as long as [the land owner] can develop that land and make money off of it and pass it on to somebody else,” Flanagan said. “The city’s responsibility is to look out for those kinds of things. … Just take a look at the maps of 121st and Sheridan, and all of that massive floodplain of the Arkansas River. City of Tulsa and Bixby are developing that. And that shows where everybody’s head is. If they can get away with it, they do.”
Noting Simon Property Group’s ongoing construction of an outlet mall in the floodplain west of the river at East 101st Street, Flanagan added Jenks to this list, as well.7
In a phone interview, Nathan Foster, a principal planner with the Tulsa Planning Office, called my attention to a rezoned area adjacent to and much larger than Wind River Crossing, near East 121st Street South and South Hudson Avenue.
“A lot of that, going down Hudson, from 121st all the way to the river, was formerly in the floodplain,” Foster said. “As was [the area] east of it, on the east side of Hudson, and [the area] east of Sheridan that’s in Bixby’s city limits. … The city needs to adopt additional regulations for floodplain development if their desire is to prevent more of that from occurring [in Tulsa]. … Our decision-makers have unanimously approved all of these developments, for the most part.”
Levee Commissioner Todd Kilpatrick calls it “the mentality”—a refusal to see the river for what it is and respond appropriately.
“How much public safety is that dam gonna afford you?” Kilpatrick asked, referring to the new Zink Dam. “That’s a simple question. And it should be a simple question for everybody.”
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Executive Homes advertises that Wind River Crossing “features some of our deepest city lots, and is perfect for those wanting to install the pool of their dreams.”
At the time, the Tulsa Public Facilities Authority (TPFA) and the City of Tulsa were defendants in a lawsuit over their attempt to sell 8.8 acres of riverfront parkland near 71st Street and Riverside Parkway to a Dallas-based developer.
The proposed plan for the site, which flooded in 1986 (see p. 15 of this report), featured a shopping center surrounded by massive parking lots. The price was $1,465,000, with $570,0000 as a credit to the buyer for infrastructure improvements.
The anchor tenant, REI, later opened a store in Oklahoma City. In 2021, the Oklahoma Supreme Court reversed a decision that favored the defendants, returning the case to a lower court. TPFA and the city then abandoned the deal.
REI now plans to build a 23,000 square-foot retail store on one of the only undeveloped acreages adjacent Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness Area. If the project continues to move forward, recreationists on lower Turkey Mountain will have a west-facing view of a store nearly half the size of a football field, its parking lot, and other commercial development.
Staab included developers Bob David, Steve Wright, Jay Labadie and Rodger Tucker on the email.
For details about Tulsa’s Arkansas River flood probabilities and the likelihood of increasingly extreme weather events, read “Wall of Water” and “The Pool of Record,” the sixth and seventh articles in this series.
Joe Kralicek, executive director of the Tulsa Area Emergency Management Agency, repeatedly interrupted my conversation with Lakin, which took place at a town hall event promoting the 2023 Improve Our Tulsa renewal.
Kralicek cited “extensive mitigation” along the Arkansas River before changing the subject to “13 different natural disasters alone that could impact the residents of Tulsa, and many many more man-made events.”
“What you’re not looking at, is you’re not looking at the most practical risk,” Kralicek said. “And you’re looking at the most dramatic risk.”
“Well, is that true though?” I said. “Because it’s a river. I mean, and there are individual extreme weather events that are happening all across the world.”
“Mhmm,” Kralicek said. “And if you’d like to, I could sit down and show you a history of the different wind events that we’ve had here. The different lightning events. The winter weather events. … There’s good warnings, and there’s unrealistic warnings. What you’re asking for is basically the equivalent of—any time there’s lightning, to be setting off a tornado siren.”
For additional context from Nathan Foster, a City of Tulsa planner, go back to “Still Fighting It,” the third article in this series.
Tulsa Premium Outlets represents the second effort by Simon Property Group to build an outlet mall on green space near the Arkansas River in recent years. Simon backed out of plans for a mall adjacent Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness Area in 2015 amid overwhelming public opposition to its location.
Within the year, Jenks rezoned more than 50 acres of the Arkansas River floodplain to make way for the development. Simon said the mall would open in 2017 but did not begin construction until 2020, when the project stalled again. Simon later resumed construction and opened the mall in August 2024.
Jenks requires that projects in the Arkansas River floodplain outside the Jenks levee be built one foot above the 1986 flood. For additional context, read my previous article, “Channel Markers.”