Sports fans in the Pacific Northwest were stunned when the Seattle SuperSonics moved to a city better known for its stockyards than its civic form.
But the effort that drew the Sonics to Oklahoma City was part of a civic renaissance that has inspired some at Metro to try and emulate Oklahoma's success.
Nearly two decades ago, civic leaders in Oklahoma City convinced taxpayers their city needed an image boost. In 1993, about 54 percent of voters signed off on a 1 percent sales tax to pay for projects like an upgraded convention center, a waterfront, sports stadiums, a library, a concert hall and a downtown transit system.
In essence, Oklahoma City voters were paying $330 million to make their downtown a little bit more like Portland's, through a project called the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Area Projects, or OCMAPS.
Now Metro is looking at Oklahoma City as a model for regional investment, singling out the OCMAPS formula as a model of using targeted public projects to attract private investment.
OCMAPS was tremendously successful. More than $2 billion in private investment followed the first round of projects, which were paid for with cash, not bonds. And it helped to keep at least one of Oklahoma City's two Fortune 500 companies in the area.
Of course, Portland already has an NBA arena, performing arts venues and a pretty good mass transit system. So why is Metro Chief Operating Officer Michael Jordan looking at OCMAPS as something that could be implemented in the Portland area?
For Jordan, it goes back to infrastructure funding. A shortfall of needed infrastructure projects, which could stretch into the tens of billions of dollars in the coming decades, means the region needs to better focus its investments.
An exploratory committee, a group of 14 businesspeople and community advocates and two Metro councilors, is working on forming the Portland Community Investment Initiative. That initiative is slated to have a Leadership Council of 15 to 25 members, selected by the exploratory committee, which will figure out what projects should be funded and how they can be paid for.
The Initiative will be a non-governmental organization, supported by the exploratory committee. Metro has identified about $3 million in resources to complement the Initiative's work through Metro's Community Investment Strategy.
The Leadership Council should be in place by the end of the year.
Jordan, in dozens of speeches to stakeholders late this summer, said he thinks the key targets for investment include land use, transportation, natural areas, housing, economic development and energy. But, Jordan has said, the exploratory committee took the problem and made it bigger, adding education, for example, to the mix.
The downtown redevelopment aspect of OCMAPS was instrumental in keeping Devon Energy, a major Oklahoma City employer founded there in 1971, from leaving the state.
"We have required an increasing number of highly talented and specialized employees to help us be successful," said Chip Minty, a Devon spokesman. "In 1993… Oklahoma City did not have the amenities necessary to easily recruit those types of people. Today, Oklahoma City has the quality of life needed to attract the best people and their families."
Now, Devon Energy is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build a new 50-story headquarters.
"We think MAPS is an outstanding example of what happens when communities invest in themselves," Minty said.
Education was the centerpiece of the OCMAPS project's second phase. OCMAPS Program Manager Eric Wenger said the first phase was successful in breathing life to that city's downtown, but it didn't attract the large companies the city was looking at.
"The thing we found was our public education was not up to the level that was desired by those coming to our city," Wenger said. "The local school districts just weren't performing."
Oklahoma law was changed to allow a city sales tax to fund school projects, and in 2001, voters approved a second round of OCMAPS projects. This time, OCMAPS would spend $700 million to rebuild or repair 116 schools, replace 160 school buses and install thousands of computers and presentation stations in classrooms.
A $770 million third phase, which includes a central park, streetcars, a new convention center, new sidewalks, health centers for seniors, trails and river improvements, was approved by voters earlier this year.
"If you look at the economic development standpoint, the successes are extremely large," Wenger said. "If you look at the convention and visitors standpoint, it's been huge leaps and bounds when you compare to what it was prior to MAPS. To get things like a national team, like the NBA's Thunder here, there's a lot of community pride that comes with that too. It's not just one area of success, it's moving out in all directions."