Lawton

[bigboyz05]

third largest urban area? I used to live there in 1993. I remembered that I loved their school system. Their downtown was kind of dead and they had some vicious storms. I've heard recently that the city was growing and I would like to know more about that.

[jbrown84]

I believe it's growing largely due to more people being stationed at Ft. Sill. I don't know much about development going on down there. I do know that the Wichita Mountains (one of my favorite places in Oklahoma) are seeing a lot of cabin building and new art galleries and shops in Medicine Park. All this is just outside the Refuge.

[mcheiss]

It sounds to me that Lawton is more of a bedroom community.

[shane453]

A bedroom community for itself, maybe. The perception is that everyone works for the army.

[tombarnes]

Whatever happened to the Lawtonian Hotel? Is it apartments now?

[jbrown84]

Couldn't tell you.

[shane453]

I might have heard that it was apartments...

Just drove through Lawton today, and there were a few places where there were huge patches of homes under construction, in preparation for the population boom that will come with at least 10,000 jobs over the next few years.

[Okie]

Did you take Cache Road or Rogers Lane (the latter cuts through patches of post-war slum)?

Guess who this is, Shane.

Yeah the old Lawtonian, either the tallest or the second, and by far the ugliest, the one located behind the Sears entrance to the mall, is a senior apartment building now. In other words, old people live there. I was just worried people got the impression there were urban lofts or anything like that in that old building.

[bigboyz05]

Isn't Rogers Lane a freeway in sections?

[Okie]

A very crappy one. And the freeway section cuts straight through one of the GHETTO parts of town.

[bigboyz05]

What makes the freeway crappy? Is it very narrow or something? Are there plans to upgrade it? In Paris, Tx they have a loop that is freeway in some sections and a regular four lane street with red lights in others. In my opinion, that's very dangerous because you have to slow from near 70 mph to 45mph in a very short amount of time.

[Okie]

This is also dangerous. All of the lanes and a lot of the exits, even on the freeway section of Rogers Lane, are actually street grade. Only a few of the exits there at Fort Sill Boulevard and Sheridan Road have a couple freeway-grade exits. Even at those you have to have to make a left turn and cut across traffic, made especially dangerous by the freeway perception.

There's talk on another forum about pushing the city to make a spur from around the Airport (one of the golf courses are out there) around Lawton in the form of a boulevard with a HUGE median of grass, simillar to how Wichita Falls came up with Kell Blvd (a full blown freeway).

[jetjockey75]

I believe it's growing largely due to more people being stationed at Ft. Sill. I don't know much about development going on down there. I do know that the Wichita Mountains (one of my favorite places in Oklahoma) are seeing a lot of cabin building and new art galleries and shops in Medicine Park. All this is just outside the Refuge.

The Wichita Mountains are amazing, especially for Texoma. Last time I was there (a couple of years ago) I was really surprised by the amount of building around Medicine Park. Hotter than blazes in the summer, but still a nice place to visit.

[jbrown84]

The Wichita Mountains are amazing, especially for Texoma. Last time I was there (a couple of years ago) I was really surprised by the amount of building around Medicine Park. Hotter than blazes in the summer, but still a nice place to visit.

Yes, definitely better in the Spring and Fall. Winter can be nice too. There is a waterfall there called Post Oak Falls that freezes in winter.

[nightshade00013]

Yeah the old Lawtonian, either the tallest or the second, and by far the ugliest, the one located behind the Sears entrance to the mall, is a senior apartment building now. In other words, old people live there. I was just worried people got the impression there were urban lofts or anything like that in that old building.

[tombarnes]

Thanks for the update on the Lawtonian. I was curious about what had happened to it. I hope the site will be updated with more photos soon. Thank you for the link. Welcome to Urban Planet!