An Orange County firm is getting closer to constructing what may become the tallest building in the U.S.
Newport Beach developer Scot Matteson has enlisted the help of Orange County’s biggest architectural firm, Orange-based AO, for the $1.6 billion project called Boardwalk at Bricktown in Oklahoma City.
Skepticism abounds for the 1,907-foot, 134-story Legends Tower building that would go up in an area known as “Tornado Alley.”
AO Managing Partner Rob Budetti said he has “no apprehensions” about constructing such a project, comparing the Legends Tower to other tall structures like the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
“Some of the tallest buildings in the world are in areas with big windstorms or typhoons,” Budetti told the Business Journal.
“It’s really a math problem for the structural engineer to calculate all these forces and how to resist them.”
Despite the skeptics, who also point to the amount of land available, the Oklahoma City County approved the zoning proposal on June 4, removing the height restriction on the four-acre development site.
“We’re excited because it’s something a little different for us and has put us in a different light nationally,” Budetti said.
The developers say they have the funding and construction is set to begin this fall.
Biggest in OC
AO again ranks No. 1 on the Business Journal’s list of top architectural firms with $77.1 million in annual OC billings, down 8% year-over-year.
Founded by Jack Selman in 1974, its 50th anniversary led to the City of Orange making March 27 as “AO Day.”
The firm in the past year designed the $12 million renovation of the Hotel Zessa in Santa Ana, which was finished in March. It has several projects under construction locally, including mixed-use apartment complex The Row at Red Hill in Santa Ana and multifamily units at retail center The Square Cypress.
The design of the Oklahoma City project, named Boardwalk at Bricktown, would be AO’s largest project yet.
Initial versions of the Oklahoma City design didn’t include the high-rise building at first.
Matteson ended up reassigning the project to AO less than a year ago “because he wasn’t happy with the design direction of the original architect,” according to Budetti.
Matteson chose Bricktown as the location for his ambitious project, saying that the city’s experiencing “a significant period of high growth and transformation, making it well-positioned for large-scale projects” like his.
“Scot has been good at finding where the next ‘it’ place will be,” Budetti said. “He’s seeing where it’s going to be four or five years from now.”
Currently, “Oklahoma City is one of the top three fastest-growing cities in the U.S.,” Matteson told the Business Journal earlier this year. “A lot of companies are relocating there because its cost of living is better.”
Moreover, the area is “very pro-business” and “friendly towards development,” Matteson added.
Matteson Capital, an affiliate of Newport Beach’s Centurion Partners, is one of three development partners in the project, along with Thinkbox and Legends Capital Management, according to Oklahoma City filings. Funding for the project has been lined up, according to the Oklahoman newspaper.
Centurion has been part of other high-rise developments, including a tower in San Diego, and has also owned low-rise projects in Orange County.
Centurion is also involved in the Miami Worldcenter, which is currently being unveiled in phrases.
That $6 billion development—which spans 27 acres in an older, run-down business district in Miami—includes over 300,000 square feet of retail, over 2,100 residential units and three office towers. The entire project, which Centurion has partially built and has portioned off to other developers, totals about 17 million square feet.
OKC Live
Budetti envisions Boardwalk at Bricktown as the next L.A. Live.
Last year, the city approved a $900 million basketball arena downtown for National Basketball Association team Oklahoma City Thunder. The arena will reportedly be built across the street from where Boardwalk’s site is. Also nearby is the Oklahoma City Convention Center, which was built in 2021 for $288 million.
City officials are further investing in the area with another $30 million going towards a new soccer stadium near Bricktown that will serve as the future home for Energy FC, increasing the original budget from $41 million to $71 million and the number of seats from 8,000 to 10,000.
Boardwalk at Bricktown consists of three smaller towers at the base, all projected to stand at 345 feet, which will start construction this fall and be completed in 2026.
Construction on the Legends Tower is slated to begin after the first phase is finished. The second phase would take around three years to complete, according to AO officials.
The four-building project encompasses approximately 5 million square feet of hotel, residential, retail and commercial spaces. Total, there will be 1,776 residential units and over 110,000 square feet reserved for retail.
Designs indicate there will be a 352-room Hyatt hotel with 99 serviced condominiums, as well as 904 luxury residences, in the 126-story Legends Tower, the centerpiece of the project.
The top floors of the tower will hold a public observatory, sky restaurant and bar.
Oklahoma’s extreme weather conditions make it an unlikely place to build a 1,907-foot skyscraper. However, a few blocks away from the Boardwalk site is the 850-foot, 50-story Devon Tower.
Wind loads, including tornado loads, would be established via wind tunnel testing, taking into account the local wind climate and the geometry and height of the tower, according to a June article in the Engineering News Record magazine.
One of the engineering firms involved in the development is New York-based Thornton Tomasetti, which has completed some of the tallest buildings in the world, including Shanghai Tower and Taipei 101. Thornton Tomasetti has worked on three of the 10 tallest towers in the U.S., officials said.
“Everybody we’re bringing on has specific experience in super tall buildings,” Budetti said.
If built, the Legends Tower would replace the One World Trade Center as the tallest building in the U.S.
“This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for … to see how tall we can get,” Councilwoman Nikki Nice said during the city council meeting ahead of voting.
The lifted height restriction was approved in an 8-1 vote, with one in opposition due to concerns surrounding the credibility of the nonprofit organization that the developer said they’re partnering with to address homelessness in the area.
Arizona-based nonprofit Aspiring Anew Generation will provide 132 residential units for workforce housing, financial advisor Joanne Carras said at an Aug. 1 city council meeting.
“It’s always been part of our design from day one to have affordable workforce housing,” Budetti said.
Getting the height restriction removed “wasn’t a far stretch” for the city as there is no height limit imposed on the rest of downtown across the street from Bricktown, Budetti said.
The city did take issue with the project’s use of LED displays and signage, which will be resubmitted separately to the planning commission.
