Oklahoma City aims to unseat NYC with America’s tallest building


One World Trade Center could soon lose its title as America’s tallest building — if developers in Oklahoma City succeed in their plan of constructing a massive skyscraper at the height of 1,907 feet.

Dubbed “Legends Tower” at a development site known as the The Boardwalk at Bricktown, the proposed building would easily surpass One World Trade Center’s 1,792 feet and would give Oklahoma City the fifth-tallest structure in the world.

Plans were announced this week by real estate investor Matteson Capital and AO architecture firm, who said the tower would be part of a mixed-use project. Unlike One World Trade Center and Chicago’s Willis Tower (1,729 feet) — both of which primarily serve as office buildings — the Oklahoma City tower would feature nearly 2,000 apartment units, a Hyatt hotel with hundreds of rooms, and 110,000 square feet of retail, dining and entertainment.

With the work-from-home revolution and a steep decline in demand for office space, the mixed-use plan represents a shift in commercial development. Currently, there sits more empty office space in the U.S. than at any point since 1979.

The 1,907 feet for the tower is also a symbolic number, representing the year 1907, when Oklahoma officially became a state. It would roughly double the height of Oklahoma City’s current largest building, the Devon Energy Center, which measures just 50 stories high.

However, Oklahoma City’s mayor is said to be noncommittal about the new plan. The idea was also dismissed as “pie in the sky” by one city economist, especially given the entire project is estimated to cost $1.6 billion, according to CNN.

“The smaller the city, the harder it is to fill all that extra space and at a price that makes it worth it,” said Jason Barr, a professor of economics at Rutgers University-Newark, adding that the Oklahoma City tower would be “way too tall given the city’s population.”

Currently, New York and Chicago — which represent the country’s first- and third-largest cities by population — are home to the 10 tallest buildings in the U.S.

But the latest proposal is evidence of new ambitions for a booming region.

Although Oklahoma City is currently America’s 20th largest, the U.S. Census Bureau reports its the 6th-fastest growing city in the country. Between 2020 and 2022, it reportedly grew in population by about 2%, while the populations of larger cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia actually declined.

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