Hello from Lawton, OK

[Bobby5280]

Hi everyone,

My name is Bobby. I'm a graphic artist, illustrator and photographer. My full time day job is working at a sign manufacturing company where I design everything from large electrical signs and billboards down to little bitty cut/print vinyl jobs.

I'm kind of a road geek from having moved all over the country growing up as a Marine Corps brat. I pay a good bit of attention to conventions of highway sign design since it sort of relates to my commercial business sign designs (if it isn't legible it is worthless). It kind of irks me how there is a number of big green signs along I-44 here with some big goofs on them. Hardly anyone else seems to notice, probably least of all ODOT.

[texaskdog]

How is the weather up there?  Nice and toasty down here in Austin. 

[NE2]

How's that downtown that was turned into a mall?

[Alex]

Welcome to the board Bobby!

How's that downtown that was turned into a mall?

+1

[roadman65]

Welcome to this board!  Nice to have you, hope you have an interesting experience here.

[Bobby5280]

The weather has been pretty crazy over the past evening. I don't know how much rain Lawton received, but it was enough to cause flooding in some areas. Lake Helen in Elmer Thomas Park had been very low for the past couple years. As of this morning it is now full. The round of storms last night might have been a drought buster, at least for us. The situation might be different in some other areas.

I had one heck of a drive last night. My girlfriend and I drove to Alabaster Caverns State Park to for the annual "batstravaganza" event. A couple dozen people are allowed to watch the emergence of many thousands of Mexican Freetail Bats from a cave nearby that is off limits to the public. That spectacle was very cool to watch. Our drive home was far less fun.

On the way there we were detoured off OK-50. It was closed for some kind of project. We had to drive clear to Woodward to pick up US-412. I was driving my girlfriend's new Nissan Altima (we left my truck at home) and didn't want to drive it down any unpaved section line roads. On the way back we hooked east on US-412 to US-281 and trekked South through Hinton, Fort Cobb & Apache. Once we got South of I-40 the rain really started pouring. I literally had to stop in the road a few times from visibility dropping down to nothing. With mobile phone service being spotty we couldn't tell just how bad the storms were getting. By the time we went through Apache (like around 2:00am) streets were beginning to flood. This had to be one of the most scary driving experiences I've ever been through. I took the morning off work from being so beat.

As to Central Mall in downtown Lawton, it is what it is I suppose. However, a lot of development is going on further up 2nd Street between Ferris Ave. & Gore Blvd. Hilton is building a new hotel and convention center just North of the Gore-2nd St. intersection. North of the hotel work is underway on a new shopping center. Kohl's, Dick's Sporting Goods, Petco, Bed Bath & Beyond, Shoe Carnival and Ulta are the main tenants. A new shopping center on Lawton's west side (82nd Street bet. Old Cache Road & Quanah Parker Trailway) just opened. Target & Academy Sports are open. TJ Maxx, Kirklands, Petsmart, Chuck E. Cheese, Qdoba and a few other stores will open soon. I also heard a new movie theater will be built North of the west side Walmart Supercenter. I think Carmike Cinemas is building that theater. Their existing 8-plex opened at the end of 1994 and is now starting to show its age.

With some of the growth going on in Lawton, I'd like to see some major improvements happen with the infrastructure here. But with road funding being what it is I suppose it may be a long time before anything happens. IMHO, Rogers Lane ought to be upgraded into a full fledged Interstate highway spur. I think it should be extended from where it dovetails into Quanah Parker Trailway and go down to Goodyear Blvd. We have these big factories on the West side of town, but there is no direct Interstate highway link to them. The heavy trucks just pound down city maintained streets. A group of local businessmen are studying what could be done to increase traffic capacity on Cache Road (or allow some traffic to bypass it). I think a Southern loop from I-44 to Lawton's west side would be a good idea. Unfortunately with so many housing developments popping up in various places it may become impossible to build such a thing unless some moves are made to acquire and protect a corridor for future development. Texas has been really good about that. I remember when Kell Blvd in Wichita Falls was just a divided street with a huge median. Now it has a freeway in the middle of it. I don't know why Oklahoma can't figure out how to copy that formula.