In the early 1990s, Oklahoma City was adrift. Struggling with a stagnant economy, a sleepy, dated downtown that closed at 5:00 pm, and little national recognition, civic pride was hard to come by. Old-money Tulsa, 90 miles to the northeast, and the booming, glitzy Dallas, 200 miles south, looked down on Oklahoma City as being nothing more than a cow town and a sprawling truck stop. (The city’s LGBTQ community had civic pride due to their vibrant 39th Street District, which lured visitors from hundreds of miles around).
In 1991, the city made an aggressive play for a $1 billion United Airlines maintenance facility that would employ 7,000. The substantial package of incentives pushed it ahead of Denver and Louisville into the final two. However, United ultimately cited the perception of a lower quality of life in Oklahoma City as a factor in their decision to choose Indianapolis. This was demoralizing at best, humiliating at worst.
But that loss turned out to be the jolt that Oklahoma City needed—a wake-up call that laid the foundation for one of the most remarkable urban renaissances in modern American history.
Bricktown Canal. Photo credit: Kerwin Moore.
Today, Oklahoma City is home to a thriving downtown, a vibrant arts scene, a growing tech and energy economy, and the pride of the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder. But back then, the city was frequently overlooked—a sprawling place with no cohesive sense of identity or forward motion. The United Airlines rejection wasn’t just about jobs; it was about being seen. And Oklahoma City had been found lacking.
Rather than wallow in defeat, city leaders asked a hard question: Why didn’t we win? The answers were stark. Oklahoma City lacked the cultural infrastructure, urban amenities, and quality-of-life features that top-tier cities offered. In response, local leaders proposed an ambitious vision—MAPS, or Metropolitan Area Projects. Unveiled in 1993, MAPS was a bold, citizen-funded initiative to revitalize the city through strategic investments in sports, arts, entertainment, and infrastructure. The people of Oklahoma City voted to temporarily raise their sales tax to transform their city.
This was not merely a beautification effort; it was a complete reimagining of what Oklahoma City could be. The city built a new ballpark, a state-of-the-art arena, a canal through a revived Bricktown entertainment district, and eventually a sparkling new downtown library and civic center. The MAPS program turned skeptics into believers and instilled a civic pride that had long been missing.
April 1993 headlines about the Oklahoma City Bombing.
Then came tragedy. On April 19, 1995, the Oklahoma City bombing killed 168 people and shook the city to its core. But even in the face of unthinkable horror, the people of Oklahoma City responded not with fear, but with unity. The bombing brought neighbors together in a profound way, reinforcing the very civic spirit that MAPS had ignited. From the ashes, Oklahoma City emerged not just resilient, but determined.
This combined civic awakening and emotional solidarity set the stage for something once unimaginable: a professional sports franchise. In 2008, the Seattle SuperSonics relocated to Oklahoma City and became the Thunder. Far from an outlier, the NBA’s arrival was the logical conclusion of decades of work to rebrand and rebuild a city that had once been overlooked.
You might say that the OKC Thunder avenged a loss that happened before the players were even born, and they did so in the heart of a proud, booming city that refused to accept that loss lying down.
