Get busy rebuilding downtown Oklahoma City and do it now. Time is the enemy.
That’s the advice Miami has for Oklahoma City as it struggles to renew its bomb-damaged core.
Miami gave residents one year after Hurricane Andrew to regroup. Looking back, Miami erred, said Carlos Bonzon, director of Dade County’s Building and Zoning Department.
“In retrospect that was too much time,” Bonzon said. “It’s been almost four years (since Hurricane Andrew) and we still have houses that are an eyesore for the community.”
Andrew damaged 107,348 area buildings, 103,200 of them homes. Damages exceeded $30 billion, $16 billion of that insured, according to news reports.
Although on a broader scale, Miami faced obstacles now confronting Oklahoma City.
Traumatized Miami property owners found standard insurance lacked provisions for upgrading structures to meet current building codes, making it too costly to rebuild. Florida sued insurers, but lost.
“Eventually, the state put together a program with $20 million in aid to help citizens,” Bonzon said. “But the surprising element was very few people elected to participate.”
Bonzon said the lack of response probably was due to the lengthy period which had transpired since the disaster. People needed to just get on with their lives.
For those who did rebuild, Miami bent the codes and other regulations. But in commercial properties, such latitude can jeopardize public health and safety, Bonzon said.
Many Miami area properties remain boarded up to this day. Buildings damaged more than 50 percent were usually razed.
Today, numerous “dead zones” dot the city, one observer noted.
Similar dead zones are appearing in Oklahoma City. A half dozen demolitions already have occurred. Other damaged buildings stand vacant, their shattered shells frozen, a violent moment in time.
Oklahoma City officials also speak of leeway in code interpretation to help the owners of those buildings.
“We’re going to give them every break we possibly can to get them back to where they were,” said Jack Crockett, manager of the city’s development center.
But the question remains, can or should the rules be bent?
Standard commercial property insurance requires a so-called rider for code upgrades. Of course, it costs extra, said Bruce Coates, with the Independent Insurance Agents of Oklahoma.
“From my personal experience when I was an agent, it was a tough sell, ” Coates said of the code rider. “Virtually all (agents) offer it. But it’s difficult to sell because it is higher premium, sometimes as much as 50 percent more.”
However, Florida did pass a law requiring insurers to inform policyholders about ordinance or law riders.
Bypassing or bending modern codes is bad policy, Coates said.
“If it’s faulty construction, insurers pay for it down the road,” Coates said. “If it’s bad wiring and the building burns down, we pay for it. So when they don’t observe strict construction regulations you and I pay for it. There’s no free lunch.
“So it’s in the public’s best interest for building codes to be adequately and properly enforced.”
Oklahoma City leaders worry about the code issue, as well as the need to quickly resolve impediments for those hoping to rebuild.
“Obviously there’s not room for flexibility on health and safety issues,” said Tiana Douglas, Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority. “It’s not code enforcement’s job to be flexible. Their job is to enforce rules, yet you don’t want to create hardship.”
In the end, money will drive what happens, experts agree. So far, $45 million in promised federal aid has bogged down in politics.
Douglas, for one, is ready to get on with it.
“We actually have an opportunity to make lemonade here and we better take it,” Douglas said. “It must be done very thoughtfully. I hate to use the word ‘opportunity’ in conjunction with this event at all. We don’t want anybody to think we see it as an opportunity. It’s a tragedy, but you’ve got to move on.
“There is something very healing about planning for the future and the process of physically rebuilding. A gentle renewal. You just start to incrementally knit that part of the city back into the rest of it.”
