The City of Oklahoma City is looking to host celebrations in wake of the 25 year milestone of the Bricktown Canal.
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) - The City of Oklahoma City is looking to host celebrations in wake of the 25 year milestone of the Bricktown Canal.
The Bricktown Canal is one of nine projects built as part of Oklahoma City’s original MAPS initiative, which voters passed in 1993 to revitalize downtown, improve OKC’s national image and provide new and upgraded facilities.
Today city leaders announced on Friday, Oklahoma City’s mile-long iconic waterway, the Bricktown Canal, will celebrate its 25th anniversary on July 2, kicking off family-friendly Independence-oriented festivities.
“The Bricktown Canal is the vital anchor for Bricktown’s thriving entertainment scene,” Mayor David Holt said. “It has served as a catalyst for private investment for 25 years. That growth continues today with new experiences still being planned and built along the Canal.”
Those interested in experiencing the Bricktown Canal by boat and learning about Oklahoma City’s unique history can purchase tickets for a 40-minute ride on a Bricktown Water Taxi.
The Canal helped transform Oklahoma City from a place nobody wanted to visit to a place people go out of their way to experience,” Water Taxi CEO Chad Huntington said. “In 1999, our guests were almost exclusively locals trying to see what the fuss was about, and now we speak daily to visitors from all over the world.”
Here are a few of the projects coming to Bricktown according to city leaders in the next decade:
To build the canal, contractors had to dig up California Avenue from the railroad tracks to Walnut Avenue, then they extended the canal south to near what is now the Oklahoma River, according to City leaders.
The Bricktown Canal opened debt-free on July 2, 1999, for $23 million.