By Carol Cole
The Norman Transcript

Concrete curbed corners round the new downtown parking lot on Gray Avenue.
City staff said they expect asphalt to be laid early next week. And shoppers and merchants could be parking in the lot as early as November.

All but two buildings on Gray Street between Peters and Crawford avenues have been demolished during the past couple of months to make way for the lot.

The buildings that remain include the former Women's Resource Center and a city maintenance building, with the former being used for city storage. They are planned to come down also when the city finds space to accommodate their current uses.

"The city has been searching for solutions to off-site storage," said Ward 4 councilmember Cindy Rosenthal at Thursday's Downtowners Association meeting. The lot is in Ward 4.

She said City Manager Brad Gambill hopes to have the old WRC building razed within 16 months.

"It's part of a whole set of dominoes," Rosenthal said. The city is considering building a new library, with the old library adjacent to City Hall at 225 N. Webster Ave. potentially available for storage if that happens.

She said the WRC building won't have the raw building face seen now. Plans are to paint the structure.

"There will be a significant improvement," Rosenthal said, with the end goal that both buildings could be torn down in 18 months to two years maximum. "The city manager makes that final call."

Leadership Norman's 2006 class has worked to raise money for three 15-by-45-foot murals around the lot, to be painted by muralist Bob Palmer and his art students from the University of Central Oklahoma.

"The murals will be there to defray a lot of the negative aesthetics," said downtown businessman and attorney Jeremy Howard, a member of the Leadership class. "It's really going to be a landmark. ... It's a prime example of city, business leaders and citizens working together."

The murals are scheduled to be painted Oct. 27-29, with bleacher seating in the lot for those who wish to watch the artists work.

Howard said the Leadership Norman group will also be getting bids from landscape architects to design a three-stage landscaping plan for the lot. The first stage will be with the two buildings remaining, then the WRC building down and long term both buildings down.

They are planning bike racks, decorative trash cans and benches.