Edmond Life and Leisure - February 27, 2025

When dreams come true

By Steve Gust

The new $400 million Okana Resort and Indoor Waterpark, near the First Americans Museum, is a great addition for the metro.

It’s really been amazing to witness the growth in tourism and attractions over many years. Does anyone remember downtown Oklahoma City about 30 or 40 years ago? When the business day ended, the downtown area cleared out pretty quickly. And then Bricktown and all the MAPS developments came along.

They finally built a baseball park although naming it took a while. At first it was going to be named after a casino. There was some pushback to that. It’s the Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark. The teams have had name changes as well. We went from the Fairgrounds and 89ers to the Redhawks, Dodgers and now the Comets. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it change again.

One of the biggest moves was when we managed to host the New Orleans Pelicans basketball team. The Katrina Hurricane in 2005 left the team without a home. Someone in the NBA was probably impressed with the way we supported the team. After New Orleans moved home, the Seattle franchise became the OKC Thunder. As I write this, the Thunder are leading their division by eight games. I really admire people of vision who invest their creativity, time and money to bring such projects to reality. And there are many more I didn’t mention. That’s a job well done.

Everyone knows the government has to somehow cut spending. A $40 trillion deficit is completely out of hand and unsustainable.

Cutting government jobs has proven to be more difficult than originally thought to be.

I would caution people not to think that all government employees are expendable. They aren’t.

During the cost-cutting, remember that honest-to-goodness people work these jobs and most of them are needed.

Remote jobs get a bad rep by some. Seems to me a remote worker can save the government money. They don’t have to pay for relocation and a remote worker probably stays on a lot longer.