Could the country's tallest skyscraper become an OKC reality? Developer talks funding, plans

Scot Matteson is doubling down on his insistence that not only can he build the country’s tallest skyscraper in Oklahoma City's Lower Bricktown, but that he now has the $1.5 billion development, including three other towers, fully financed to proceed on what is now a surface parking lot.

Matteson’s vision for his “Boardwalk at Bricktown” started with an already ambitious mix of two 14-story hotels and an 18-story condominium tower. Matteson kept growing the plan, which now consists of two 34-story apartment and retail towers and one 34-story hotel tower.

And then there is the Legends Tower, which Matteson originally pitched as the country’s second-tallest tower. But that apparently wasn’t tall enough for Matteson, who last month announced he was seeking to build the country’s tallest skyscraper by adding a spire that will bring the height to 1,907 feet.

"Our goal is to start moving dirt by summer, probably June or July," Matteson said. "We will be first getting a grading and infrastructure permit. And then we will get a building permit in September. The entire project is financed, including the tower — if the tower gets approved. We have financing already committed for all 5 million square feet."

The project still has its share of those who doubt the tower, twice the size of Oklahoma City's 50-story Devon Energy Center, will get built. Norb Delatte, an engineering professor at Oklahoma State University, is among a handful of engineering experts who told The Oklahoman the tower can be built. But his first question about the project is “why?”

“Very tall buildings make sense in densely populated areas where land is really expensive,” Delatte said. “That’s not Oklahoma City.”

Matteson’s Legends Tower proposal has drawn attention in Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom and Malaysia. It has popped up on everything from nationally broadcast radio sports talk shows to People magazine. The story has been covered in dozens if not hundreds of newspapers, news shows and on multiple major news networks.

More: How does the proposed OKC skyscraper stack up against the tallest buildings in the US?

"I can see why it’s getting a lot of attention and a lot of skepticism as to whether it can get financed, whether it can get built structurally and how tornadoes might affect it," Matteson said. "The city itself is promoting all the things I’m seeing — job growth, one of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S., a lot of migration coming in, and it’s a very positive business environment. The downtown, is ripe for urban development. It's the right place at the right time."

Matteson said similar developments are being built in second-tier cities, and he sees no reason why the Boardwalk at Bricktown can't succeed in Oklahoma City, where no similar development of such scale has been built.

“We believe that this development will be an iconic destination for the city, further driving the expansion and diversification of the growing economy, drawing in investment, new businesses and jobs," Matteson said. "It’s a dynamic environment, and we hope to see the Boardwalk at Bricktown stand as the pride of Oklahoma City.”

The next frequently asked question after “why?" is whether the development, notably the 134-story Legends Tower (including a parking and retail podium), is financially feasible in a city that has not seen new high-rise housing built since the opening of the 24-story Regency Tower in 1967.

Matteson told The Oklahoman he has the entire $1.5 billion development, including the proposed Legends Tower, fully funded. He is partnered with Thinkbox, an-Oklahoma City based construction management company.

A newly launched $250 million Legends Capital Management fund is investing in the project. The group is a who's who in California sports, entertainment and banking.

Matteson said the fund's investors and board members include former NBA coach Byron Scott; retired NBA player Cuttino Mobley; Olympic gold medalist and retired NFL player Ron Brown; sports agent Lee Steinberg (the inspiration for the movie "Jerry Maguire"); John DeCero, CEO of California-based Mechanics Bank; Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer; real estate investment banker Guy Johnson; Paula Paizes, COO of Pressman Films; Reed Hummel, executive with Wells Fargo Capital Finance; and billionaire business executive Roger Penske.

"They are all longtime associates and friends," Matteson said.

Matteson said the only outstanding questions about the likelihood of the country's tallest tower being built in Oklahoma City consists of getting Federal Aviation Administration approval, zoning approval from the city, and sufficient leasing of apartments in the Phase One apartment towers to be named Emerald and Ruby. The Oklahoma City Planning Commission is scheduled to review a zoning change for the skyscraper on April 11 with a final vote by the city council on June 4.

Matteson's plans are to start construction first on the apartment towers and Dream Hotel, and then to start construction of the Legends skyscraper once the apartment towers are 50% leased. The project assumes the development will charge rents equivalent to what is being charged at First National Center.

More: After 40 years, Bricktown has become more than just a tourist destination

Matteson insists the development is going to happen. The Boardwalk at Bricktown and Legends Tower, if built, will easily set a record for a commercial development in Oklahoma City. But is Legends Tower structurally feasible? Who is Scot Matteson and does his portfolio show sufficient prior experience with high-dollar projects? What drew his interest in Oklahoma City, and what's at stake for Oklahoma City if the development doesn't match the hype?

An investigation by The Oklahoman shows Matteson may be the real deal even if the idea of building the country's tallest skyscraper in Oklahoma City comes off as pure fantasy.

Engineers say Legends Tower is structurally possible in Oklahoma City

The parking lot where the towers are proposed was once in the path of the Oklahoma River and is located next to the BNSF Railway viaduct. Add in tornadoes, a frequency of windy days and even earthquakes, and some are wondering whether Legends Tower is structurally viable.

“The technical part is not the hard part,” said Delatte, the OSU engineering professor. “It’s possible, but why would you do it? It’s not how do you make the numbers work from a structural standpoint; it’s how do you make the numbers work from an economic standpoint?”

Oklahoma City isn’t the only city with intense wind conditions. Chicago is known as the windy city, and New York City is vulnerable to hurricanes, but that hasn’t stopped the construction of skyscrapers. Delatte said wind is a factor with any tall building.

“The wind speed gets higher the further you get off the ground,” Delatte said. “And what you’re designing against is whether the building is going to topple over sideways. We do have earthquakes here, but from a structural design standpoint, they are pretty insignificant here.”

More: OKC skyscraper: Here's what the massive apartment tower could look like

The 58-story Millennium Tower in San Francisco is a cautionary tale of the foundational risks for skyscrapers. In 2016 engineers discovered the building had sunk 16 inches with a two-inch tilt at the base and a six-inch tilt on the top of the tower.

“The engineering is not the difficult part,” Delatte said. “You have deep foundations. As you go up, all the structure you have to put up has to resist the wind. You have the elevator systems to think of; how are you going to get people up to the top? It works in New York City. But will it work here? I don’t know.”

Jerome Hajjar, an engineering professor at Northeastern University in Boston, understands questions and concerns raised about building a skyscraper in Tornado Alley. Hajjar, like Delatte, responds the tower is quite doable from a structural standpoint.

“It’s certainly an unusual and distinctive structure for a city the size of Oklahoma City,” Hajjar said. “A building system like this, along with the surrounding buildings, can be an anchor for transforming the city.”

Hajjar called the engineering firm on the project, Thornton Tomasetti, “one of the top firms in the world” in terms of expertise with skyscraper design. Building towers in an old river bed, next to busy train tracks and in Tornado Alley can all be addressed thanks to advances in engineering over the past 20 years.

“Tornadoes are particularly challenging, but we’ve seen a lot of advances made for structures like this when it comes to hurricanes and tornadoes,” Hajjar said. “Part of the challenge is the cladding system. The cladding has to take the first impact of the wind. Having adequate connections of the cladding to the overall structure system is imperative.”

Who is Scot Matteson? Can he pull this off?

Questions emerged in some media as to the veracity of Matteson’s portfolio. The Oklahoman independently confirmed his projects include Sapphire Tower in San Diego, multiple developments in Aspen, Colorado, and a joint hotel purchase and redevelopment in Houston with Magic Johnson’s Canyon-Johnson Urban Funds.

The Oklahoman also confirmed Matteson’s involvement in building the $20 billion Worldcenter in Miami, Florida. The sprawling development, started during the 2008 Great Recession, spans 10 city blocks that were mostly parking lots surrounding Kaseya Center, home of the NBA's Miami Heat. Matteson told The Oklahoman he was a 50% partner in the project.

“We bought the land at huge discounts,” Matteson said. “That project has offices, retail, apartments, condos, multiple hotels, a 600,000-square-foot convention center and with a 1,700-room Marriott Hotel going in. We’re also building the world’s largest Apple store.”

Matteson does not have a website, though archive.org shows his Centurion Partners had an online presence until a few years ago. The lack of a website, he said, lines up with his prior absence from development dating back to 2018.

“I had stage 4 pancreatic cancer just before COVID-19,” Matteson said. “I was out of commission for two years doing chemo, radiation and surgery. I didn’t work for two years. Then COVID came, and that put everything on pause for a couple of years. During those four years, I didn’t do any deals. Nobody was during COVID, and I had my own health issues.”

In 2019, Matteson’s daughter, Brittany, established a GoFundMe account seeking $100,000 toward his medical bills. Matteson said the account represented his family’s desire to help him and that he wasn’t aware of the site when it was established.

A California developer with no history in Oklahoma City chooses it to build the country's tallest skyscraper

Matteson, 63, is partnered on the Boardwalk project with Brad and Randy Hogan, developers of Lower Bricktown. Even the Hogans have described Legends Tower as "aspirational."

When Matteson was diagnosed with cancer, a mutual friend convinced him to visit with researchers in Oklahoma City, and while there, to visit the Hogan brothers and also the Hall family, which developed West Village.

Matteson said he quickly saw untapped potential in Oklahoma City.

He also saw a business-friendly city that was eager to build up its skyline. The city council last year agreed to a record-setting $200 million tax increment financing incentive that will be paid once the first phase of development is completed.

The city also is set to invest more than $1 billion building a new arena and outdoor stadium within walking distance of the Boardwalk at Bricktown.

“The city has been a proponent for growth with everything, whether it’s in real estate or businesses relocating, resorts or mixed-use development,” Matteson said. “You have a city willing to help. You don’t see that in every place, especially where I live in California. It's no fun here anymore.”

Some warn hype for tower could hurt city's reputation

If fully built, the Boardwalk at Bricktown could double the amount of housing downtown and significantly boost the supply of hotel rooms. The apartment towers will consist of 576 market rate apartments and 140 workforce apartments. The Dream Hotel is set to consist of 480 hotel rooms and 85 condominiums.

The Legends Tower, set to be a Hyatt Hotel and a Residences by Hyatt, is designed to consist of 1,017 luxury apartments, 99 condominiums, 48 affordable housing apartments, and 400 hotel rooms.

Skeptics include veteran developer and real estate finance consultant Bert Belanger. Belanger, a managing director for Milwaukee-based PACE Equity, believes the publicity given to the Legends Tower is potentially harmful for the city’s market credibility.

“Normally I'd say there is hardly any bad publicity out there,” Belanger said. “But this is an exception. It's so fanciful that it makes us look bad for even acting like it’s a possibility.”

Belanger cautions the city’s growth, especially downtown, has been fueled by local developers, including Mark Beffort, Dick Tanenbaum, Gary Brooks, the Pivot Project and Midtown Renaissance Group. He said Hines, which developed BOK Park Plaza Tower, is a rare example of a large, outside developer investing in Oklahoma City.

“It’s difficult to attract the Hines of the world,” Belanger said. “Devon brought them in to do their big tower. We don’t want to give the big boys on the coasts a reason to dismiss us. They view all of Middle America as flyover anyway. It’s off-putting for sophisticated people who really know how real estate finance works.”

Belanger isn’t so sure about assurances the Boardwalk at Bricktown, including Legends Tower, are already fully financed. He also warns the publicity effort may hurt the project.

“This goes back to what this guy is trying to do — drum up interest to drum up investors,” Belanger said. “I think it will have an opposite effect, not just for him, but others trying to get things done in Oklahoma City. It's so preposterous it’s not worth talking about. The discussion is taking up too much space. We should focus on things we know can get done.”

David Chapman, a business professor who teaches real estate at the University of Central Oklahoma, takes a more optimistic view of Matteson’s efforts, but like Belanger, Chapman isn’t quite sure how the project can by financially feasible.

“It makes me think he knows something I don’t know,” Chapman said. “It’s fun to imagine. It’s one of those deals where I would be surprised if it happens, but I hope it does. We are one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, we have people moving here from both coasts and from Texas.”

Rents are going up, as well, Chapman said, and studies indicate the market is trending toward one where more people choose to rent instead of buy.

“That makes one think we will need more rental housing in the future,” Chapman said. “But this is a lot in one place. You’re putting your eggs in one basket. When you spread it around the metro, it makes sense. If you were to build all of this housing from Norman to Guthrie to Mustang to Spencer, I think we could absorb that in the future.”

When told Legends Tower is not financially viable in Oklahoma City, Matteson quickly refers to San Diego's Sapphire Tower as a reminder he’s been doubted before. He said the 32-story luxury condominium and retail tower was the first on the West Coast to be built with dual-glazed, floor-to-ceiling glass.

“People said we couldn’t get it financed, but we did,” Matteson said. “Goldman Sachs was my partner on that one. In Aspen, the same thing happened. The market was $1,500 to $1,800 a foot, and we underwrote at $2,800 a foot. Everyone said we would never sell at that point, and we ended up selling at $7,000 a foot.”

Matteson said his track record, free of failed projects and a history of making money for investors and lenders, gives him an advantage developing in Oklahoma City. The city, he said, is ready for residential skyscrapers.

"I don’t think there is another project in this city that has all the elements in this environment where you can live, work, you can dine, you can have entertainment and walk to sporting venues. It just hasn’t been done. It’s going to be very successful because of all of that."

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Developer says funding secured for record-breaking OKC skyscraper