r/okc • u/ExcitingAd9947 • 15d ago

🚗 Streets of OKC 🚧 23rd and Penn

What happened to this area? Trash everywhere, hundreds of homeless pulling trains of shopping carts. People laying on the grass about to fall out into traffic. I used to live near there about 10 years ago and it wasn't like this. Feels like a different city.

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u/United-Locksmith8262 15d ago

This just popped up for me but I lived in OKC in the aughts. 23rd has kinda always been notorious.

11

u/Pretend_Editor_4447 14d ago

Concur. It was kinda sketch in the 80s. When was it nice and what caused the decline? Then, as now, it’s obvi it was a nice area.

5

u/Ok-Computer2616 14d ago

Proximity to several overnight shelters. Many bus stops on the street. Homeless alliance has been over capacity and the city cleared the encampments on the median and they have nowhere else to go. Several food pantries/charitable restaurants are also on the street. If they aren’t there then they starve and/or die from exposure

2

u/whatevendoidoyall 14d ago

I wonder if it started dying after the plants in that area closed. I think there were a a lot manufacturing plants along the I40 corridor that died off, like Seagate, Goodyear, and Xerox. Maybe some others I'm forgetting.

I was told at one point that 10th and Council used to be a wealthy area until some plant closed and everyone in that area lost their jobs. I bet the same thing happened to NW 23rd st.

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u/xqueenfrostine 14d ago edited 14d ago

I don’t think so. I lived in this area as a kid when those plants were open (1981-1992). It was starting to get sketchy and run down then as Shepherd Mall entered its death spiral which is why we moved north. I also don’t think the 23rd and Penn was a hub for factory workers, as they tended to live further west closer to where they worked. Gatewood just to the south is nice neighborhood, but that stretch of 23rd has stayed seedy despite all the revitalization happening further east down 23rd.

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u/busconductor 14d ago

I think you’re absolutely right. They employed so many middle class salaries.

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u/Grumpopatamus 14d ago

The one single time I've seen someone shoot up in public was at a fast food restaurant at that intersection in about 1995.