Lawton Politics

This is unofficial, but the Seattle Times has a map showing the rumored closings. seattletimes.nwsource.com/flatpages/businesstechnology/
locationsofstarbucksstoresclosingacrossthenation.html

It shows the Sheridan Road location as closing as well as the Altus location. These make sense, as Starbucks has said closures would be of stores opened 2006 and after. If it's not true, Starbucks is getting what they deserve. By saying 600 stores are closing, but not saying which 600, they are leaving everyone to guess, so such conjecture is very predictable. It is as though they wanted people to think their store was closing.

UPDATE

It's official, Altus is closing as is Sheridan Road.

www.starbucks.com/aboutus/USStoreClosureInfo.pdf

15 closures overall in Oklahoma. 8 closed in Nebraska. Starbucks is abandoning middle America and small-town America.

Longtime KSWO chief meteorologist Pat Walker is blowing out of town, making an interesting move to Independent News Network, a shop in Davenport,Iowa that creates news content for TV stations in small cities that can't afford a full newsroom. In an industry of tornado chasing blowhards (see Eric Law), Walker was a fresh breeze of understatement.

Replacing him will be David Baxley, an Alabamian who leaves WAKA in Montgomery, a larger market, to come to Lawton. I wonder if he's related to Bill Baxley, who lost the race for Alabama governor in 1986.

So Starbucks announced that it is closing 600 underperforming stores that opened in the last two years. That no doubt sent shockwaves up my spine. You don't know how serious some of us here in the catacombs are about our caffeine. That said, on the positive side for Lawton, most of the stores to close will be located near other Starbucks according to a corporate statement. Our new Starbucks location is indeed not very far from the Cache Road location. On the other hand, urbanites know that in big-city downtowns, Starbucks are virtually across the street from each other, so we wonder if these are the targets. Be that as it may, we have noticed that the Sheridan Road location is much less crowded than the Cache Road location. It is also located between CiCi's, Dollar Tree and a cheap shoe store, hardly a place you expect to see Starbucks. Be that as it may, we feel secure the Cache Road location will survive and give the Sheridan location 50-50 odds of surviving.

Have you seen the workers at Ramada Inn on 2nd Avenue busily adding a new facade? Ten will get you 20 that they're not doing much to the interior. Hmm. I wonder why Ramada would update the exterior. It wouldn't have anything to do with Lawton's urban renewal plans, calling for the motel to be bought out and converted for the multi-use, residential retail (read Target store) development city planners have in mind, would it? The owners probably think they can shake an extra $50K out of the city by making the building look better. It's a horrible location for a motel anyway. And if you check the reviews at places like Tripadvisor.com, most guests hate it.

Just as a preview, here are the headings for the last nine reviews, and I'm not leaving any out.

"Horrible experience"

"Humid & moldy"

"Dirty"

"DIRTY, SMELLY & NASTY"

"This place is a flea motel"

"Stinky and stinky"

"Rude dump"

(My personal favorite) "Yuck"

and "More than the room was hot"

If you have a death wish, or are hoping for a rear ender to earn an insurance payday on your clunker, try driving up and down North Sheridan in the northbound lanes. Not only is street construction limiting you to one lane near the critical turn into Wal-Mart, now that the new Carl's Jr. is open, there is also traffic exiting and entering just beyond the traffic cones, creating all sorts of peril. It has long amazed me someone hasn't been killed pulling into Wal-Mart. You'll note that traffic entering Wal-Mart and the main entrance has the right-of-way over those turning into the parking lot's main exit. But many turning into Wal-Mart treat it like a four-way stop, often backing traffic up into Sheridan Road. It's an invitation to a T-bone accident.

Speaking of lane blockages, Arts For All is limiting access to the Water Department, Library and Police Department. I have to hand it to whoever erected those tents. I was stunned they all stood strong through our Wednesday thunderstorms. Speaking of those storms, this is turning into the best spring I've seen in years, perhaps even better than last year. We were a little too inundated last year.