Turns out Tulsans won’t have to wait three years to visit the new park called A Gathering Place for Tulsa.
Just stop by Saturday’s groundbreaking and canoe across Blair Pond, rest at the lodge and watch the fireworks from the great lawn.
It will take all of five minutes — plus a little imagination.
And the Park Pod, of course. That’s the name given to a giant, sky-blue dome inside of which visitors can take a panoramic virtual tour of the park — butterflies and all.
The 270-degree view igloo will be set up for Tulsans to enjoy at the groundbreaking.
Over the next three years, it will be transported statewide as a reminder to Oklahomans of what they can expect to see when the park opens in late 2017.
“We have a long period of time between groundbreaking and ribbon cutting, and we wanted people to begin to have an understanding of the power that this park can and will have on the community,” said Jeff Stava, who is overseeing construction of the park. “It really makes you feel like you’re in the park.”
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Phase 1 of A Gathering Place will stretch from approximately 26th Street to 31st Street on the east side of Riverside Drive and from 26th Street to 33rd Place along the west side of the street.
Construction is expected to begin in October.
The $350 million project is a George Kaiser Family Foundation initiative. The foundation is being assisted by dozens of private citizens and corporations that have given millions of dollars.
Creation of the Park Pod was a collaborative effort between SuperUber, The Elumenati and Saxum.
SuperUber used animation, photos of the park and its own computer wizardry to create a five-minute virtual tour of what the park property looks like now and what it will become in three years.
Liana Brazil, founder of SuperUber, said the Brazil-based company used a drone with six Go-Pro cameras to take photos of the park property.
“The real images are very important because people recognize the places, and even if they don’t, they see a real place,” she said. “And they see the juxtaposition between that image and the future image, which is made of the animation.”
They’ll also see people they know.
Dozens of Tulsans appear in the presentation. That little piece of magic was made at Retrospec Films’ studios in Broken Arrow, where the locals acted their parts in front of a long green screen.
“We felt like this is a park that is a community collaboration, and the community needs to be involved in presenting what this park will look like,” said Houda Elyazgi, with Saxum.
Ken Yager with The Elumenati, which built the pod and digital projection system, describes the Park Pod as “essentially a portable planetarium.”
“It could just as effectively be used to educate school kids about earth science or astronomy or whatever,” he said. “What surround sound does for audio we are doing visually. It’s surround video.”
The Park Pod is about 21 feet wide and 10 feet high, Yager said, and has a patented inflation design that includes an open door rather than an air-lock entrance.
The Kaiser Foundation had a waterproof cover built for it that makes the pod another 10 or 15 feet high.
The Oxford fabric from which the pod is made is similar to the material used to build a hot-air balloon, Yager said.
“It was actually stitched in a hot-air balloon factory,” he said.
Brazil, whose SuperUber company has done work for the Olympics, the United Nations and the San Francisco 49ers football team, said the Park Pod project is different.
“The park is something that is going to be around you. You are going to be in it. You are going to use it,” she said. “And this is something that is around you, that immerses you, that embraces you just like the park.”