Oklahoma City, Aubrey McClendon and Chesapeake Energy (now in bankruptcy)

Reuters photo.

Chesapeake Energy, the natural gas fracking behemoth based in Oklahoma City, just declared bankruptcy ("Chesapeake Energy, once a power in natural gas, files for bankruptcy: Company that led the fracking business succumbs to prices too low and debt too high," Washington Post).

Only in 2018, did I start writing an annual piece around the end of the year, an annual obituaries article with short vignettes of people who died during the year who were significant in some way to urbanism.

Had I written such an entry in 2016, I doubt I would have thought to mention Aubrey McClendon, the founder of the natural gas fracking giant Chesapeake Energy. He likely died in a suicide--a car crash--after he had been indicted for various improprieties.

McClendon and Chesapeake Energy led the natural gas fracking revolution which has contributed significantly to the expansion of supply and significant drop in price, leading to the conversion of many electricity generation plants from coal to natural gas.

And in 2014, I interviewed Rand Elliott, principal of the eponymous architecture firm Rand Elliott Architects, because among the many projects he designed for the Chesapeake Energy campus--done in Georgian style, I guess to reference the Chesapeake region in the Mid-Atlantic--he designed some high quality parking garages, including Car Park 3.


Car-Park-3, Chesapeake Energy Corporation, Oklahoma City, by Rand Elliott and Associates, architects. Each floor is color coded, created by special polycarbonate panels engineered and manufactured by Duo-Gard Inc. Photo: SCOTT MCDONALD/HEDRICH BLESSING.

Most parking garages are crap.  And given my focus on sustainable mobility, I suppose I should be happy about that.

But high quality parking garages contribute positively to urban form, when so much of the spaces and structures dedicated to supporting the car generally are negative contributions and the Chesapeake Energy garage was one of the influences wrt my general point that transportation infrastructure should be treated as an element of civic architecture so that urban design, placemaking, and aesthetic qualities are prioritized.

And while I mentioned it in a couple pieces, I never did write a full piece about it.

I am finally reading the book, published in 2018, The Next American City: The Big Promise of Our Midsize Metros by Mick Cornett, the Republican former mayor of Oklahoma City.  It's a phenomenal bthe cook which I'll write about later.

But McClendon features in the book in a few places, not just because of his company and its place in the city, but because of his role as a civic leader, and the many investments he and his firm made in the city.

These investments included being one of the founding investors in the Oklahoma City Thunder basketball team, the company's naming sponsorship of the arena in which the team plays, paying for the boathouse which helped to center the city and the renamed Oklahoma River as an international center for rowing, canoeing and kayaking ("River Attraction: Oklahoma River is becoming a big draw for Oklahoma City," Daily Oklahoman, 2013).

In 2017, the OKC Boathouse, which was the initial investment in a new riverfront, which in turn grew into the Riversports Rapids complex, was renamed in honor of Aubrey McClendon ("Boathouse building renamed in honor of Aubrey McClendon," Daily Oklahoman).

Many people leave complex legacies and Aubrey McClendon was one such person.