Former Edmond council member releases new book on downtown development
Richard Mize, The Oklahoman, 8 11 2025
USA TODAY NETWORK
EDMOND − Like pioneers of old who penned memoirs of the toils and terrors of frontier life, David Chapman didn’t intend to write a book − he felt compelled to put down an account for the record.
The result, part personal chronicle, part recent Edmond history, part introduction to urban real estate development in a suburban setting, is the professor’s self-published 'subURBAN! Reimagining the Suburban Downtown,' available at Best of Books in Edmond, OKC’s Full Circle Bookstore, and from Amazon.
In it, he tells of his and his wife Julie’s journey from life in suburbia to building a townhome, as urban pioneers in downtown Edmond. Along the way, he recounts tests and trials, yet treads lightly around the fierce opposition he sometimes encountered while serving on the Edmond City Council.
Chapman, 60, served on the council from 2020 to 2023 during trying times that just started with COVID-19: Forming Edmond’s first Tax Increment Financing District, or TIF, to encourage and aid in development, accusations of unethical dealings that came to nothing, and public protest over proposed apartments and retail along Spring Creek that critics said would ruin next-door Hafer Park, among others.
People circulated petitions that led to a vote to stop the project. A conservation easement was put in place to preserve it.
Chapman said the fight got vicious and personal, a rattling tenor unlike his formal education in mechanical engineering, construction management and business, capped with a doctorate in educational leadership and policy studies from Oklahoma State University.
It came with the territory, especially for someone scorned as 'Stack-and-Pack Chapman' for encouraging high-density development. He came prepared for it, as a developer, teacher of real estate and finance at the University of Central Oklahoma, and as a member of the Oklahoma Real Estate Commission since 2018.
He said density is the future, especially for downtown Edmond. But how did he and his wife wind up living at 325 N. Broadway Ave. in what is still its only pioneering townhome? That’s the guiding narrative of 'subURBAN! Reimagining the Suburban Downtown.'
The story of David and Julie Chapman’s pioneering move to downtown Edmond
It kept coming out in Chapman’s academic presentations for the American Planning Association, Congress for the New Urbanism, the Urban Land Institute, and the like.
'I’d tell the story of Julie and I moving from the suburbs, the true suburbs, one way in, one way out, a 1-acre lot on Lake Arcadia, 4,000-square-foot house, three-car garage, two-car shop, ‘living the life,’' he said during a weekday afternoon interview at Ellis Island Coffee and Wine Lounge at 130 N. Broadway, a one-minute walk from his home.
'We did that. (Then) the kids go away to school. Julie and I looked at each other. I’d been teaching urban planning, urban concepts, fundamentals of urban fabric. And I said, you know, it’s time for me to start walking the talk,' Chapman said.
The Chapmans lived in a rental they owned, remodeled, while the home downtown was under construction.
'We built that house and moved down here, but only after we looked all over Oklahoma City. We went to Deep Deuce. We went to Midtown. We went to Automobile Alley,' he said, naming popular historic, revitalized OKC neighborhoods. 'We looked everywhere. We didn’t have to have a school system anymore.
'We could live anywhere we wanted to. In the end, it was just a little edgy for me.'
Downtown Edmond it was. As pioneers do, Chapman soon went to work building a community, or in this case, working to build up the community. He said he spent four years on the council 'trying to implement the things that I thought would make this city better.'
Edmond was growing along, on its way to hitting 100,000 population, which it has now topped, according to some estimates.
'It was going pretty well, but we needed the quiet zone,' Chapman said of the 11 quiet zones the city installed in late 2020 along the BNSF Railway, where what became Edmond started as a water and coaling station for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in 1887.
Trains were here before the city of Edmond was, but regular blaring horns smack in the middle of downtown drowned out talk of turning it into a place to live.
'We had to have that quiet zone. We had to shut that train horn down,' Chapman said.
The downtown quiet zone changed that, as evidenced by Oxlley Apartments, which Indianapolis-based Milhaus just opened with 276 units at 101 W. Main St., hard by the railroad.
Plus, Chapman said, developers needed some different structures of public finance.
'We needed Tax Increment Financing. We’d just gotten an Opportunity Zone. Nobody knew how to use it. There was some policy that had to happen, and the only way that was going to happen was if I ran for city council,' he said. 'I just didn’t feel like anybody else knew. I have a Ph.D. in policy.'
The first TIF came in September, 2020, to stimulate development in and around downtown.
TIFs allow municipalities to fund redevelopment by borrowing against the future increase in property tax revenue generated by the projects. Chapman said Edmond’s went in place after negotiating with the Edmond Public School District, which gets 10% of tax revenue generated.
And Edmond needed a new municipal office complex, which started under his watch.
The $44 million City Center Complex just opened with a new City Hall at 22 E. Main St., and Municipal Court Building at 120 E Main, with a new parking garage in between. It complements the still-new-looking Public Safety Center and Police Department at 100 E First St., which went up in 2015.
David Chapman, Ph.D, learned real-world lessons as an urban suburban pioneer that he says are worth teaching others
Chapman’s move downtown in 2016 and those four years on the Edmond City Council also taught him lessons that he believes could inform other suburban developers, investors, planners and local governing officials.
That’s why he wrote 'subURBAN! Reimagining the Suburban Downtown,' which comes with bonus material − papers, news articles, his own weekly columns and blog posts, interviews, podcasts and videos accessible by QR code.
'The whole purpose of telling about the journey that Julie and I went through was to teach and explain urban concepts,' Chapman said 'What became obvious to me is we’ve got beautiful, resource-rich downtowns in suburban communities that are dying all over the country.
'This one is not. It’s because people were intentional.'
In the book, he names Edmond developers and entrepreneurs and their recent projects such as Mathew Myers, developer of The Lark, a pocket neighborhood of an eventual 39 single-family homes on the northwest corner of W First Street and Santa Fe Drive, walking distance from downtown.
During his time on the council, Chapman said, 'What we did is we gathered together the Matthew Myerses of the world. We got the people who cared.'
As for the downtown living pioneer, teased and worse as 'Stack-and-Pack Chapman,' he has no regrets. He said downtown Edmond will grow denser or it will wither. It will help when the Oxlley Apartments fill up, which will probably take a couple of years.
'Density is important to what we do down here. It’s important for taxes. It’s important for the city. It’s important for amenities. And we are greatly lacking (density) down here,' he said. 'We’re going to help a lot of our sales tax issues when we get people living down here.
'We don’t have enough people. Nobody’s going to put (more) restaurants and bars and boutiques there unless there’s a critical mass of people, and nobody’s going to rent anything that doesn’t have (nearby) bars, restaurants and boutiques. It’s the chicken and egg playing out.'
As an urban pioneer in a suburban downtown, Chapman said he was, and is, ready to take pushback from people who don’t share his vision of transformation. 'That’s out job as developers, as community builders, to try to figure that out, to try to help, to try to get things through the city. That’s hard. ... I call it a ‘delicate dance.’'
Staff writer Richard Mize covers Oklahoma County government and the city of Edmond. He previously covered housing, commercial real estate and related topics for the newspaper and Oklahoman.com, starting in 1999. Contact him at rmize@oklahoman.com.