Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States
Oklahoma City Underground
The Oklahoma City Underground, formerly the Conncourse, is a network of tunnels and skywalks linking office towers, government buildings, hotels and garages across more than 20 downtown blocks. It is managed by the Downtown Business Improvement District and the Downtown Oklahoma City Partnership, which open it to the public from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays. A 2006–2007 renovation funded through the improvement district rebranded it with colour-coded lighting and historic photo galleries.
Governance
Who owns it, who runs it, what the rules are.
- Owner
- Ownership of individual tunnel segments is not documented in the sources found. The passages run beneath and between private, county and federal buildings, and management is centralised in the Downtown Oklahoma City Partnership and the Business Improvement District rather than left to each owner.
- Operator
- Downtown Oklahoma City Partnership, together with the Downtown Business Improvement District; the Downtown OKC Green Team handles safety concerns.
- Hours
- Open to the public Monday–Friday, 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., set by the Downtown Oklahoma City Partnership; closed on New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.[01]
- Public right
- Open to the public during posted hours by the managing partnership, but some connections are marked private or card-access only. No legal right of passage was found.
- Who pays
- Management is funded through the Downtown Business Improvement District's special assessments on downtown property. The 2006–2007 renovation drew on the improvement district and a proposed Special Improvement District paid by affected owners.
Legal instruments
- Downtown Oklahoma City Business Improvement District ↗A special assessment district in which downtown properties pay for enhanced services, run under an agreement between the Downtown Oklahoma City Partnership and the City of Oklahoma City, with a BID Advisory Board reporting to the partnership and City Council.[02]
- Special Improvement District for the Conncourse renovation (proposed 2005) ↗Property owners were petitioned to form a district to fund the remaining renovation cost, needing 51% approval and City Council action after a public hearing. Final formation was not confirmed.[05]
Governing bodies
Open issues
- The tunnels lost much of their shopping and foot traffic after the end of the 1980s oil boom.
- The Underground is closed evenings and weekends, limiting its use beyond office workers.
- Some segments are card-access only, so the public network is not fully continuous.
- Legal ownership of individual segments is not publicly documented.
Timeline
- The first tunnel is built; it is attributed to hotelier William Skirvin, who linked his Skirvin Hotel to his Skirvin Tower across Broadway.[06]
- Major construction of the tunnel network begins; most of the system is built between 1972 and 1984.[04]
- The tunnel system opens as the Conncourse, named for banker Jack Conn.[01]
- Downtown Oklahoma City, Inc. plans a US$2.1 million renovation, funded partly by the Business Improvement District and partly by a Special Improvement District petitioned by affected property owners.[05]
- Architect Rand Elliott's renovation is completed and the Conncourse is renamed the Underground, with colour-coded lighting, wayfinding panels and historic photo galleries.[04]
What it cost · who pays
The story
Oklahoma City's first pedestrian tunnel dates from 1931, when hotelier William Skirvin linked his Skirvin Hotel to his new Skirvin Tower across Broadway. The wider network came with the urban renewal plan drawn up by I. M. Pei in the late 1960s. Most of it was built between 1972 and 1984, and it opened in 1974 as the Conncourse, named for banker Jack Conn. Shops and restaurants lined the passages, but the system lost much of its trade after the oil boom ended in the 1980s.
Unlike most American tunnel networks, the system has a central manager. The Downtown Oklahoma City Partnership and the Downtown Business Improvement District run it and publish its hours: Monday to Friday, 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., closed on six federal holidays. The improvement district is funded by special assessments on downtown property under an agreement between the partnership and the city. Who legally owns each segment is not documented in the sources found.
By the mid-2000s the tunnels looked dated. In 2005 Downtown Oklahoma City, Inc. planned a US$2.1 million renovation, funded partly by the improvement district and partly by a Special Improvement District that affected property owners were petitioned to form. Architect Rand Elliott reworked about 3,000 linear feet for a reported US$1.3 million, and the system reopened in 2007 as the Underground.
Elliott's design assigned colours to destinations: green for banks, blue for federal buildings, red for county buildings and magenta for hotels. Nine galleries display 125 historic photographs from the Oklahoma History Center, and the longest tunnel, 400 feet, became a permanent light installation. The Underground now covers about a mile and more than 20 blocks. Some connections remain card-access only, and the network still closes in the evenings and at weekends.
Questions people ask
What are the Oklahoma City Underground's hours?
Who runs the Oklahoma City Underground?
Why was the Conncourse renamed the Underground?
How big is the Oklahoma City Underground?
Who paid for the Underground renovation?
Sources
- Underground — Downtown Oklahoma City Partnership (2026)primary
- Downtown Business Improvement District — Downtown Oklahoma City Partnership (2026)primary
- Underground Map, April 2022 — Downtown Oklahoma City Partnership (2022)primary
- Underground, a walk-in work of art — Interior Design (2007)
- Skyline Snapshot, 3rd Quarter 2005 — Downtown Oklahoma City, Inc. (2005)primary
- Underground — Elliott + Associates Architects (2007)primary
- Oklahoma City Underground — Wikipedia (2026)
About this record
Confidence medium · reviewed 2026-10-19. Built from fetched primary pages after the session's web-search budget ran out. Hours, length, block count and management come from the Downtown Oklahoma City Partnership's current page. Renovation funding comes from the 2005 Downtown OKC Inc. project report; it shows the Special Improvement District as proposed, and its formation by City Council was not confirmed. Reported cost differs: US$2.1 million planned in 2005, US$1.3 million reported by Interior Design in 2007. Building counts vary from 23 to more than 30 by source. Legal ownership of tunnel segments, whether any run under public streets by easement, and the skywalk count were not found. The Skirvin 1931 attribution comes from Wikipedia, whose cited source is dead; the 1931 date is confirmed by the architect. The 1974 Wikipedia credit to I. M. Pei for the tunnel plan is unsourced there.
Map geometry: 84 corridor features, © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), as of 2026-10-20. Levels come from OpenStreetMap tags and can be incomplete.
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© 2026 Open Civic Intelligence Ventures LLC. Quote with attribution and a link; terms.