On Monday, ONE Norman hosted a speaker who encouraged the city to reflect on its inner self — Downtown Norman.

James Lima, the founder of a New York-based real estate and economic advisory firm that has provided consultations to cities like St. Paul, Austin and Orlando, said because the traditional role of a downtown as the central economic hub of a city is diminishing, creating strategies to keep downtowns strong is more important than ever.

“Cities have an opportunity to think about a much more interesting model than the central business district,” Lima said. “Think about something where this concentration of urbanity, of historic architecture, of arts and culture, parks … for that all to be one vibrant thing, and for that place to do a better job of competing for your interest.”

Lima said emphasizing a downtown’s existing assets while also promoting a greater diversity of uses improves quality of life for a city’s residents. Such increased diversity includes mixing retail, workplace and residential spaces in the area, along with improving nighttime opportunities and making the area more friendly to foot traffic.

“I sometimes feel like I’m talking about the soft side of economic development, but I have found that in talking to the decision makers about location [for businesses], it really does come back to quality of life and aspirations that individual human beings have for themselves,” Lima said.

“It turns out companies are actually made up of a bunch of individual human beings,” Lima added, drawing laughter from attendees.

Lima said investment from both governments and businesses leads to the type of attractive downtowns he describes. In turn, people are drawn to the area to live or visit, bringing with them their talent and capital.

Lima visited as a part of ONE Norman’s CiviCon series, a series featuring experts around the country intending to encourage dialogue about Norman’s development.

ONE Norman is an initiative of the Norman Economic Development Coalition. The NEDC is one of the boosters of a proposed billion-dollar arena and entertainment district at University North Park, which would be funded through tax increment financing.

While taking questions from the public, Lima said development on the periphery of cities is not necessarily harmful to downtowns, but added robust transit options are helpful in making sure people can move between districts with ease.

“Every city is a unique circumstance, and cities are made up of multiple nodes, so there are different personalities to different places,” Lima said.

Things briefly turned contentious when Russell Rice, a candidate for Ward 2 of the Norman City Council, pressed Lima on whether he thought the proposed arena and entertainment TIF district was a sound idea.

“Do you think using $200 million of citizens’ taxpayer dollars through a TIF for an arena and entertainment area is a good thing?” Rice asked.

“Hire me and I’ll tell you,” Lima joked, and then continued that he is not familiar enough with Norman’s plans for the TIF district to make a judgment.

“You have to do the analysis to understand. It’s a cost-benefit analysis that somebody really has to do the work and say, ‘Here’s the benefit it would generate, and here’s the cost,’” Lima said. “Sometimes it doesn’t [outweigh the cost], and often it does. Every situation is unique.”

“That’s a non-answer,” Rice said.

“I couldn’t answer it without knowing the data,” Lima said.

“Non-answer,” Rice repeated.

The exchange ended when a co-chair of the ONE Norman steering committee — Matt Peacock, who just so happens to be Rice’s opponent in the upcoming Ward 2 runoff race — said, “Let’s be respectful of our guest,” ending the exchange.