City experiments partially contributed to the demise of the Boeing 2707 SST project seven years later. Decline and stagnation As the 1960s continued, however, Oklahoma City began to decline. By 1970, "white flight" and suburbanization had drained the life from the central business district and the surrounding areas. The oil beneath the city had begun to dry up, and property values declined. The city leaders then engaged in a disastrous program of "urban renewal" which succeeded primarily in demolishing much of the aging theater district. Despite popular conjecture, the impressive Biltmore Hotel was not originally targeted to be taken down by the Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority. Plans drawn up for downtown's redevelopment by I.M. Pei always assumed the building would remain open for business. After a $3 million renovation in the mid-1960s, the hotel was renamed the Sheraton-Oklahoma Hotel. But, the operation could not turn a profit, and in 1973, hotel owners agreed with the authority the building had outlived its useful life and needed to be demolished. The city had planned to build a massive shopping mall called "The Galleria" downtown, but money for renewal ran out before they could construct more than the parking garage for it. This left downtown Oklahoma City in even worse shape than it had been in, with vacant lots where Victorian brownstones once stood. The 1970s and 1980s were periods of stagnation for Oklahoma City proper (and was the case for almost all major cities in the United States) and periods of affluence and explosive development for the suburbs. With the exception of The Myriad Gardens, little was done to improve the inner city or the central business district during this time, even as the oil boom of the late 1970s brought a flood of money into the area. 1990s By 1992, the city was in such dire need of improvement that it was losing jobs, population, and even air carriers to more attractive cities. With this in mind, Mayor Ron Norick pushed through a massive plan for capital improvements throughout downtown called the Metropolitan Area Projects Plan, or MAPS. MAPS called for a five-year, one-cent sales tax to fund a new ballpark, a canal through Bricktown, a new central library, a large indoor arena, renovations to the fairgrounds and the civic center, and a series of low water dams on the North Canadian River to make it attractive and accessible to