Nothing screams prestige like having a major professional sports franchise in your city.

That was among the points delivered Thursday by Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt, who was the featured speaker at the Tulsa Press Club PageOne Luncheon at McNellie’s.

“American cities are just judged by whether they have a major league professional sports team, most notably the MLB (Major League Baseball), the NFL (National Football League) and the NBA (National Basketball Association), and to a lesser extent the NHL (National Hockey League) and MLS (Major League Soccer).

“…So, until 2008, our two cities (Oklahoma City and Tulsa) were on the outside looking in at that club. We were just kind of on the fringe.”

That changed 16 years ago when the Seattle Supersonics NBA franchise moved to Oklahoma City and became the Thunder.

Holt was chief of staff under then-Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett when the municipality was wooing the Supersonics. In 2012, Holt wrote a book about that recruiting process, detailing the charge being an NBA city has given OKC.

“Suddenly, you just could tell,” Holt said. “It isn’t just having something fun to do 41 nights a year. It is a total brand change. It totally elevates your identity on the national, international stage. People just look at you differently.

“…It also just sort of sends this implicit message like, yes, they have enough people, enough business to sustain this internationally known brand.”

Holt encouraged Tulsa, the 52nd largest market in the United States, to think big when it comes to professional sports.

“If I were running for mayor of Tulsa, and there may or may not be at least one person in the room who is, I’d spend my time at least thinking and talking about that,” he said.

County Commissioner Karen Keith – an announced mayoral candidate – was in the audience for Holt’s remarks.

Holt on Thursday also touched on other subjects, including forms of city government, a proposed OKC skyscraper and whether he will run for another mayoral term.

He was interviewed by Tim Landes, features editor of TulsaPeople Magazine, and took questions from an audience of about 30 people.

Holt serves as dean of the Oklahoma City University School of Law. As mayor of OKC, he makes $24,000 a year.

By contrast, Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum, who is serving his final term, makes $105,000, an amount that will increase to $190,000 when the next mayor takes office on Dec. 2.

Tulsa uses a strong-mayor form of government; Oklahoma City practices a mayor-city manager model, which limits a mayor’s authority.

“That’s the system that we have,” Holt said. “But at the end of the day, nobody but the mayor can still set the vision for the city.

“That’s the reality. The job is very powerful. But a lot of the power really sort of emanates from soft power and the ability of the person in the job to use it wisely.”

In the middle of his second mayoral term, Holt said he intends to run for another third term.

“You just get so many things started,” he said. “I would like to open that (proposed basketball) arena. I would like to open some MAPS 4 projects and some other exciting projects. At some point you should move on. I’ve seen the model where people stay for 20 years, and you get a little stale. But I think that third term is important.”

As for the feasibility of a 1,907-foot-tall skyscraper a developer has proposed for downtown Oklahoma City, Holt is not convinced it will materialize.

“If Jeff Bezos (Amazon CEO) said he was going to do this, I would say, ‘Well, you’ve got the money; I guess you can pull it off,’” he said.

Holt also said the market doesn’t seem to demand “this level of density.

“This is Oklahoma City and Tulsa,” he said. “We build more out than up. So, I think that’s why we’re a little skeptical. But he (the developer) says he already has the investors ironed out. So, I guess we’ll see what happens.”