REGIONAL HUB: The Bank of Oklahoma Center, being built with Vision 2025 funds authorized by Tulsa County taxpayers in 2003, is well underway and is expected to be completed later this year.
GTR Newspapers photo
Concentric circles are out.
Traffic flow is in.
That, says Rickey Hayes, is why Tulsa County is going to flourish.
Hayes has spent years studying the region. As director of economic development for Owasso for the past eight years, Hayes has seen not only his own city explode with growth but also the cities surrounding Tulsa.
Now he is a one-man band, available for hire by any city that wants him. He has agreements to advise Claremore and Glenpool and is in negotiations with several other communities, some of them outside Oklahoma.
He brings with him a theory of growth that shatters the conventional wisdom of a decade ago.
“When Owasso hired me six years ago, stores concentrated on concentric circles,” he says. “They wondered how much of a specific demographic (school children, persons with annual incomes over $100,000, etc.) could be found within a mile of a specific site, or three miles, five miles or seven miles. If a business could find enough of a desired demographic in a certain radius, it might set down roots.
“But when I first went over Owasso’s books, I discovered the sales tax revenue was far ahead of what should have been collected for a city our size. We found that although at the time Owasso was fairly small, people who lived outside the city made some 70 percent of the purchases. Between Highway 75 and Highway 169 they had excellent access to the retail facilities of Owasso and would stop here rather than drive all the way into Tulsa.
Gary Akins of the Owasso Chamber of Commerce says the beginning of the boom actually preceded Hayes’ arrival.
“Kohl’s Department Stores decided to build two outlets in Tulsa and one in Owasso. To their amazement, the one in Owasso did best of all. I remember going to the Owasso store and thinking that I used to have to go to Tulsa to get a facility like this.”
One day Hayes went to Texas to visit his daughter and the economic history of Owasso began to change.
“I was in McKinney, Texas, just outside of Dallas, and I saw a new Home Depot with a sign out front saying Hunt Construction had built it. I called them on a Tuesday. On Thursday, when I was back in Owasso, they returned my call. I told them I’d fly down to Texas to meet them. They said they were in a parking lot in Owasso.”
Within months a new Home Depot was operating in Owasso. Hayes then turned his attention to Target. It took a couple of years, but he landed them and the Owasso expansion was underway.
“The whole area around here has excellent traffic flow and the cities surrounding Tulsa are reaping the benefits. The corridor from Owasso to Collinsville to Claremore is ripe for expansion. Claremore is, historically, one of the most important cities in Oklahoma and it is in Rogers County, which is the fastest growing county in the state. It has a very high traffic count and is benefiting from a $110 million mixed use development.”
Collinsville is developing its residential subdivisions very efficiently, and with Highway 20 and Highway 169, is in close proximity to Owasso, Claremore and Tulsa. Skiatook has a lake and a state highway.
“On the other side of Tulsa look at how Jenks has expanded and now Glenpool has announced a major shopping area right on Highway 75. Broken Arrow and Bixby are all increasing.”
Of course they all draw sustenance from Tulsa which continues to be the straw that stirs the drink. In order for the suburbs to thrive, the city of Tulsa has to prosper. Anything that helps central Tulsa helps the entire area.
“Not too many years ago Tulsa was a city surrounded by small towns. Now it is a true metro area. All the cities that are growing, I think, can accelerate that growth by partnering with its neighbors.
“It’s not just Owasso that’s taking off; it’s the whole area, and I think the national retailers have finally caught on to that.”
