QUICK CONSTRUCTION: Main Street in Owasso is in the process of getting a make over. Unlike the repaving of some streets in downtown Tulsa, Owasso is simply getting a facelift. When the project is finished in September, the city will have new street signs, lights, irrigated flower beds, benches and bricked sidewalks.
DAVID JONES for GTR Newspapers
Tulsans can tell their Owasso cousins to relax: the worst will soon be over.
For the past two years, Tulsans driving downtown have had to dodge barriers, avoid ditches, observe closed traffic lanes and find many parking spaces missing as the city redid its downtown streets. The mess is due to be completed late this year.
Now Owasso is going through the same process, although not in the same degree. Main Street has been flowing reasonably smoothly even if parking spaces in front of some businesses that depend on them have been impacted.
Unlike Tulsa, where the streets needed major work, the Owasso Main Street project has been primarily cosmetic.
Most of the improvements concerned such items as adding street signage, putting bricks in the sidewalks and streets, adding street lights, irrigated flower beds and benches for people to sit while they enjoy the new view.
The $1.5 million project, with monies provided both by the City of Owasso and funds from Vision 2025, is expected to be complete by Sept. 1 of this year.
It is an ambitious project, but nowhere near as ambitious as the improvements along 129th East Avenue between North 76th and 93rd Streets where the road will be widened from two to five lanes. Well underway, this project will make traveling through a major residential section of Owasso much easier.
The area has been expanding with residential sections and schools and the need for the widening put it on the drawing board several years ago. When completed, the $8.3 million project will not only aid residents but will make getting to and from as many as six schools much easier.
Begun in late October 2007, it is due to be completed in the late spring or early summer of 2009.
