GOING UP: With a shopping center in place on one side of U.S. Highway 169 in Owasso, and another in the process of beginning building, the vision of Rickey Hayes that within a few years the highway may be at the bottom of a canyon of businesses stretching to Tulsa seems closer to reality. Unlike Tulsa, however, Owasso sees its continued growth coming by attracting businesses now outside the area.
When Rickey Hayes, Owasso’s Director of Economic Development, drives south on Highway 169 his thoughts occasionally turn to Plano, Texas.
For 15 years, Hayes was a law enforcement officer in the Dallas area. He saw Plano go from a tiny town surrounded by miles of flat land to a bustling community filled with offices and shops and entertainment emporiums. U.S. Highway 75, once a lonely ribbon of road, now seems like the bottom of a canyon surrounded by walls of glass-fronted 10-story buildings that house highly paid, well educated, and well trained employees.
That, Hayes thinks, is what Highway 169 between Owasso and Tulsa will look like in a few years.
“For the past 20 years Owasso has been putting everything in place. I only came on the scene six years ago, but long before that the movers and shakers of Owasso were setting the scene for future growth. They were putting in the electrical lines and water pipes and myriad of details necessary to make a city grow.
“They were pro-active. Most cities get a new development and then scramble to provide the necessary infrastructure; in Owasso, when development is offered the infrastructure is usually already there.”
The growth of Owasso has already been well documented in these pages. The question, as seems appropriate when contemplating a new year, is where does it go from here.
City Manager Rodney Ray enters the conversation:
“I believe Owasso will become the new major quality job center for the Tulsa area. Everything we’ve done has been pointed toward one simple goal: to have a sustainable economy and the way to do that is to create an environment where people can have a great quality of life.”
Both Ray and Hayes acknowledge their community’s debt to Tulsa. “I would hate to think of what would happen to Owasso, or for that matter to any of the cities surrounding Tulsa, if Tulsa began to decline,” says Ray. “When they get out of bed in the morning roughly 65 percent of people going to jobs head to Tulsa. The difference between the job environment now and a few years ago is that then most of them were headed to Tulsa International Airport or the businesses surrounding it. The airport is still vitally important to Owasso’s economy but the number of workers depending on it has probably fallen to around 15 percent. We’ve become a much more diversified economy. “We are terribly fortunate in our location: We are surrounded by the airport, the Cherokee Industrial Park and the Tulsa Port of Catoosa, each one of which offers a host of employment opportunities.”
Owasso has certainly enjoyed a prosperous decade. “In the year 2000 the population in our zip code, which spills out over the city limits just a bit, was about 17,000. The latest figure is 36,000.” “We’ve seen the development of over 3.5 million square feet of new commercial space with a value of nearly $250 million, says Hayes. “Chain restaurants and big box stores have joined us and we are negotiating for such things as a major sports store and a book store.”
There is one thing the two men readily agree on: Unlike Tulsa, which expects most of its future growth to come from expansion of businesses already in the area, Owasso is going to have to woo businesses from afar. Says Ray, “we don’t have the numbers to simply expand from within.”
Hayes adds, “you can’t get a corporation to relocate unless you have a great world-class educational system. We have all that. A few years ago we were thinking that the only thing we truly lacked was a major medical facility and within 90 days in 2006 we got two. St. John Hospital and Bailey Medical Center have been enormous additions to the total Owasso package.
“We are also,” adds Ray, “remarkably crime free. During Black Friday (the day following Thanksgiving Day which is the largest retail day of the year) we had one reported case of shoplifting and it was solved in under five minutes.”
Both men say their relationship with Tulsa city leaders is excellent and say cooperation, not confrontation, is the key to the future.
Says Ray, “I believe we have to get to the point where we have unconditional high regard for each other and for each city to do what is best for the whole. We have to quit questioning the motives of each other. If we work together we’ll all get our fair share.
“In Owasso, for example, if we get the businesses we envision we’ll be a center of employment and quality jobs which will benefit the entire Tulsa-area community.”