The city’s been trying to build a Route 66-themed something or other at Cry Baby Hill for over a decade now, an effort we were reminded of this week when the Tulsa World reported that the latest effort “appears to be in limbo.”
The Dewey Bartlett administration first tried it in 2013, inviting local developers to “give us ideas” for what was being called “The Route 66 Experience.” Here’s the vibe that Bartlett was going for, according to the Journal-Record:
The exhibit space will be maintained as a fresh program of interpretive, electronic and static displays,” according to the document. “Tulsa wishes to establish itself by name recognition in the field of heritage tourism for Route 66. A companion goal is to create a commercial amenity where Route 66 joins the central business district and the Arkansas River.
Doesn’t exactly get my engine running, but whatever! Part of the problem with this whole development is that the Arkansas River, Cry Baby Hill and Route 66 just don’t really cohere into anything. They’ve been brought together by geography, time and cultural happenstance.
Perhaps that’s why the Bartlett plan never gained traction, and the plot of land near Cry Baby Hill remained unthreatened until a few years ago when G.T. Bynum’s administration picked Sharp Development to build a mixed-use thing that would’ve included a 40-room hotel and “interpretive center.” Sharp pulled out in May 2023, citing high costs. Big, Beautiful Car Vending Machines, it turned out, are expensive!
This would seem to have been the city’s last, best chance to build a Route 66-themed something before the Route 66 centennial celebration brings a wave of tourists to Tulsa in November 2026. And even if it had worked, it would’ve brought a lot of traffic to an already bottlenecked part of the city, where the residential Riverview neighborhood butts up against the IDL and the river.
And that brings us to this week, when the city’s third big push to get a developer to build something shaped like a Route 66 attraction along the Arkansas River hit a lull.
For this ‘third-time’s-the-charm’ attempt, the Bynum administration split the RFP process into three separate requests: for a hotel, a roadside attraction (how’d that turn out?) and an interactive experience.
It seems to me like it’s just time to cut bait. If the city owns the property and we’ve already missed out on the chance to cash in on the centennial next year, then why not build something more practical? A modest housing development wouldn’t be a bad bet: we need more housing, and residents could walk out the front door east to work downtown, west across the pedestrian bridge or north or south on the Riverside trail.
That’s all I got. In other news this week:
- Speaking of Riverside, Asian-fusion concept Daigoro is set to open in the former Blue Rose Cafe space “in a few weeks.”
- The local market for child care “is very fragile” as demand for care grows.
- The mayor’s office has detailed a plan to reach “functional zero homelessness” in Tulsa.
- Broncho is playing a free show at Guthrie Green June 14.
- A new pickleball, food and entertainment concept, Courts & Commons, opens Saturday in south Tulsa.
- Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is Batman.
- Helmerich Library is holding its annual book sale next month. $5 for anything you can fit in a grocery bag? Heck yeah.
- A megachurch founder and former Trump spiritual adviser was indicted in Oklahoma on charges of lewd acts with a girl that began in the 1980s.
- The Oklahoma Senate sent a bill to the House that would require school districts to ban cellphones and personal electronic devices next school year.
- Bob Dylan is coming to El Reno, Oklahoma this summer with Willie Nelson and others.
