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Broken Arrow Looking to Move Ahead With Innovation District in 2020

City of Broken Arrow

Broken Arrow still plans to build an innovation district featuring advanced manufacturing and tech companies.

It was first announced in 2017, but City Manager Michael Spurgeon said the pieces will start falling into place this year.

"Probably sometime next summer, we’ll have a real good idea about what industries we’ll be recruiting in addition to going out and trying to find some educational partners, because … we’d like to find a higher education partner that could help us prepare those folks to go into those jobs once we identify what industries we’re going to target," Spurgeon said.

The city has narrowed down the list of potential sites for the innovation district to three. Spurgeon said Broken Arrow’s not setting out to build just an industrial park with the project.

"We’d like to basically make sure it’s interwoven with quality of life — things to do, restaurants, retail, commercial — to where those folks that are there have an opportunity before they leave town or before they come to work to be able to support those businesses," Spurgeon said.

Spurgeon said there’s still a lot of local interest in the idea.

"There are a number of businesses in the community that said they’re interested in expanding and they’re keeping their eyes on the potential for relocation into the district once we determine where we’ll be," Spurgeon said.

The initial concept for the innovation district was to build a campus in southeast Broken Arrow that advanced manufacturers and tech companies shared with schools.

Matt Trotter joined KWGS as a reporter in 2013. Before coming to Public Radio Tulsa, he was the investigative producer at KJRH. His freelance work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and on MSNBC and CNN.