The Tulsa Route 66 Commission may proceed with an asset survey even though the state historic preservation office is doing one statewide.
The state is taking an inventory of structures like movie theaters, gas stations and restaurants built during the Mother Road’s heyday that may be eligible for preservation tax credits. Tulsa Route 66 Commission member Amanda De Cort said that work is not looking at an alternate alignment of Route 66 on Admiral Boulevard from Lewis Avenue to downtown.
"We've never had any formal recognition from the Park Service, the State Historic Preservation Office or ODOT that this may be an historic alignment of Route 66," De Cort said.
De Cort said the preservation office is willing to pull Tulsa’s inventory of that stretch into its statewide asset survey and submit it to the Oklahoma Department of Transportation and National Park Service.
"If we're successful in this, any of those properties would then be eligible for any kind of incentives that might come up in the future related to Route 66," De Cort said.
The commission wants to use leftover funding for Route 66 projects from the Vision 2025 sales tax package to pay for the survey.
The asset surveys are creating a list of structures built between roughly 1926 and 1985. Many have fallen into disrepair.
