Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper, who represents Tulsa’s historically Black district, told a room of constituents at Rudisill Library on Tuesday night to decry a supposed proposal for blight studies in north Tulsa.
Hall-Harper gathered people in her district for a town hall to discuss her worries about the city’s economic development authority, PartnerTulsa, a city entity she has heavily criticized before.
Hall-Harper printed out an email exchange from April 13 between her and Vicki Jordan, SVP of PartnerTulsa, for constituents to read. The email states that ParterTulsa intends to initiate a blight study on areas of north Tulsa to determine future urban renewal plans.
Hall-Harper believes such blight studies and urban renewal efforts, which she dubbed as "urban removal," would displace residents.
"The weight of urban renewal in Black communities has not been positive," she said, speculating that such studies would open the door to local governments taking over land via eminent domain.
Hall-Harper has said that her concerns about urban renewal in her district have been ignored by PartnerTulsa. She recently said the implementation of the the Kirkpatrick Heights Master Plan in, a $5 million 56-acre redevelopment project, would not serve her district well.
She said she’s been excluded from the decision making about redevelopment in her district.
“Those are systemic issues from the top level of government all the way down. That’s intentional," she said of her exclusion
Hall-Harper also continued to deny notions that she planned to siphon off money from the Kirkpatrick Heights plan after introducing an amended ordinance to expand the language of where the money would go.
