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A New Gathering Place For Tulsa

KWGS News File Photo

On this edition of StudioTulsa, we speak with Jeff Stava, a senior program officer for the George Kaiser Family Foundation and the project manager for the new, privately-funded, still-in-development public park known as A Gathering Place for Tulsa. The final design plans for the Riverside-based park (to be created on the site of the Blair Mansion) were announced Tuesday the 18th. Internationally known landscape architect Michael van Valkenburgh's design will include a lodge, a children's adventure playground, a two-acre pond with a boathouse, a skate park, gardens, and two 300-foot land bridges over Riverside Drive, which will connect the new park with the existing River Parks trail. In addition, an extension to the existing pedestrian bridge over the Arkansas River will allow for greater foot and bike travel between the east and west banks of the river. Stava speaks about the impact of the park --- on the city's economy as well as its quality of life.

Rich Fisher passed through KWGS about thirty years ago, and just never left. Today, he is the general manager of Public Radio Tulsa, and the host of KWGS’s public affairs program, StudioTulsa, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in August 2012 . As host of StudioTulsa, Rich has conducted roughly four thousand long-form interviews with local, national, and international figures in the arts, humanities, sciences, and government. Very few interviews have gone smoothly. Despite this, he has been honored for his work by several organizations including the Governor's Arts Award for Media by the State Arts Council, a Harwelden Award from the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa, and was named one of the “99 Great Things About Oklahoma” in 2000 by Oklahoma Today magazine.
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