City of Tulsa

On this installment of StudioTulsa, we speak with Corey Williams, the executive director of Sustainable Tulsa, a well-regarded local nonprofit that's been encouraging area businesses and individuals to embrace sustainability for nearly a decade. Williams tells us about her organization's "Triple Bottom Line ScoreCard," which has just completed its pilot (or developmental) phase...and which will begin its first full-year term as a Sustainable Tulsa program in the fall. The "triple bottom line," in this case, refers to People, Profit, and Planet.

On today's installment of StudioTulsa, we offer a discussion with Tulsa City Councilor G.T. Bynum, who is running for mayor. (Tulsa's mayoral elction will occur on June 28th; we spoke with Mayor Bartlett, who is also running, on yesterday's program.) Bynum was elected to the Tulsa City Council in 2008; he still serves on the Council, representing District 9. As noted at the G.T.

On this edition of ST, we offer a discussion with Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett. Mayor Bartlett is running for re-election to a third term as our city's mayor; the election will happen on Tuesday, June 28th. (On tomorrow's StudioTulsa -- that is, Friday the 17th -- we will feature an interview with Tulsa City Councilor G.T. Bynum, who is also running for mayor.) As noted at the Bartlett campaign's website: "Dewey Bartlett has devoted his life to creating jobs, promoting the energy industry, and working on transportation issues.

On this edition of StudioTulsa, we are pleased to welcome Eileen Bradshaw, Executive Director of the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma. The Food Bank, as it's commonly known, is the largest private hunger-relief organization in eastern Oklahoma. It's been around since 1981. As noted at this nonprofit's website: "Our vision is food security, with dignity, for all eastern Oklahomans.... With locations in Tulsa and McAlester, we provide food and other donated goods to 450 Partner Programs in 24 counties of eastern Oklahoma.

On this installment of ST, we learn about a locally-rooted socio-economic and educational project called Growing Togther. It's a nonprofit that works to bring meaningful and lasting change to two different Tulsa neighborhoods marked by concentrated areas of poverty, Eugene Field and Kendall-Whittier. Our guest is Kirk Wester, executive director of Growing Together.

So many attractive and impressive old buildings -- in downtown Tulsa and across this state -- would still be gathering dust, housing pigeons, and contributing even less economically without the Historic Tax Credit (HTC) program. Indeed, HTC projects have injected $163 million in private investment into the City of Tulsa alone since 2000. On this edition of ST, we speak in detail about the positive economic influence that historic preservation tax credits have had (and are still having) in our city and throughout the Sooner State.

On this edition of ST, we speak with Chris Gates, who is CEO of the Tulsa-based Janada L. Batchelor Foundation for Children, or JBFC, a nonprofit that works to provide aid to, and combat extreme poverty in, East Africa. As noted on the JBFC website: "Janada Batchelor is JBFC Founder Chris Gates's grandmother. The organization carries her name because she is the woman who introduced Gates to Tanzania in 2002.

On this edition of ST, we offer a closer look at some of the economic development objectives within the Vision Tulsa proposal. For years, the north side of Tulsa has felt neglected and shortchanged when it comes to infrastructure improvements as well as efforts to provide good-paying jobs in the area. But within Vision Tulsa, there is money for a public-private partership that would create a ready and receptive environment for the next potential manufacturing or industrial employer looking at our city as an expansion site.

On this edition of StudioTulsa, an interesting conversation with Gabe Klein, an entrepreneur and urban-development advocate who was formerly the DOT director under Mayor Rahm Emanuel in Chicago, and also the Director of the District of Columbia DOT under Mayor Adrian M. Fenty. Prior to working in local government, Klein worked at a few notable start-ups, including Zipcar. On our show today, he talks about his new book, "Start-Up City: Inspiring Private and Public Entrepreneurship, Getting Projects Done, and Having Fun." About this guidebook, Ray LaHood, the former U.S.

This evening -- Tuesday the 8th -- beginning at 6pm, Oklahoma Watch, a statewide nonprofit dedicated to both in-depth reporting and investigative journalism vis a vis public-policy issues, will host a free-to-the-public forum on the future of mass transit in the greater Tulsa area. The event will take place at the Central Center, near 6th and Peoria.

Last week on our program, we spoke with two members of the Tulsa City Council about the Vision program, which was recently approved by the Tulsa City Council in unanimous vote and is likewise supported by Mayor Bartlett.

On this edition of StudioTulsa, we get to know Laura Fry, who began her tenure as Curator of Art at the Gilcrease Museum here in Tulsa back in December. Fry previously worked at the Tacoma Art Museum in Tacoma, Washington, where she was the inaugural Haub Curator of Western American Art. Prior to that post, she served at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming -- first as an education and curatorial assistant, then as a Frederic Remington research assistant.

On this installment of StudioTulsa, we are talking about the Vision program, which was recently approved by the Tulsa City Council in unanimous vote, and which is now slated to appear on the April 5th ballot. Our guests are City Councilors Karen Gilbert (of District 5) and G.T. Bynum (of District 9), who both describe the Vision program in detail why also explaining why they think it's vitally important for voters to approve this program.

On this edition of StudioTulsa on Health, we learn about the Blue Zones Project.

On this edition of ST, we speak with two outstanding local citizens who were among the ten women recently given the Women of the Year - Pinnacle Award from the YWCA Tulsa collaboration with the Mayor'’s Commission on the Status of Women. Earlier this week, Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett presented these awards in person, and in doing so recognized how each of this year's recipients has worked to eliminate racism and/or empower women.

Last fall, about 40 local non-profit arts organizations joined Phil Lakin, CEO of the Tulsa Community Foundation, in launching Arts Alliance Tulsa (or AAT), a United Arts Fund that aims to provide funding for -- and audience-development support for -- the City of Tulsa's various cultural assets. (United Arts Funds, as noted at the AAT website, "seek to raise money to provide ongoing operating support to local arts institutions. Over the past 65 years, more than 100 communities across the country -- both large and small -- have established UAFs.

On this edition of StudioTulsa on Health, we learn about a non-profit called WellOK, which was formed in 2014, and which bills itself as "the Northeastern Oklahoma Business Coalition on Health." It's a coalition of 17 locally based organizations, including businesses large and small that purchase healthcare as well as government and philanthropic organizations.

On this edition of ST, an interesting exit interview with John W. Silva; the CEO of Morton Comprehensive Health Services here in Tulsa will leave this post next month to assume a similar job in his native Massachusetts. Silva has been at the helm of Morton since 2010. Under his leadership, it has expanded from its North Tulsa headquarters to additional locations in Bartlesville and west Tulsa and has moreover become Oklahoma's only community health center-based teaching facility.

The recent decision by the Tulsa Public Facilities Authority to sell more than 12 acres of Helmerich Park (at 71st and Riverside in Tulsa) to a private developer is creating controversy and organized opposition. The location has been touted as a future retail site for the outdoor recreational business, REI, on land that (under the Arkansas River Corridor Master Plan) does call for some development.

Interested in the idea of living in downtown Tulsa? Curious about all the apartment buildings and office spaces that seem to getting refurbished or constructed downtown these days? Wondering about what might be in store for a certain vacant property or unsightly parking lot within the City of Tulsa's Inner Dispersal Loop? If you've answered in the affirmative to any or all of these queries, you might want to check out the 3rd Annual Dwell in the IDL Tour, which will be presented by the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture this coming Sunday, the 4th, from noon to 5pm.

The proposals for the City of Tulsa's Vision sales-tax extension are all now in, and those proposals are many and varied. Some are, indeed, visionary; others seem fanciful. Some are familiar; others seem quite novel. All of the proposals -- there were more than 130 in total -- address perceived needs of one kind or another in our community, and taken together, they tally more than $2 billion in spending. Now comes the difficult task of narrowing down the numerous needs, goals, and desires in these proposals to a coherent set of projects that will be put before voters in April of next year.

In several ways, obviously, Tulsa -- especially downtown Tulsa -- looks and feels much different than it did ten or fifteen years ago. Or even five years ago. Developments, improvements, enhancements, and refurbishments are occuring on many fronts. But what about the mass transit system that serves this community? On today's ST, another discussion in our series of interviews with organizations aiming to acquire funding through the Vision 2025 sales tax extension.

Today's ST offers another discussion in our series of interviews with organizations aiming to acquire funding through the Vision 2025 sales tax extension for the City of Tulsa. Our guests, both members of TYPros, are two of the principals behind the much-talked-about proposal to create a Boston Avenue Multisport (or "BAM") Facility, which would exist between Boston and Cincinnati Avenues, and between 10th and 12th Streets, in downtown Tulsa: Terrell Hoagland is the Director of Sustainability for Jones Design Studio and Kenton Grant is the owner of Kenton Grant Consulting.

On this edition of ST, we offer another installment in our ongoing series of interviews with organizations vying to be included in the Vision 2025 sales tax extension for the City of Tulsa. This extension is expected to go before voters in the spring of 2016, and over the past couple of months, many area organizations (from Gilcrease Museum to the Tulsa Zoo; from Tulsa Transit to Langston University) have been presenting proposals in this regard to the Tulsa City Council. We at StudioTulsa are speaking with certain of those groups whose ideas seem especially interesting and/or feasible.

Iron Gate, a nonprofit soup kitchen and food pantry at Trinity Episcopal Church in downtown Tulsa, began operations nearly forty years ago. It's still based at Trinity, but it's a separate facility -- make that a separate and vitally important facility -- that has drastically outgrown its workspace. Iron Gate, actually located in the crowded basement of Trinity, has an on-site dining area meant to seat 127 people, yet the facility serves food to 500 or 600 hungry Tulsans every day of the year.

Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett and City Councilors are seeking public input regarding how best to use a proposed renewal of the Vision 2025 sales tax for economic development here in our community. Several ideas have recently been put forth -- from funding for the Tulsa Zoo to enhancements to the Pearl District, from the purchase of the downtown Tulsa Club Building to refurbishment of the Gilcrease Museum and its buildings and grounds (to name but a few) -- and on this edition of StudioTulsa, we learn another such proposal.

Our guest on this edition of ST is the locally based filmmaker Sterlin Harjo, who tells us about his latest feature, "Mekko." Most of this movie was shot in Tulsa, and it profiles a Native American ex-con (the film's title character) as he tries to rebuild his life after 19 years behind bars. Mekko has no home, no immediate family, and little cash -- so he soon ends up on the streets, where he's eventually taken in by Tulsa's homeless Native community.

The folks who bring you StudioTulsa have been on summer holiday for the first half of August.

Here's a guide to the programs that we aired on ST on July 31st as well as August 3rd through the 7th, along with audio links (in case you'd like to hear any of these programs as a free, on-demand mp3 stream).

Friday, July 31st -- We spoke with Terrie Correll, CEO of the Tulsa Zoo; you can hear that conversation here:

We also featured a commentary during our 7-31-15 show by Janet Pearson; it concerned Oklahoma travel and tourism and can be heard here:

On this installment of ST, we speak with James Pepper Henry, who began his tenure as the executive director of the Gilcrease Museum about four months ago. As was recently reported by KWGS, Pepper Henry has requested $75 million out of  a proposed Vision 2025 sales-tax renewal.

On this edition of StudioTulsa, we learn about a newly created feature-length documentary film, "Boomtown: An American Journey," which depicts the history of the City of Tulsa. Our guests are Russ Kirkpatrick, the producer and executive producer of this film, and Michelle Place, the executive director of The Tulsa Historical Society and Museum, which originally commissioned it.