City officials appear set to spend more than half a million dollars to improve access to a recently announced southwest Tulsa sports complex.
City councilors will consider using $550,000 in Improve Our Tulsa funds for work on 71st Street to benefit the Titan Sports and Performance Center. Plans for the 60-acre complex near Tulsa Hills only have an entrance on 81st Street, which is prone to flooding.
Titan Sports board member Danny Christner said they always wanted 71st Street access because of how many people may use the sports complex.
"We think right off the bat, we're over 700,000 per year — about 12,000 to 15,000 visitors per week," Christner said. "And then, ultimately, possibly going up to 1 million visitors a year."
Economic Development Coordinator Jim Coles said the plan is to rebuild a road currently used to get to wastewater treatment facilities.
"We use a very old, private road that really doesn't handle the truck traffic and capacity the best way that it could, and so this is an opportunity to improve a road that assists one of our own operating facility as well as bring a great new facility to the public," Coles said.
The city will perform or contract the work.
"We're not just writing a check directly to the developer and then he goes and builds a road that may cost more, may cost less," Coles said. "We've had one previous project where we had an allocation and we were actually able to build it for less than was allocated, and so we retained that money and could invest it in a future project."
Improve Our Tulsa funds have been used twice before for infrastructure projects like this one. Several city councilors have already said they support the 71st Street work.
