A group of Chickasha business and civic leaders accompanied by some key politicians plan to travel to southern California in June to promote the Grady County community to several hundred business owners and managers in The Golden State.
“My plan,” businessman Chet Hitt told Southwest Ledger, “is to host a seminar for 300 to 400 California business people and ‘sell’ them on Chickasha and how we could customize a business site and a workforce specifically for them.”
California companies might be interested in Chickasha because construction costs are cheaper in Oklahoma than they are in California; bureaucratic regulations are not as onerous here as they are there; plus taxes, utility bills, and the cost of living in Oklahoma are much lower than in California.
“We want to recruit entrepreneurs who are looking to create jobs,” said Hitt, a resident of Apple Valley, California, who has invested perhaps $5 million in Chickasha in the last two years.
“We’re going out there for the jobs, rather than waiting for them to come to us,” he said. “A group of us are working on marketing the whole community, showing what Chickasha has to offer,” Hitt said. “We not only want to bring them here, we want to keep them here.”
Gov. Kevin Stitt has already agreed to join the trip, said Hitt, indicating he also will extend invitations to U.S. Sen. James Lankford, Congressman Tom Cole, and state Sen. Lonnie Paxton of Tuttle, who was born in Chickasha.
Local citizens asked to join the trip include Jim Cowan, president of the Chickasha Economic Development Council; Chickasha Mayor Zach Grayson, City Manager Jim Crosby, and Community Development Director Rachel Bernish; Dr. Kayla Hale, president of Chickasha’s University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma; and Ronnie Bogle, director of Canadian Valley Technology Center’s Chickasha campus.
Hitt said that for two and a half years he lived in Anadarko, where he graduated from high school in 1982. When he returned to Oklahoma in 2022 for the 40th reunion of his high school graduating class, “I was just driving through Chickasha and thought I might find an opportunity here.”
Since he unveiled his development plans to the City Council in December 2022, Hitt has bought seven buildings in Chickasha, sold one outright (the Steelman building), and has renovated three of them: the formerly vacant Mill Building; the former Canadian River Brewery building; and the previously abandoned 123-year-old Savoy Hotel, on which he spent at least $1.3 million and more than 18 months completely renovating.
Hitt now is selling the Savoy’s business, but leasing the building, to Brandi Terry, who owns a bar and grill directly across the street. Hitt also is selling the brewery business, but leasing the renovated building, to Brent Johnson, son of former City Manager Keith Johnson; the new owner and his wife, Crysta, have already changed the name of the company to The Outpost.
Hitt’s “Town’s End” development is located south of the U.S. 62/ Choctaw Avenue viaduct in the vicinity of the popular “Leg Lamp” statue.
In addition, last December the City Council acting as the Chickasha Municipal Airport Authority voted to sell Hitt 320 acres of undeveloped land “next door to” Chickasha’s airport for $1,578,000, or $4,931.25 per acre. That was the market value of the land as established by an appraiser retained by city officials. For several years that acreage has been leased for $400 per year for agriculture.
Hitt told the Ledger he is subdividing the property. The first phase will be 50 industrial lots ranging from two to ten acres “or more, depending on the needs of the customer,” he said. “We plan to build a couple of ready-to-occupy spec buildings,” he added.
An infrastructure study of the area is underway, Hitt said. For example, “We need to know the location and size of water and sewer lines out there,” he said. “I want to be as shovel- ready as we can be.”
During the March 11 meeting of the Economic Development Council, Cheryl Critchfield of the Chamber of Commerce announced that a manufacturing luncheon is scheduled at the Canadian Valley Technology Center in Chickasha on March 24.
“We anticipate the manufacturing community growing significantly in Chickasha,” Cowan said, but didn’t elaborate.
Chickasha needs upscale housing Also during the EDC meeting, Crawford Roofing CEO Tim Crawford said, “We have to draw people to Chickasha,” and one of the community’s needs is housing, including upscale homes.
Crawford is the developer of Redbud Ridge, located off I-44 and South 16th Street in Chickasha. It will be a gated community of 48 custom-built houses, the first neighborhood of its kind in Chickasha.
“There’s demand in Chickasha for houses in the $400,000 price range,” Cowan said.
“I’ve got a lot of builders who want to go in there and build $250,000 to $300,000 houses, but I’m not interested in that,” said Crawford. “We have five houses in there under construction now,” he said, adding, “I will not downgrade” the 43 lots that are undeveloped. He also said the economy “is back and forth.”
Ryan Posey, president of HSI Sensing in Chickasha, noted that creation of wealth “typically comes with home ownership.” The median net worth of Americans is $192,000, he said, and 70% of that “comes from the value of the home.”
Chickasha’s home ownership rate “is low,” said Posey: 52.4%, compared to the national average of 64.8%, according to the 2023 federal census.
In another related matter, First National Bank executive Ed Stanton said that if President Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” policy comes to Grady County, “it will be good for us.”
It’s too early to tell whether Trump’s tariffs “will affect us,” Stanton said, but the federal government’s crackdown on illegal immigration could have an adverse effect on the labor force, and bankers have “a little concern about credit card debt.”