CHICKASHA – The principal mission of the Economic Development Council is to “shine a positive light on Chickasha,” Director Jim Cowan told the City Council recently.
As an illustration, a variety of new businesses were launched in Chickasha “in the past year,” he related.
Those included Brandi’s Bar & Grill, 5th Street Unique Boutique, Downtown Tattoo, Flower Shop Winery & Pizzeria, Hudson Prince civil engineering consultants, Grease Monkey tune-ups and oil changes, Glo Tanning, Optimum Dental, Downtown Mercantile & Visitor, Wild Ox Axe Throwing, and others.
“A couple of those” received new business grants in which the EDC paid for the company’s first three months of rent or utility bills, a period when a start-up’s finances are usually tight, Cowan said.
The EDC is “raising awareness of available incentives,” such as the $150,000 Oklahoma Innovative Expansion Program award to HSI sensing, the $135,000 OIEP award to Taylor & Sons Pipe & Steel, and the $35,000 OIEP award to Royal Filter Manufacturing Co.
The annual Festival of Light is “still the most attended Christmas event in southwest Oklahoma and in this entire region, Cowan said. “But we are more than a Christmas town.”
Telling Chickasha’s story “has received regional and national attention,” he pointed out.
The iconic 50-foot-tall leg lamp statue, which resembles the one made famous in the 1983 film “A Christmas Story,” continues to attract visitors to downtown Chickasha.
A youth baseball team from Tennessee or Kentucky, en route to California, detoured off Interstate 40 and drove to Chickasha to see the leg lamp in August, Matt Palesano, temporary operator of the Visitor Center nearby, told Southwest Ledger recently. “They noticed we were open and dropped in.”
In addition, “a guy from London came here to see the leg lamp,” Palesano said.
“We are blown away by the amount of people who are traveling,” he said. “Weekdays, we’re getting people from all over.”
Last summer a couple from Alaska went to Cleveland, Ohio, to see the house where exterior shots for “A Christmas Story” were filmed. “So this summer they came here to see the leg lamp,” Palesano said.
Consequently, Chickasha has been featured in reports on television stations in Oklahoma City, Lawton and Tulsa; newspapers in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Lawton; but also in USA Today, The New York Post, and Ohio’s The Cleveland Scene, Cowan related.
Increased tourism explains, at least in part, why state Tax Commission records indicate Chickasha is among the top four cities in Oklahoma in percentage increase in its city sales tax collections compared to last year’s tax receipts.
“We have to ‘sell’ our community to companies that do business within this entire area,” Cowan continued.
Amazon, for example, announced plans to hire more than 2,000 employees from the Oklahoma City metro area for full-time, seasonal, and part-time jobs. Chickasha is “less than a 30-minute drive” from Amazon’s distribution center in south Oklahoma City, Cowan noted.
“Our image is very important,” he said, stressing the significance of the “Keep Chickasha Beautiful” campaign.
He also mentioned the Community Alliance, which was founded about a year and a half ago and meets once a month to discuss how to assist neighbors in need of food, shelter, rental assistance, and other essentials. “Every city of any size in Oklahoma is challenged with homelessness,” Cowan said.
Councilman R.P. Ashanti-Alexander urged the EDC to do more to make Chickasha a community “where all races can feel they belong here,” because, “We don’t do enough.”
Cowan agreed that the community needs to “acknowledge the past and embrace the future.”
Goals for FY 2023-24
Among the EDC’s goals for Fiscal Year 2023-24 are to:
• Recruit even more new business and industry, by updating the building inventory on the EDC website to show what’s available; conducting “peer city” visits monthly to Elk City, Enid, El Reno, Duncan, Medicine Park, Weatherford, Shawnee and other communities; and promoting small-business start-up grants to “grow new retail throughout Chickasha, not just in downtown.”
• Promote business retention and expansion by joining hands with educational partners on apprenticeship and internship programs.
• Accelerate downtown development and revitalization by, for instance, working with the Chickasha Community Foundation to finance the new downtown park; work with the Life Skills Institute to provide weekly trash and weed removal throughout the downtown business district; and work closely with California businessman Chet Hitt and his Town’s End staff on their developments “to maximize our momentum and to attract other new businesses.”
• Collaborate with local and regional partners, such as the Canadian Valley Technology Center and the state Commerce Department, on workforce development.