CHICKASHA – Chet Hitt, the California entrepreneur with dreams of an invigorated downtown, will be a guest speaker at the 100th annual Chickasha Chamber of Commerce banquet April 21. “I’m going to do my best to inspire everyone,” he told Southwest Ledger.
The event was sold out by April 6, a Chamber employee said.
His Town’s End development will include a distillery, souvenir shop, restaurant and bar, a coffeehouse, stage and courtyard, Hitt said. The Chickasha project would be patterned after his Town’s End development in Apple Valley, California.
Hitt’s development will be located south of the U.S. 62/Choctaw Avenue viaduct in close proximity to the iconic 50-foot tall “Leg Lamp” statue that’s a replica of the one in the 1983 hit movie “A Christmas Story.”
A drive through Chickasha last year while in Oklahoma for his 40th high-school reunion at Anadarko sparked his ideas for investment of up to $5 million in the vicinity of the leg lamp.
In the four months since he revealed his plans to the city council, Hitt has bought the long-vacant Mill Building, the Savoy Hotel building which opened in 1902, the abandoned grain elevator and two nearby buildings, and has been negotiating a lease on the restored Rock Island Railroad Depot.
In less than a week Hitt and a construction crew he brought from California remodeled the ground floor of the Mill Building, in which coffees and breakfast items will be served. It also will house Town’s End memorabilia, clothing, retail items and a gift shop, and an information center “showcasing our projects.” Offices are planned for the upstairs at a later date.
Restoration of the Savoy interior is underway. Hitt estimated that by the middle of May he will start on renovations for the bar and a restaurant in the building. He said he’s not certain how long that project will take but he’s “looking to be done by year’s end.”
Hitt’s plans also include construction of a stillhouse and grill that will be “our granddaddy project.” A 1,000-liter copper still will be “our anchor showpiece” of the Town’s End development; his distillery will produce whiskey, bourbon and vodka, he said.
Hitt previously told the Ledger he’s not concerned about the quantity, nor the quality of the ‘hard’ water Chickasha draws from the Fort Cobb Reservoir. “We’ll use a reverse osmosis process to treat the water for our distillery operations,” he said.
The grain elevator site “will give us adjacent parking we need downtown” and will serve as a “billboard” displaying a large “Welcome to Old Town Chickasha” neon sign, he said. In addition, projectors showing animated videos that “fit the seasons of the year” will be shown on the side of the elevator.
Rickhouses will be built near the grain elevator to house approximately 25,000 barrels of whiskeys and bourbons “for the aging process.”
Recently Hitt expanded his revitalization plan to include a pedestrian bridge extending from the Grady County Fairgrounds to Old Town Chickasha over the railroad tracks, a hotel, amphitheater, water feature, and perhaps a splash pad, basketball court, skatepark, and a miniature train.
Hitt said he met with representatives of a company in California and discussed the train and railroad track for the Chickasha project. “We are putting together some proposals on that,” he said. “It would be a great addition to the overall project.” And during his conversations with local officials, “Somebody even mentioned a carousel, too,” Hitt recalled.
Chickasha Mayor Chris Mosley said in January that he called and talked to Apple Valley Mayor Scott Nassif for about an hour. “He said that every community around them is talking about” Hitt’s Town’s End Stillhouse and Grill in Apple Valley. Nassif also described Hitt as “a visionary,” Mosley said. Just below Hitt’s name on his business cards is printed “THE DREAMER.”
“All I’ve done is listen to the community about the things they want,” then presented a few proposals and suggestions, Hitt told the Ledger.
An example is the proposed pedestrian bridge spanning the railroad tracks. During conversations with various city leaders “I was told they’ve been talking about that bridge for 15 years,” Hitt said. “This is not my project. It’s the community’s project.”
The hotel he proposed for construction in the Old Town area would be “based on economics,” he said. “Maybe start with 75 rooms, or 50.”
The hotel, park, miniature train and pedestrian bridge “would bring tourism to Chickasha,” he contends – and Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell “is all about tourism,” Hitt said.
A partnership between the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma and the hotel could develop into a culinary arts district and a hotel/hospitality management degree program, he believes. Similarly, Hitt said officials at the Canadian Valley Technology Center campus in Chickasha “reached out to me and offered to help” with development of a hospitality employee training course at the Career Tech school.
“After all this effort to attract visitors to Old Town, we don’t want to serve food that’s just OK and provide mediocre service,” Hitt said.
He confirmed that he’s “looking for other sources of funding” – city, county, state, federal, and COVID relief funds – for some of his projects and proposals. “We are trying to tap into everything we can.”
Hitt said his plans are “not set in concrete; they’re just a place to start.”
“We listened and my team came up with a master plan and vision,” he said. “Now it’s time to go to work and figure out the options that the city wants and the needs of the fairgrounds. I want it to be a community project.”