CHICKASHA — A California dreamer who envisions a multimillion-dollar redevelopment project in downtown Chickasha has widened his goal.
Chet Hitt, an Anadarko High School graduate who has lived in California for many years, announced his plan last December to invest as much as $5 million in development of several businesses in downtown Chickasha in the vicinity of the iconic “leg lamp” statue.
The “Town’s End” project would include a distillery, souvenir shop, restaurant, bar, coffeehouse, stage and courtyard, Hitt said. The Chickasha project would be patterned after his Town’s End development in Apple Valley, California.
Hitt told Southwest Ledger that he has bought the Mill Building, the Savoy Hotel, plus the nearby abandoned grain elevator and a couple of adjacent buildings. And Jim Cowan, director of the Chickasha Economic Development Council, said Hitt is “close” on negotiating a lease on the railroad depot.
His plans include renovating the Chickasha Milling Co. building, which has been vacant for years, and converting it into a coffeehouse that would serve “many types of roasted coffees, lattes, espressos, handmade breakfast items and desserts.”
It also would house Town’s End memorabilia, retail items and a gift shop, plus a Town’s End information center “showcasing our projects.” The upstairs will be devoted to office space, he said.
The Savoy Hotel, which opened in 1902, is undergoing interior renovation. Hitt said his plans for the remodeled building include a restaurant and bar. He said the menu will be “barbeque and hometown style foods,” and is searching for “a late 1800s to early 1900s bar to be one of the grand centerpieces.”
Construction of a building of approximately 10,000 square feet would house the Town’s End Stillhouse & Grill. The central feature would be a 1,000-liter copper still, complete with mash cooking tanks, fermentation tanks, storage tanks, and alcohol filtration and blending tanks, Hitt said.
The still “will be the anchor of the Town’s End project” and will be showcased in a brick, iron and glass tower “for maximum exposure,” he said.
The stillhouse and grill “will be our granddaddy project,” he said. A double-column still approximately 30 feet tall will be “our anchor showpiece.” The still will produce up to a million bottles of whiskey, bourbon and vodka per year, he said. Guided tours will be provided “to explain the distillation process of producing spirits,” he said.
The distillery alone will cost $1 million, he said during his presentation to the city council in December.
The restaurant will feature dry-aged beef “along with our 34-ounce Tomahawk Steak.” The menu also will include seafood, pork chops, rack of lamb, and other specialty dining items. Several types of cocktails will be served, too, he said.
The renovated depot, which was constructed in 1910, “is the staple of the Old Town,” Hitt said. His goal is to use the building for special events, weddings, classrooms, and community space. Town’s End “will lease the building by placing funds, to be determined, into endowment trusts,” Hitt said. “The purpose is to build capital in that we don’t touch the principal, but can use the interest from the funds invested for maintenance. This is not a short-term program…”
Expanded plans: hotel and bridge
During a March 27 ‘pep rally’ in the restored Rock Island Depot that attracted a host of local residents and several municipal and state officials, Hitt unveiled his enlarged plans that include a hotel and a bridge.
Although Hitt did not reveal his estimated cost of the hotel and bridge, he did indicate that he thinks the State of Oklahoma should contribute some funds to the projects.
The Drover would be a 75-room hotel “with complete culinary classrooms and hospitality training,” he said. “This will meet the needs of the necessary expansion of the fairgrounds while educating our children for the workforce of the future in the culinary and hospitality industry.”
Chickasha has “a long history” of supporting the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, said J.P. Audus, the school’s vice president for advancement and development.
“Not everybody wants to attend a college with 50,000 students,” he said. A degree program at USAO focused on the hospitality industry could prepare students for a career in hospitality management or hotel management, “or maybe provide them with a job in restaurant or hotel dining in a partnership with Town’s End.”
USAO graduates with a degree in hospitality management, Audus said, “could pursue jobs in every segment of the hospitality industry: hotels, restaurants, casinos, cruise lines, resorts, event businesses, and theme parks.”
At the Grady County Fairgrounds and Event Center – the third largest in Oklahoma, surpassed by only Oklahoma City’s and Tulsa’s fairgrounds – “we focus on family and corporate events as well as livestock shows,” Executive Director Andy Maher said. “We lack hotel rooms” in Chickasha, so competitors and their families “have to go to Norman or Oklahoma City” to spend the night, he said. “We want these people to stay here, not leave.”
Presumably the Drover Hotel could alleviate some or all of that problem.
Hitt also envisions a “railroad and industrial-style” pedestrian bridge spanning the railroad tracks between the Grady County Fairgrounds and Old Town Chickasha.
The grain elevator will serve as “a billboard,” Hitt told the Ledger. “It will feature a ‘Welcome to Old Town Chickasha’ neon sign.” Acreage around the elevator will provide additional parking space and will support rickhouses where Town’s End whiskeys and bourbons will be stored during the aging process, he said.
The iconic leg lamp statue – a 50-foot-tall replica of the one made famous in the 1983 film “A Christmas Story” – is “the main tourist attraction” in the new downtown park, Hitt noted; it stands adjacent to the refurbished train depot.
In January “we counted more than 70,000 people who visited downtown Chickasha,” Cowan told the Ledger recently. “That did not include employees,” he added. “It was a 23% increase over the previous year – and the leg lamp statue was a major attraction.”
Total sales tax for Chickasha during the 2022 Christmas holiday “was up 13% versus the same time in 2021,” Cowan noted. “We attribute that to the increase in visitors to the leg lamp.”
The $1.4 million leg lamp statue “gives people from out-of-town a reason to come to our town,” Mayor Chris Mosley said.
Tim Elliott, owner and chief executive officer of Standley Systems who was instrumental in development of the leg lamp statue, recalled that on a vacation to Alaska he stopped in Winslow, Arizona. He wanted to view a pair of statues entitled “Standin’ on the Corner,” made famous in the megahit “Take It Easy” sung by The Eagles and released in 1972.
“Tourism is the front door to economic development,” Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell told those attending Hitt’s event.
When he was elected to office in 2018, “our downtown was barely surviving,” Mosley remembers. City leaders began to overhaul dilapidated buildings downtown with local funds, proceeds from the city’s 8% hotel/motel tax and the $2.7 million balance that remained from a five-year special excise tax voters approved in 2011 for “economic development purposes”
Phase 2 would “allow the community to have an open canvas to the future,” Hitt said. He has proposed a miniature Western train running on tracks “equivalent to two and a half football fields” that could be built as an additional attraction in the park.
“The leg lamp has already shown its worth by the media coverage, news interest and new business it has rallied – one of those being Town’s End,” Elliott said.
“I’m just a dreamer,” said Hitt. “I dream big.”
“A successful city has a strong, vibrant downtown area,” City Manager Keith Johnson said.
“We’ve got an opportunity to hit the fast lane,” Maher said. With the Land’s End project, “We could hit it in the next 18 months.”
“Today our past and future collide,” Cowan said. “We’ve been building momentum for the last year and a half to two years. It’s our time.”