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If, as the old saying goes, perception is reality, Tulsa Development Authority has a real problem. And it’s a big one.

Many of the people TDA says it is out to help don’t trust the organization. They think it is out to take their property — preferably with little or no notice — at a discounted price.

If a deal can’t be struck, they’ll take it through eminent domain.

Those were the perceptions and fears that drove hundreds of Tulsans to City Hall on March 27 to object to TDA’s proposed Unity Heritage/Greenwood Neighborhoods and Crosbie Heights sector plans. A sector plan is another name for an urban renewal plan.

Charlotte Combs, 65, was one of the 213 people allowed in City Council Chambers for the hearing. Hundreds more never made it inside.

“Immediately, it was a flashback, and the first thing that came to my mind, if they are allowed to do it (by eminent domain), where would I move? Where would I relocate?” said Combs, who lives in the Heritage Hills neighborhood. “At my age, and like some of my other neighbors ... we’re at the age now we really don’t have a desire to relocate to any other area.”

Combs’ flashback was to decades-old city urban renewal projects north of downtown that helped clear the way for highways, private commercial development and higher-education facilities.

In the process, she said, homes and private businesses, including some on Black Wall Street, were cleared and their owners relocated. Some businesses survived, some didn’t.

“There were several business that were there,” Combs said. “We had our own theater there. It was called the Rex Theater. There was a hat shop for men and men’s clothing. It was thriving businesses that were located on Greenwood at that particular time.”

The City Council’s meeting ended with councilors voting to table the sector plans indefinitely.

Combs said she left the meeting with the belief that councilors understood that she and the others who packed the meeting room have no intention of selling their properties under any circumstances.

“I am a single parent, and I worked very hard to purchase my home,” Combs said. “With my upbringing and my faith in God, I got up every morning and went to work, and I made sure I never missed a payment on my home, just like the rest of us.”

Mayor G.T. Bynum got the message loud and clear.

“I sent a letter to TDA’s board last week requesting a freeze on any use of eminent domain by that authority while we work through systemic issues that clearly need to be addressed,” Bynum said. “I don’t want any Tulsan to ever fear that an unaccountable government agency is going to take their home away.

“I believe the problems highlighted recently present an opportunity for us to make changes that deliver better outcomes for the citizens of Tulsa. I will have more to share on this in the weeks ahead.”

Outpouring of anger

The City Council, which must approve all sector plans — also known as urban renewal plans — held a public hearing March 13 to take questions on the Unity Heritage/Greenwood Neighborhoods and Crosbie Heights sector plans. Fewer than 10 people showed up.

Two weeks later, on March 27, with the council set to take public comments on the plans and the possibility of a vote on the agenda, the line of people was out the door of City Hall. The night before, Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper, whose district includes many of the neighborhoods included in the plan, posted a Facebook message that read, in part: “The Greenwood Unity Sector Plan could potentially displace over 2,000 District residents if passed by City Council.”

O.C. Walker, executive director of TDA, has consistently said that the organization has no plans, or funding, to acquire any properties within the two new sector plans. And he described the list of properties in the blight study that accompanied the Greenwood Unity sector plan — each designated by condition — as an inventory of properties, nothing more.

But that argument doesn’t sit well with people like Ronald Stewart, a Tulsa firefighter who lives in the historic Greenwood neighborhood. He was one of the many people who couldn’t get into the March 27 meeting.

“You’re basically listing our properties and you grade them on this scale and put it out there to the public,” Stewart said. “In my opinion, it painted the picture that we’re living in the sub-par neighborhoods, and it deserves to be taken over and re-purposed for the benefit of the public, which I don’t agree with at all.”

Attorney Stephanie Sinclair, who lives in The Heights, had a similar reaction when she saw her home on the list of properties in the blight study. The prospect that TDA would have the authority to use eminent domain to remove properties only boiled her blood more.

“It’s bigger than me,” she said. “When you put people or their residences on a list like that, you are going to see major fear, emotional reaction. That is most certainly what happened.”

The assessment of properties is one of several factors, including dilapidation and deterioration, arrested economic development and unsanitary or unsafe conditions that are considered by TDA when determining whether an area is blighted.

Sinclair, who lives next to a vacant house in an otherwise well-established neighborhood, said the blight study lacks much-needed nuance.

“You can’t put a list of everybody’s houses when there is one (bad) house in a two-block area,” she said.

Sinclair is also skeptical of Walker’s claim that TDA has no plans in place to develop the areas within the sector plans.

“ ‘Never do it’ means we’re probably going to do it, just happens it’s not you,” she said. “The words are so often used in city planning endeavors. In the legal world, those are red herrings.”

Forgetting history

Realtor Burlinda Radney tells the story of a woman who lived near Quincy Avenue and Pine Street for years before being relocated decades ago as part of an urban renewal project. Now, she’s in her 90s, living alone in a house near Reservoir Hill that’s paid off.

“For her district, with a broad brush, to be described as being blighted, that potentially could reduce the amount that her heirs might inherit or, even more directly, if her block was to be redeveloped, then the amount of compensation that she would receive for her home,” Radney said.

Urban renewal isn’t working for the people it was intended to help, Radney said. The home near Reservoir Hill, for example, is valued at half what an identical home in Florence Park would command.

“I think the primary issue is the same one that anyone would have, in the sense that eminent domain — public taking — is a big deal when you talk about private property, and it is even more so when are talking about someone’s home, where they live,” Radney said.

Attorney Jim Goodwin said he believes the sector plans — and the process for adopting them — reflect an insensitivity on the part of TDA and the city to the history of Tulsa’s African-American community. This is an area that was home to the 1921 race massacre and less-than-stellar urban renewal efforts at places like OSU-Tulsa.

“Tulsa has been very ambivalent about that history, signified by the fact that it has one street with two names — Martin Luther King and the other Cincinnati,” he said.

Rather than give millions of dollars to developers to build in north Tulsa, Goodwin said, why not put money into the pockets of the property owners themselves?

“Urban renewal came about with a promise to the people in the neighborhood to revitalize, and that never happened,” Goodwin said. “… That plan money could have been appropriated for low-interest loans. People aren’t looking for a handout, they are looking for opportunities to be part of that historic neighborhood and not give way to the interests of gentrification.”

A cup of sugar

Charlotte Combs can look out her living room window and see a massive old tree rising above her neighbor’s home. She loves it, in part because she has watched it grow, along with her four children, over the past 35 years.

It’s part of the neighborhood, part of a lifestyle where property owners know one another and are always there to help.

“You can go and ask your neighbor, ‘Girl, can I have a cup of sugar? Can I have a cup of flour, whatever?’ ” Combs said. “This is the type of connection we have with one another, and we don’t want to lose that, and we want our children to experience the same thing that we’ve done.”

Combs and her son, Chris Morgan, say they have no problem with appropriate development and love what projects like ONEOK Field and the BOK Center have done for the area.

But they want to be part of the development process, not an afterthought.

“I don’t want to be forced out because changes are made,” Morgan said. “Why is it that we can’t reap the benefits of the changes that are happening because we have been here — a majority of us — all our lives?”

Related: TDA attorney responds to public's concerns about urban renewal plans: Tulsa Development Authority attorney Jot Hartley understands the public’s confusion and consternation regarding the organization’s recently proposed sector plans. So he discussed some of the main issues of concern with the Tulsa World.

Previous coverage

Kevin Canfield 918-645-5452 kevin.canfield@tulsaworld.com Twitter: @aWorldofKC

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