2024 was one of our busiest years, filled with remarkable projects and events.
We celebrated our 15th anniversary as a design firm that started in my house in 2009 with team meetings every week at B-dubs to review drawings together. Now we are entering our fifth year in historic downtown Sapulpa.
As project manager of the City of Sapulpa’s downtown revitalization plan, we completed a two-phase alley makeover in 2024 and made great progress towards the renovation of Dewey Avenue, which should start construction this spring. For these and other projects, we received Oklahoma Main Street’s new business award in ‘24, which celebrated our 2020 move to Sapulpa and subsequent works.
Also in 2024, we entered our fourth project with Evergreen Baptist Church, and our projects through Master’s Plan Church Design & Construction doubled, taking our Reed Architecture & Interiors work into 20+ states!
Even with all of that, our largest single project to date came when Sapulpa voters approved the 2023 bond for the Sapulpa Public Schools High School & Junior High. And now, after a year of design documentation, we’re ready to submit for building permits and go out for bids. It’s time to deliver on that promise we made to taxpayers, designing and building first-class 9-12th grade high school facilities. We believe we are on track, all while making sure we meet the needs of all our clients, students, teachers, and our community.
That is a heavy responsibility – to deliver $150 million+ of facilities to your hometown. I’ve made the comment to some of my team members that we have to get this right, because the people of Sapulpa voted for and deserve first-class, outstanding educational environments. We’ve got to deliver not just for this generation, but for generations to come.
I don’t think of these challenges as burdens. I see them as opportunities. It’s an honor that Sapulpa Public Schools selected Reed Architecture & Interiors to do this work, and I’m very proud of our team’s commitment to excellent results. In this project, we are living our core values of teamwork, trust, and respect for each person involved in this project. Getting those three things right is how we have fun and joy, which rounds out our core values. I believe our clients had fun with us, too, along with the people we’ve met in designing these projects.
With construction set to begin soon, 2025 promises more excitement as visible progress is made on the campus. Our local community will need a lot of patience, because construction is messy and things will constantly shift and adjust as we advance each project on the campus.
Workers will start tearing up the main strip of the Route 66 Christmas Chute (four blocks of Dewey Avenue downtown) around March. Hopefully we will complete the renovation by October.
About a mile east of there, demolition at the middle and high school will start in January, with construction beginning the next month. This will take about three years to complete.
There will be a few years of inconveniences and traffic disturbances, but that’s proof of positive change and growth. When I designed and built custom homes with my dad, the first thing we would do is give our clients a big bottle of Tylenol. “Just remember, this too shall pass,” we would tell them, with their dream home waiting on the other side.
The other side of 2025-26 will be a transformational change for our students, teachers, staff, and community. This will impact not just the schools, but all the surrounding area. The first-class school buildings will attract new investment in our community. And so will the Dewey streetscape improvements. Our team has seen momentum building in our town since we moved to Sapulpa. Several new businesses came to town, and several downtown buildings were sold and renovated. That private investment will continue to grow as momentum builds and the Route 66 Centennial arrives. The future of Sapulpa looks very, very bright!
When we moved to Sapulpa four years ago, our work here only included the 2014 SPS bond, when we did the Westside soccer and track stadium design and the George F. Collins Stadium renovations. To think of where we are today! We’ve participated in multiple projects with the City of Sapulpa and were trusted to deliver the entire scope of the 2023 SPS bond projects to our community. We’ve completed numerous projects on time and budget for multiple existing and new clients. And then there’s the amazing church work we’ve been chosen to provide with Master’s Plan! It has all been a tremendous blessing.
In June 2020, we opened our office here with eight people, and now we’re at 15, with two of our past summer interns set to join the team. That will put us really close to the “magic cap” I envisioned for David Reed Architecture at its start 15 years ago. With God’s blessing, we’ll continue to grow as we’re led. We’ll continue to deliver outstanding projects and build on our mission statement, to serve by design.
I wish you all a happy and prosperous 2025. God bless you all!
