After years of waiting, construction on the Dewey Streetscape Redesign is finally beginning this Tuesday, March 4th.
In a meeting with the downtown retailers and building owners earlier this week, City Manager Joan Riley confirmed the news and reassured the businesses that the City was behind them for the duration of the project.
“I want you to know that we’re here to promote you and your ideas,” she said. “It’s your business, and however is best to help get the word out, we’re here to help you do that.”
One of the most highly-anticipated parts of the 2020 GO Bond, the Dewey Streetscape Redesign proposal was exciting, ambitious, and divisive. It promises to fundamentally change the way historic downtown Sapulpa operates, as more of a shopping, eating and entertainment district rather than a pretty-but-passable town on Route 66.
The major points of change for the redesign are truly transformative: lanes of travel will be reduced from four to two, with a center median designed to be reminiscent of the trolley tracks of Sapulpa’s yesteryear. Sidewalks will be extended outward to accommodate more pedestrian traffic and allow for new retail and eatery opportunities like sidewalk sales and bistro tables. Parallel parking spots will be removed from the three-block stretch of Dewey Avenue and replaced with a multipurpose “loading lane” for dropping someone off or unloading cargo. The City will also be adding ADA-compliant parking to Water and Park Streets.
The Dewey Streetscape Redesign began as part of the 2020 GO Bond, but it’s not a city project. Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT) took on the project and its bidding process when they agreed to provide the additional funding needed to make the proposition happen.
The City of Sapulpa announced near the end of 2023 that the project would be postponed to 2025 after a bidding process by local contractors brought disappointing results.
Ten companies showed up to the pre-bid meeting in early November, but after the project was let out for bidding, only two companies submitted bids: Diversified Civil and Cherokee Pride. Both bids were over the budget by about $1 million, but the bigger issue, according to Riley, was the length of time for the project to be complete.
“The most telling of this was the amount of days that it would take to complete the project,” Riley said at the time. “(One contractor) stated 300 days, (Another), 290 days. About the same length,” she said. “We had all hoped they wouldn’t go past six months.”
The winning contractor on the bid by ODOT has said the project will not take more than 200 days, and construction is expected to complete and the road reopened by October 31st.
Also as a result of the project being undertaken by ODOT, the Christmas Chute committee made the decision to “push pause” on the Route 66 Christmas Chute for 2025 in order to negate the possibility that construction delays would cause the Chute to be canceled.
Although the Christmas Chute is planning a modified design to accommodate a new Dewey Street, “a lot of the design decisions for the chute cannot be made until the Streetscape project is closer to completion.”
For the next 200 days, Riley says that the most important thing is to help these affected downtown businesses survive by letting the community know that they’re still open for business.
“Communication is everything. Not just between us, but with the citizens. They’re going to take one look and go, ‘Oh, it’s closed.’ So if we don’t communicate that we’re still open, then they’re not going to think we are.”
See more details in the full episode of the Timeloop below.
