By Caleb Wortz
Sapulpa’s City Council met this Monday for two meetings involving upcoming events like the Christmas Chute, downtown construction, and an overview of the Route 66 Blowout.
Monday’s study session began with an overview of upcoming events from marketing director Lucy Lawson. There will be a grand opening of Arrowhead Land Company on Oct 20 celebrating their new home office with agents from sixteen different states.
Roads will begin to close for the construction of the Christmas Chute on the 28th of Oct at 5:00 a.m. You then have the kickoff of Jingle Bells and the “Downtown Holiday Open House” on November 4 and an event on Nov 25 called “Shop Small Saturday”.
There will also be a “Cookie Crawl” on December 7th to bring business to different downtown shops.
Various photo opportunities around the Chute will be expanded this year. It will be a requirement that every theme involved will be accompanied by a photo opportunity.
One of the bigger complaints from last year’s Chute was the aesthetics of the construction barricades blocking the roads. This was addressed and this year barriers and barricades will be appropriately themed and there will be a gate that can open to emergency vehicles.
There will be ten pop-up shops that will be moved further down towards Oak Street this year so as to not block any businesses.
The council then heard from city manager Joan Riley regarding the Route 66 Blowout and Cruise Night, how it went, and its future. Riley covered the continual growth of this event and that it may be necessary to move it to the other side of the tracks down the line.
Concerns with this growth revolved around the density of both cars and people in the downtown area which could lead to accidents or issues. There were a number of incidents such as burnouts and an individual doing donuts in an intersection.
The last item discussed during the study session was the progress of the alleyway construction downtown. There were slowdowns due to OG&E and eclectic due which resulted in more underground cabling.
There were rough estimations of when work may be completed but according to the construction contract, it’ll be January 10. The roadwork on Cheyenne is also now complete.
The following regular council meeting mostly involved discussion of the Land Development Act and the connected public hearings. This included more information on how this act will pull a portion of funds from unrestricted sales tax to put back into Sapulpa’s progress and developments.
All agenda items during the council session were approved.
