Black Wall Street Square will kick off its first phase of construction Friday on the north Tulsa development featuring 25 single-family townhouses.
Cameron Walker, president of Boomtown Development, said its concrete contractor will begin pouring the footings, a milestone that took over two years due to the area’s infrastructure.
“Most of north Tulsa’s infrastructure is about 110 years old, and so it’s undersized, it’s old and it’s crumbling,” Walker said. “And so everything that we kind of uncovered as we began digging into the ground had to be replaced.”
The $8.4 million project located on the northeast corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and East Reading Street will include four buildings.
Eight townhomes will be market rate units developed and sold by McGee Enterprises Inc. Those eight will feature two-car garages, three bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms.
The other 17 will be slightly smaller with three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms and a single-car garage. Those buying the smaller units will receive some form of down payment assistance subsidies to keep pricing affordable.
“One of the things north Tulsa needs, in addition to affordable units, is they need market-rate investment,” said City Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper, who represents the area. “You need houses that are being built at all sorts of income levels that really create a healthy and vibrant community.”
When the request for proposal to develop the land went out in 2021, Hall-Harper said she reached out to Terry McGee, founder of McGee Enterprises. She believed he would create a unique project that would address housing needs in north Tulsa.
McGee partnered with Green Country Habitat for Humanity and Boomtown Development, its sister company, as well as Twenty20 Management to break ground on the project.
McGee died in 2022 in a drowning accident, which caused delays for the project. His son, Dominic McGee, then took over and continued with the proposal and infrastructure work.
Walker said the name “Black Wall Street Square” was an idea that came from the late founder. Though it is not located in the Historic Greenwood District, its name is meant to honor its legacy, which in turn has helped attract funders to help employ Black-owned businesses.
“We are being very intentional about recruiting and hiring north Tulsa, particularly Black-owned businesses to help on this project,” Walker said.
About three months ago, Walker hosted a Black contractor meeting in partnership with the Black Wall Street Chamber of Commerce that introduced the project and its bid process.
The business meeting is one of several community meetings Hall-Harper has held since the project’s inception. She wanted to emphasize that Black Wall Street Square is not a new idea, nor has the project been dormant over the past few years.
“A lot has happened in two years,” Hall-Harper said. “Now we’re at a place where we are ready to break ground on the actual structures. You have to have infrastructure in the ground before you build a home. And so the infrastructure work is what’s been taking place for the last two years.”
Both phase one and two will likely take about nine to 10 months barring any weather delays.
The first phase will be constructing the first two buildings, footings are the first step of the process. The final two buildings will be constructed during the second phase.
Ismael Lele is a Report for America corps member and writes about business in Tulsa for The Oklahoma Eagle. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting this link.
