The Lobeck Taylor Family Foundation on Wednesday announced it will develop a $5.5 million Mother Road Market as an entrepreneurial food hall and community space just off Route 66 in Tulsa.
The Mother Road Market will redevelop the 1939 Scrivner-Stevens Grocery as spaces for budding graduates of the Kitchen 66 food incubator.
KTUL-TV gave more details about the development:
The 26,000-square-foot development will feature 16 small shops at 320 square feet each with one shop at 640 square feet. It will also feature a bar, a 640-square-foot space for pop-up restaurants, an indoor/outdoor seating area, children’s activities and a special event space.
The anchor tenant is Andolini’s. Leasing and construction begin in August with an expected completion date in late spring 2018.
Andolini’s is a popular pizza and Italian restaurant that initially began a few years ago on the Cherry Street district in Tulsa. It later opened satellite locations in the suburbs of Broken Arrow, Owasso and Jenks.
Here’s the video report from KTUL:
The Tulsa World also reported the Mother Road Market will feature a general store, a demonstration kitchen and a commercial kitchen.
The news conference showed two artist’s renderings of the possible look of the Mother Road Market. I favor the first one as a sort of homage to the nearby historic Meadow Gold sign, but both are pretty cool and feature a Route 66 shield prominently.
The Mother Road Market will be at 1124 S. Lewis Ave., a stone’s throw from the 11th Street alignment of Route 66.
Above is a Google Street View excepted image of the Scrivner-Stevens Grocery building. Scrivner-Stevens once was a regional wholesale grocery chain, based in Oklahoma City, that dated to 1917, according to an archived article in The Oklahoman newspaper. The store in Tulsa was one of its early satellite ventures.
Here are artist’s renderings of the Mother Road Market interior:
Mother Road Market already has a dedicated website.
The foundation undoubtedly became inspired by the Fuel 66 food-truck court that opened last year on 11th Street; the Mother Road Market announcement occurred there. The foundation also was about to mark its 20th anniversary and saw the Mother Road Market announcement as a way to celebrate it.
The Lobeck Taylor Foundation is named after former Tulsa mayor Kathy Taylor and her husband, Bill Lobeck, who once owned Thrifty Car Rental and National Car Rental.
(Images via the Mother Road Market website and Google Street View)