The long-planned Route 66 Experience facility in Tulsa may break ground by April or May 2018 and open to the public by November 2019 if all goes to plan, according to an email from the Route 66 Alliance’s executive director.
Ken Busby said about $13 million has been raised for the Route 66 Experience, which will be built near the Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza next to Route 66 and the Arkansas River. About $23 million in pledges is required to begin the project.
Busby said back in December about $13 million was raised, but clarified this week $500,000 had been raised since that time and that the earlier figure was a “rounded-off” number. He said he expects another $500,000 raised by year’s end.
“I’m working major corporations for funding, including American Airlines, Polaris, the Chickasaw Nation, and these asks take time …” Busby stated in an email.
I’d noticed Michael Wallis, co-founder of the Route 66 Alliance, had been more active online in recent weeks in touting the Route 66 Experience.
In one email, he said the complex would make Tulsa the “Capital of Route 66” and attract thousands of foreign and domestic visitors to the city.
In an email this week, Wallis sent this drone-footage video of the site where the Route 66 Experience would be built.
The Route 66 Experience project initially was announced in May 2015, with a projected groundbreaking of summer 2016 and a projected opening of 2018. But such a facility in Tulsa had been proposed as far back as 2003.
The Route 66 Experience will contain interactive exhibits, a restaurant and a retail shop within its 42,000 square feet.
(Artist’s rendering of the proposed Route 66 Experience in Tulsa)