Nonprofit group has a plan to buy, renovate Brookshire Motel

A Tulsa-based nonprofit organization wants to buy and redevelop the closed and fire-damaged Brookshire Motel into a gift shop, sandwich shop, farmers market, offices and classrooms.

The Oklahoma Family Empowerment Center Project aims “to empower individuals, strengthen families, help couples, enhance parenting skills, bring recovery to those struggling with an addiction, assist returning citizens after incarceration and more” regardless of cost.

A sharp-eyed Route 66 fan in Tulsa saw a segment on KOTV last week about the group’s plan to buy the motel. She Tivo’d the segment and put it on YouTube:

KOTV didn’t put the segment on the internet, and the GoFundMe page apparently wasn’t launched.

However, Sharyn Cosby, founder of In the Spirit Christian Church and executive director of the nonprofit, in an email directed me to a webpage that gives more detail about the Brookshire Motel proposal:

Restore the neon sign and turn the Cottage/Office building into a gift shop for Route 66 travelers.  Rooms 7 & 8 behind the cottage are to be a small coffee/sandwich shop to complement the retail space. Rooms 9, 10, 11, & 12 will be replaced with a two-story building that would provide ministers in training and/or interns residence quarters with garage spaces to be used for a farmer’s market. The field to the west (marked Former House Location) will be a community garden to help supply said Farmer’s Market. Rooms 21 thru 26 are to be the front of a larger building, which will house office/classroom/kitchen space for programming.   A large dining area will be added to the west of the larger building, which will provide an adequate buffer as to not take away from the potential retail possibilities of the front cottage.

The total budget for the plan is $750,000, which includes buying the property, renovations, new construction, furnishings and appliances.

This seems to be an ideal plan for the motel and helping that long-troubled neighborhood in east Tulsa. Reopening it as a motel probably isn’t in the cards except for the unlikely event that part of town suddenly gentrifies.

A fire damaged the main building of the closed Route 66 motel in February, but the Tulsa Route 66 Commission stated it wasn’t giving up on the property and remained hopeful of finding a buyer. In March, Preservation Oklahoma put the Brookshire on its annual list of the state’s most endangered historic properties.

According to Tulsa County property records, David Silver of Plano, Texas, bought the property from the Nathu Patel family living trust Nov. 8 for $70,000. The fair market value is $228,400.

Little is known about the Brookshire’s history, although its architecture indicates it likely was built in the 1940s.

(Hat tip to Allison Spicer; an image of the Brookshire Motel in Tulsa in 2012 by Nicolas Henderson via Flickr)