The Wings of Freedom organization, which acquired the Saratoga Motor Hotel in Tulsa in 2020, hopes it will be partially open as a sober-living facility by Christmas.
Pastor Dixie Pebworth, director of Wings of Freedom, told KJRH-TV in Tulsa he hopes to have 29 rooms on the west side of the Route 66 motel transformed into efficiency units by late December.
‘We’re creating a sober center, and this will be for women, women with children and married couples with children. The first phase is phase one and that’s the horseshoe you see behind me, and it will have 86 rooms when we are done. We are taking the motel rooms and turning them into efficiency’s and trying to make them affordable for low-income housing,” said Pebworth.
The station reported the organization still needs about $1 million to finish the project. Wings of Freedom has a buy-a-brick program on its website.
The motel at 10115 E. 11th St. (aka Route 66) was known as the America’s Value Inn later in its lifespan, and its Googie sign was repurposed during the name change.
Route66Times.com reported the Saratoga “was an 85-unit that advertised free TV and continuous hi-fi music.”
(Vintage postcard image of the Saratoga Motor Hotel in Tulsa courtesy of 66Postcards.com)