George Kaiser Family Foundation outlines Invest North plan for Hawthorne, Whitman neighborhoods

Brandon Oldham, senior program officer at the George Kaiser Family Foundation, told the Greater Tulsa African American Affairs Commission on Jan. 14 that the foundation’s Invest North initiative will concentrate investments in historically Black neighborhoods in North Tulsa — including Hawthorne and Whitman — with the goal of expanding families’ pathways to prosperity.

“We call this initiative Invest North because we believe that the neighborhoods lack nothing but investment,” Oldham said. He listed four core focus areas: housing, community wellness, generational wealth and youth development and said the foundation has defined a geographic area for measurement that extends roughly from Apache on the south to 56th Street North.

The initiative will support a set of already announced and planned projects. Oldham highlighted the Envision Comanche redevelopment — a project he described as a roughly $190,000,000 investment — and said phase 1, dubbed Phoenix at 36th N, will be mixed income. “The Comanche project will be mixed income. So a third, a third, a third in terms of deep affordability, sliding scale, and then market rate,” he said. Oldham said Habitat for Humanity is partnering on neighborhood-scale homebuilding and pointed to a separate Woodshire development of about 30 homes that has broken ground.

The foundation is also backing parks and trail work, Oldham said. He described Chamberlain and Berry parks as undergoing “complete revitalization” that included resident-led design, and he cited the Flat Rock Creek Trails project — roughly 216 acres of flood plain land — as a plan to create green-space…