Supporters of Failed Vision2 Looking for Another Way to Improve the Airport

• Joe Wertz
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  Joe Wertz was a reporter and managing editor for StateImpact Oklahoma from 2011-2019. He reported on energy and environment issues for national NPR audiences and other national outlets. He previously worked as a managing editor, assistant editor and staff reporter at several major Oklahoma newspapers and studied journalism at the University of Central Oklahoma.

Tulsa County voters soundly rejected Vision2, but supporters of improving the city-owned airport-industrial complex have vowed to find another way.

“We cannot stop this process,” Vision2 co-chairman Don Walker tells the Tulsa World. “If the voters did not like this proposal, we as citizens are going to have to find another way to reinvest in these facilities and get them to the point that American Airlines or another airline can use these facilities as long-term maintenance hangars.”

Officials with the bankrupt airline were following the Vision2 vote and were disappointed by the rejection, the World reports. Improving the Tulsa maintenance base is important, but airline officials wouldn’t comment on any “future moves.”

The facility is outdated, and Tulsa is in danger of losing the AA jobs to another city that’s more willing to pay for a modernized complex, supporters and officials at the Tulsa Metro Chamber warn. If American does leave, Tulsa will have a hard time luring in a new tenant to occupy the outdated complex.

Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett, the third Vision2 co-chairman, sounded a similar note that aerospace jobs at the city-owned industrial facilities around the airport are too important to lose.

“We still have 25,000 jobs that are in jeopardy,” Bartlett said.