BARTLESVILLE, Okla. — When the First Christian Church closed their doors, they donated their building to the city of Bartlesville.
Bartlesville Vice-Mayr Jim Curd said, “”We’ve acquired the building. Now we’re just looking for ways to use the building.”
Curd said they first looked at making it a convention center, but the cost was a little too high for the city right now.
“Look at some ways we can continue to combine it with the Community Center and find alternate uses for it at this point,” Curd said. “[We will] wind alternate uses for it at this point, and seeing how down the road, if the convention center continues to be a good idea for developing this entire property with perhaps another hotel or something like that down the road.”
The church has been described as prime real estate, located in the Tower Arts District downtown, near the iconic Price Tower.
Curd said, “Our community center is one-of-a-kind here, our Price Tower is one-of-a-kid, and now we’ve added in the Unity Center here to really tie them all together. So this is just very widely appreciated by the public, and I know they’re waiting to see what we can do for it too someday.”
The city has put out a request for proposals from the public in hopes to get some ideas.
Lisa Cary with the United Way said, ““It’s very generous of the First Christian Church to donate the building to the community, to make sure that it can be utilized to help our citizens.”
The United Way building is across the street from the building.
Cary said Bartlesville has a childcare shortage and wants the building to be used for childcare.
She said, “Making sure that we can give some quality care, state-of-art childcare really would not only pay dividends right now, but it would be in the future as well.”
“We’ve had a lot of groups interested [in it],” Curd said. “We’ve had some theatre productions rehearsing in it. We’ve got a church that’s rented it in the short term here. So, we’ve got a lot of activity and a lot of desire to use the building.”
The city said whoever moves into the property will not pay any rent, but they’ll be responsible for paying for utilities, maintenance and insurance.
The city of Bartlesville plans to dedicate up to $2 million to help develop the property through a future bond proposal.