OKLAHOMA CITY –Representative Regina Goodwin, D-Tulsa, Cody Brandt, Tulsa STEPS along with Dr. Warren Blakney, Pastor of North Peoria Church of Christ and other community leaders will announce a $1.6 million grant awarded through the Biden administration's Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program. 

The grant will fund a feasibility study of the partial removal of a one-mile section of Interstate 244 dividing the Historic Greenwood District.

An interim study revealed that alternate connections would include Highway 75, and Gilcrease or Tisdale expressways, Rep. Goodwin said.

“Many different organizations and local leaders worked tirelessly to bring this project into fruition,” Rep. Goodwin said.

“We were initially in Greenwood on Kings Street,” said Dr. Blakney, Pastor of North Peoria Church of Christ. “We look forward to opening up the Greenwood area to the entire city to support Black businesses and encourage economic growth,” he added.

 “As a descendant of Tulsa Race Massacre survivors, I know the construction of I-244 was the second phase of destruction in the Greenwood community as houses and buildings were bulldozed,” Rep. Goodwin said.

Community organizers also seek to establish a community land trust to facilitate ?long-term redevelopment of nearly 30 acres that will open up with the removal of the one-mile northern leg of the interstate. 

The Reconnecting Communities Program is a bipartisan infrastructure law that invests $1 billion over five years to address ?infrastructure barriers that limit mobility, access, or economic development for ?communities across the country.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, federal highway policy of the mid-20th century allowed for, and often promoted, the construction of highways through Black cities and towns across the nation.

?"Transportation should connect, not divide, people and communities,” said U.S. ?Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “We are proud to announce the first ?grantees of our Reconnecting Communities Program, which will unite ?neighborhoods, ensure the future is better than the past, and provide Americans ?with better access to jobs, health care, groceries and other essentials.”  ?

According to the Department's Beyond Traffic 2045 Report, routes were chosen where land costs were the lowest or where political resistance was weakest, cutting through low-income and minority communities more often than not.

U.S. DOT estimates that at least 1 million people and businesses—including mom-and-pop shops, farms, and non-profits providing services—were displaced in the buildout of the highway system. In many instances entire neighborhoods were razed. Many of the communities destroyed by urban renewal and the construction of urban highways were once densely populated, vibrant, affordable, and accessible neighborhoods. 

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