Published: May 07, 2008 12:48 am            

Do not abandon downtown Enid

So! They’re going to abandon Convention Hall, are they? That really would be a shame. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again — we need to find new ways to use our historic downtown buildings and not just step back and leave them for the bulldozer.

It seems to me in just the past year or two I hear more and more talk of moving things out of downtown Enid. First, the city of Enid took control of Cherokee Strip Conference Center out of the hands of Main Street Enid Inc., removing an important segment of the organization’s income and making it difficult for it to operate.

Then, when a storm damaged the Public Library of Enid and Garfield County I kept hearing strong background murmurs that maybe the library should be moved from its present location on the south side of the downtown Square. I believe at one point the Northern Oklahoma College Enid campus was mentioned. They have a library out there, too.

And now, the Enid High School indoor sporting events are going to be moved out of Convention Hall to the Mabee Center on the NOC Enid campus — 20 blocks east of the downtown Square. They say Convention Hall is too old-fashioned and needs to be remodeled so people in wheelchairs can access the building, restrooms and concessions.

In the past several years a couple of our town’s movers and shakers have shown a real interest in reviving downtown Enid. Paul Allen and his Advance Food Co. invested well more than $1 million in a downtown baseball park that people from out of town ooh and aah over. And, it has brought a lot of people downtown.

Advance Food also has invested a great deal in the renovation of the venerable Knox Building at Broadway and Washington and turned it into a modern office building. The Knox Building is as old as Convention Hall, and apparently is serving Advance Food well. Enid Symphony Orchestra occupies the top two floors of the renovated and remodeled Knox building.

People have invested money in several downtown restaurants that seem to be doing rather well. And we have heard some of our more prominent citizens talk about maybe building a hotel that would be tied in, somehow, with Cherokee Strip Conference Center.

The old building at Garriott and Monroe — once upon a time housed a drug store and grocery store, a barber shop and some other small businesses, with second-floor apartments used by student nurses who were in training at Enid General Hospital across the street — has been purchased, along with the old Rock Island depot at Second and Garriott, by the D.C. Bass Construction Co. family. They have repaired both buildings and sealed them to prevent further deterioration, hoping in the not-too-distant future they will evolve into something different and charming — an asset to Enid.

Our city fathers and the businesspeople in our city need to look beyond the black and white, bottom line numbers and realize downtown Enid is more than a big circle of buildings. It is the historic core of our city, and it is still alive and breathing.

Just look at what Harold Hamm has done with the old Hotel Youngblood and Bass Building. He turned them into a pair of really nice, and I do mean really nice, office buildings. They are really uptown.

Convention Hall has hosted the likes of 1920s opera star Madam Schumann Heinck, President George Herbert Walker Bush, Pavlov and her Russian dance troupe, John Philip Sousa and the Marine Corps Band, Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys, Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians, Saturday Night Wrestling, boxing matches promoted by Enid tavern owner and professional boxer Dude McCook, Walkathons, Northwest Oklahoma and Garfield County Junior Livestock shows and on and on.

I can remember when the line to buy tickets to get into a Bob Wills concert extended from the ticket window at Convention Hall out the door, down the steps, across Cherokee Street, down Independence past Si-Siler’s Used Car lot, past the fire station and across the alley behind Kress’.

It has hosted more fun, more happiness, more music and more big names than any venue in the state.

For heavens sake — somebody please — don’t let these bottom-liners abandon Convention Hall.



Brown is a former managing editor of the Enid Morning News.