Residents plead for city to widen road before building new shops near Turkey Mountain

TULSA, Okla. — Residents living near Turkey Mountain are pleading for the city to improve Elwood before allowing a new set of shops and offices built on the northwest corner of an already busy intersection.

FOX23 was at a Tulsa Metro Area Planning Commission meeting in late-September and spoke with residents again Tuesday about the building of the new Tulsa Hills Marketplace which will put in more commercial space on the northwest corner of 71st Street and South Elwood. Elwood is the only road drivers can use to access the two parking lots people park at to use the amenities at Turkey Mountain.

“We are not anti-growth,” Resident Don Ray who lives in the neighborhood directly west of Turkey Mountain and north of the proposed new commercial center. “We love growth, but what we are against is leaving Elwood as it is while the area builds up around it.”

Don and his wife Marsha have lived at their home on the west side of Turkey Mountain for more than twenty years and have seen the area explode in both popularity and development.

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“We love living over here,” Marsha said. “We love that the area is thriving, but this road can’t take much more.”

Currently, Elwood is only a single lane in each direction (North and South), and at 71st, there is a lane for traffic to turn left, but the turn is not a dedicated green arrow, it is up to the driver’s discretion as to when it is safe for them to turn on to 71st going eastbound.

“Until they put in a dedicated left turn lane for people trying to get on to 71st, it’s just going to be clogged because let’s face it, some people have more courage to turn left than others and some will go through a whole cycle without ever trying,” Don said.

Marsha said she and Don have to plan their days around busy times because there certain hours of the day, even on weekends, when getting out of their neighborhood isn’t possible.

“There are just times every day when we are trapped,” Marsha said. “We know when we need to stay home.”

Marsha said with the addition of a new commercial-type shopping center, but no improvements to Elwood actually happening yet, they are concerned they are setting themselves up to the trapped in their homes.

“I think we’ll get to a point where we’ll see days where we won’t ever get out of here if it stays the way it is,” she said.

The residents of the Turkey Mountain neighborhood held public meetings with city officials and were told a traffic study is in the works, but there were no firm plans as to when a new and improved Elwood would happen.

Residents showed up to a recent Tulsa Metro Area Planning Commission to plead with the city to demand Elwood be repaired and improved before any construction on what will be the Tulsa Hills Marketplace begins.

A representative for the project said the developers are donating more than the usual amount of right-of-way to the city for future Elwood improvements, but they too had not heard of any firm plans to actually get construction started to handle what is expected to be additional traffic.

An official with the neighborhood association told the TMAPC that at the very least, a protected left turn lane onto 71st needs to be completed before the new shopping center opens.

Residents were told the plans for the development are still preliminary, and the city is still working on plans for Elwood, but those living on the west side of Turkey Mountain will continue to insist road work before building work.

“We get some breaks when school is out for the summer, but when school is in session, there are some days even south of 71st when we know we can’t even try,” Don said about Elwood south of 71st Street next to Jenks Northwest Elementary School.

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