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KOTV displacing Race Riot Memorial?

The Whirled is reporting that KOTV is looking for a new location in the Brady Arts District, having outgrown the studio at 3rd & Frankfort that has been home to the station since it went on the air in 1949.

The land they're eyeing is south of I-244 between Detroit and Elgin. It is owned by the Oklahoma Historical Society. OHS bought it from the Tulsa Development Authority as a location for a proposed memorial to the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot. The official name of the proposed museum is the "John Hope Franklin Greenwood Reconciliation Memorial and Museum." The site is at the western boundary of the old Greenwood District, the area into which African-Americans were segregated.

I hope KOTV stays within the IDL, and my gripe is not with them at all. I just wonder if anyone has considered where this memorial is supposed to go now.

UPDATE: KOTV says the Whirled got it wrong. The memorial location is not the site they're exploring:

The News On 6 has begun a negotiation on a small piece of land in downtown, but has not made an agreement to buy it and negotiations continue on five larger pieces of land big enough for a new television station.

The Tulsa Development Authority and Griffin Communications, the parent company of The News On 6, are in negotiations to buy a piece of land that could be used for a parking lot. A newspaper report that a larger lot across the street would be used for the television station is, according to Griffin Communications, an incorrect report.

In fact, the piece of land mentioned in the newspaper story was purchased by the state as the site for the John Hope Franklin Oklahoma Race Riot Memorial. The News On 6 does plan to replace its current broadcasting building and will announce the new location by the first of October.

Griffin Communications owner David Griffin has said the new building will be in downtown Tulsa, inside the Inner Dispersal Loop.

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Comments (4)

XonOFF:

KOTV reported on their 6:00pm edition that the World's story was bogus and any new station would indeed be located inside the IDL.

It'll probably repeat at 10:00pm, but it wasn't on their website yet.

Dad:

Maybe they could put the memorial in the crypt where the "BELVEDERE" was buried?!?!?! Then it could be resurrected in the year 2107, maybe by then no one will really care about what happened in 1921.

sbtulsa:

How could the Tulsa Well Oiled Woiled mess this up? Did they contact Griffin for coment? Did they interview anyone about their facts?

The big story here is that they got their facts wrong on a point that could easily have been checked against their own reporting or public records. Is this lazy, stupid, purposeful or all of the above?

Bill:

This really exposes the inaccurate reporting that PJ Lassek gives on city issues. This is more evidence of her lack of credibility.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on August 3, 2007 8:31 AM.

The previous post in this blog was Tulsa 1957: A porch swing on East 5th Place.

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