Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum’s address on Tuesday to a roomful of local business representatives was largely a 30-minute love letter to the Tulsa Regional Chamber and the way the nonprofit does its job.

“Pretty much all the major achievements of which I am most proud that our community has been able to accomplish in the eight years that I’ve been mayorhave been in partnership with the Tulsa Regional Chamber,” Bynum said before about 200 people at the Chamber’s joint Board of Directors and Board of Advisors meeting at Southern Hills Country Club.

The outgoing mayor singled out the Chamber’s work in campaigning for the passages of three capital improvement packages: Vision Tulsa and Improve Our Tulsa 2 and 3.

In particular, he discussed the impact of three Vision Tulsa projects: Zink Lake, the expansion of the Gilcrease Museum, and bringing the USA BMX headquarters and BMX racing arena to Tulsa.

“Every time I’m blown away by the crowds that are there by the lake and by the (Williams Crossing Pedestrian) bridge,” Bynum said. “…There are people from all over the region at any given moment who are loving this new lake that we built.” 

The City projects that the $139.2 million Gilcrease expansion will be completed in 2026. The new structure will be the only one in the state capable of housing major traveling art exhibits, Bynum said.

“We as Tulsans own the greatest collection of American art and history, outside of what the federal government owns, in the Gilcrease collection, thanks to the generosity of Mr. Gilcrease and so many other contributors who came after him,” the mayor said. “And yet, for years, we were storing it in this run-down, old building.”

The USA BMX campus brings 100,000 people annually to the Greenwood District, Bynum said.

“It has made us the home of an Olympic sport,” he said. “When you have the potential to be an Olympic athlete, you go where the best trainers are. And the trainers at that facility are the Olympic athletes. Who better to train future generations of Olympians than the people who are the Olympians today?”

Improve Our Tulsa 2 contained the largest street improvement program in the history of the city, and Improve Our Tulsa 3 includes the renovation of the Tulsa Performing Arts Center.

“The Chamber has done such a great job of running those campaigns,” Bynum said. “Every one of them, in the time that I’ve been there, we have passed by a 2-to-1 margin or greater. That’s a great vote of confidence by the citizens.”

Bynum praised Chamber President and CEO Mike Neal’s eye for attracting talent to his organization and credited the Chamber for helping change the city’s economic development perspective.

In short, Tulsa stopped competing with the suburbs for projects and adopted a regional perspective, he said.

“By not spending all our energy fighting with the suburbs over retail development and instead focusing on working with the suburbs to recruit great employers to our city, and then help great employers in our community grow, we landed the two largest employers in the history of Tulsa – Amazon and Greenheck,” Bynum said. “We convinced American Airlines to invest half a billion dollars in their plant in Tulsa, the single-largest economic development investment in the history of our community, because we weren’t wasting our time and energy fighting with each other.”

Bynum’s speech preceded the Chamber’s annual Leadership Retreat, during which the organization’s board members discussed future priorities for the region.

“What do we want Tulsa to look like in 2050?” Bynum said. “What are our dreams for our city in the next quarter century, and then how do we work together to achieve them moving forward?

"This is the organization that has done more than any other to drive those positive changes over the past quarter century, and it will be over the next. But we have to have goals – and big ones.”