Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame....

by Jaime Adame

Deborah Brown has few doubts about the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame's commitment to children and music education.

The founder and executive director of the Deborah Brown Community School decided to have her new charter school, Sankofa, housed on the floor below the Hall of Fame in the Union Depot building downtown.

"I just thought it was a wonderful marriage of sorts between the two entities," said Brown.

The charter school planned for middle-schoolers doesn't stand alone from the Deborah Brown Community School just yet. Brown said having a new president at Langston University, the school's sponsor, contributed to the delay, along with the university having to ask the Oklahoma State University Board of Regents to allow the sponsorship.

Nevertheless, children began in August to attend school at the depot building. But the presence of the classrooms has become another in several points of contention between the Jazz Hall of Fame and its landlord, the Tulsa County Industrial Authority.

Among the questions: How can a school move in without having any sort of lease agreement or informing the county? Also unsettled is the approximately $50,000 the county says it's owed by the nonprofit organization, a mix of electric bill payments, downtown assessments and insurance fees.

The county has set a Sept. 4 deadline, basically, with a special meeting scheduled for that date that could potentially involve taking action -- with county officials pointing out publicly how they think the jazz hall has violated terms of its lease.

But the county and the Jazz Hall of Fame don't have a typical landlord-tenant relationship.

Dylan Spaulding

The county purchased and renovated the building with Vision 2025 funds, public dollars collected from a sales tax hike approved by county voters in 2003. Vision 2025 allocated $4 million for the project. The Hall of Fame -- created in the late 1980s -- eagerly moved from the Greenwood Cultural Center into the renovated space, paying essentially no rent as part of the deal.

After the trains stopped stopping in the late 1960s, the depot sat vacant until the early 1980s. But since that time, the roughly 50,000-square-foot structure housed a variety of tenants, though not always filling the entire building. The county purchased the structure from oil and gas giant Williams Companies, and the Hall of Fame moved into the building June 2007.

How the deal was reached matters to Tulsa City Councilor Jack Henderson.

"The voters voted on that to be the Jazz Hall of Fame," Henderson said, adding, "I hope the county intends to let it remain."

He said that he plans to visit with county commissioners about the conflict, but acknowledged he hasn't yet gotten details from them about the dispute.

Publicly, Tulsa County Commissioner John Smaligo and Hall of Fame Chief Executive Officer Jason McIntosh seem intent on minimizing the conflict.

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