Good neighbors

Iron Gate and the Pearl District clash over proposed soup kitchen at 3rd and Peoria

Palpable frustration hung in the air as business owners and residents filed into the August 25 Board of Adjustment meeting. In protest of Iron Gate’s request for a zoning exception, many carried signs reading, “SAVE THE PEARL DISTRICT” and “REJECT! BOA #21942.”

A non-profit soup kitchen and grocery pantry serving Tulsa’s working poor and homeless, Iron Gate recently announced plans to move from Trinity Episcopal Church at 5th and Cincinnati to an unused lot at 3rd and Peoria. The state-of-the-art facility they plan to construct on the site would total 16,000 square feet—more than five times the size of their current location. Because the site is zoned Industrial, Iron Gate must obtain the Board of Adjustment’s approval in order to proceed.

Soon after Iron Gate’s announcement, an online petition came out against the move.

“Good organization but bad proposed location,” the petition reads. “If the rezoning is permitted millions will be lost. Please protect our investments by rejecting this application.” As of this writing, the petition has 480 signatures.

In response to the pushback, Iron Gate requested a continuance on the zoning exception so that concerns could be adequately addressed. At the August 25 meeting, the Board offered the standing-room-only crowd a chance to voice their opinions on the continuance.

Though Board Chair Frazier Henke warned that objections must be limited to the continuance and not the exception request, several of the neighborhood leaders, business owners and residents who took the mic spent their time lambasting the project. During her turn, Leanne Benton, president of the Pearl District Association, asked anyone against the proposed move to stand up. Almost everyone immediately shot out of their chairs.

The battle over Iron Gate’s new location is the latest manifestation of Tulsa’s urban growing pains in a year that seems to introduce a new development controversy almost monthly: a proposed outlet mall near Turkey Mountain, an REI superstore near the river, a Trader Joe’s on Brookside, high-end lofts in the Brady Arts District. Each new proposal has given rise to a unique, though related, conversation about urban planning. At the same time, urban revitalization has shone a spotlight on our struggle to reconcile fears about protecting downtown investments with the realities of Tulsans without safe, affordable housing.

The geography of the Pearl District, located between 11th Street and I-244 from the Inner Dispersal Loop to Utica, seems to play a central role in the opposition to the move. Many people, including several business owners I spoke with, worry that Iron Gate’s new location will create a corridor for people traveling from Tulsa Day Center for the Homeless (in northwest downtown, near Archer and Denver) through the East Village along 3rd Street to the Pearl District location. The fear is that Iron Gate visitors might loiter, panhandle and sleep in alleys and that this would create security concerns.

Derek Zellner manages Custom Motor Rebuilders, across the street from the proposed site. He said the company is “not really for” the move.

“Not that it’s a bad thing—what they’re doing feeding the people—that’s great,” Zellner said. “But the location—in the Pearl District, you’ve got all these investors coming in trying to fix it up and make it nice. Then they’re bringing this in here. It’s kind of slapping (the investors) in the face. They’ve got zoning areas already downtown to do that stuff. It’s kind of a messed-up deal.”

Zellner said he’s worried that Iron Gate visitors might loiter and disrupt his business.

“We work on cars, and we’ve gotta be responsible for the stuff in the cars if there’s a break-in,” he said. “Not saying that would happen, but, you know. The area’s not really set up for that kind of environment.”

This sounds like classic NIMBY (“Not in my backyard”) reasoning. But One Architecture owner Rachel Navarro, a former Pearl District Association board member, said it’s unfair to characterize objecting business owners as NIMBYs. Navarro and others said they are primarily concerned with a perceived lack of information and neighborly consideration from Iron Gate.

“People say, ‘Oh, not in your backyard;’ ‘Oh, you’re just scared,’” said Navarro, who also owns commercial properties on 6th Street. “No, we’re not. We deal with homeless people already. A lot of us don’t have a lot of money. It’s not a fancy neighborhood—it has nothing to do with that. I get it—this is worthwhile.”

Joe Picorale, who owns Be Love Yoga Studio at 6th and Peoria, said he isn’t particularly concerned about the effect Iron Gate will have on the neighborhood. Like Navarro, Picorale said he’s used to the presence of local homeless people and knows many of them by name.

“A lot of people have invested a lot of time to get the Pearl District to where it’s at,” he said. “I think the biggest issue is just a lack of communication. All the business owners know each other; just like in any little district, everyone works together to promote their district, and then all of a sudden someone comes in with pretty big plans to change things without talking to any of the other business owners. It created a lot of reaction, more so than if there would’ve been some communication upfront and ahead of time. … They need a PR person to shift the perception of what’s going on.”

After the Board of Adjustment meeting, I spoke with Connie Cronley, executive director of Iron Gate.

“I have been really shocked and then really sad at the volume of the opposition, the anger and the hostility,” Cronley said. “I keep telling myself, ‘Misinformation, fear of the unknown, fear of change.’”

Cronley has been a member of Trinity Episcopal Church for nearly 40 years and has been involved with Iron Gate for a decade. As it grew, Iron Gate became independent from the church and eventually renovated the basement of Trinity to expand the food ministry with a 127-seat dining room. The 2008 recession brought an “explosion of hunger,” Cronley said, and the number of people who use Iron Gate for food assistance has since ballooned 407 percent.

“Now, in the dining room we may circulate five or six hundred people a morning,” she said. “Then we have the grocery pantry, we have a hundred families come in for grocery assistance, and everyone is crammed into this tiny space. We’ve made offices out of closets and hallways. … There’s no more way we can expand.”

As the need outgrew the location, Cronley said the board had two choices: cut services or find a bigger space. (Cronley denied rumors that Iron Gate is being strong-armed out of its current location, whether by surrounding businesses or the Downtown Coordinating Council.)

The board looked at 27 properties over 18 months and worked with an architect to determine space and parking needs to accommodate Iron Gate’s large volunteer base.

“We ruled out a lot of places because we couldn’t afford them, or they were too little, or the parking across the street was too dangerous,” she said.

Despite the prevailing belief that Iron Gate will attract upwards of a thousand homeless people to the new location each day, Cronley said the majority of people they serve are the working poor—people with homes and vehicles who go to Iron Gate for food assistance. Furthermore, nearly a fourth of Pearl District residents rely on Iron Gate for groceries.

Cronley acknowledged that she didn’t think to bring the neighborhood into the conversation during the initial planning stages.

“It never occurred to me, personally, to talk them,” she said. “I think that was very naïve of me. When I bought my home in Florence Park and moved in, it didn’t occur to me to talk to the neighbors and say, ‘Do you mind if I live next door?’”

Over the strong objections of nearly every person in attendance at the August 25 meeting, the Board of Adjustment granted the request for a continuance.

On September 1 (after press time), Iron Gate representatives met with residents of the Pearl District and surrounding areas at Trinity in hopes of earning the trust of the neighborhood. The Board of Adjustment meeting is scheduled for 1 p.m. September 8 at City Council Chambers at 175 E. 2nd St.

For more from Joshua, read about his experience at a Ted Cruz rally.