Mayor David Mason recently released his bi-monthly update video “Ask Mason” where he answers questions submitted by Enid residents; this time answering questions regarding the future of the Oakwood Mall and the process of getting a new movie theater.
Mayor Mason started off by talking about how involved the city is with the Oakwood Mall.
“The City does not own Oakwood Mall. That is a privately owned entity by a person that owns multiple malls around the United States. We don’t have any control over that,” Mason said. “As far as I know, all those taxes are up to date, all the codes are met.”
Upon answering the question about tearing down the building, Mayor Mason responded with this:
“We don’t just take people’s businesses, we don’t do that in the United States and we certainly don’t do that in Enid, Oklahoma. So as long as they are meeting all the codes, that is out of our hands.”
When talking about eminent domain, Mayor Mason said that there are too many qualifications that need to be met for eminent domain to take place.
Regarding the mall’s future, Mason said that multiple people have reached out to the business owner to purchase the mall. All attempts have come back unsuccessful and no settlement has been made yet.
Mason finished off by discussing the old movie theater and the possibility of a new one.
“You have to back up multiple years, and think about the old movie theater that we did have out at the mall. I remember when that was in there, all I ever heard was complaints: broken chairs, dirty floors, bad sound. What people didn’t fully realize was that [movie theater] was a chain,” Mason said. “When COVID hit, it absolutely decimated the theater business. Unlike a restaurant that could still stay open and do take-out only or drive-thru, theaters could not even operate; the film companies weren’t producing films. So they were literally shut down for 18 months.”
Mason went on to talk about a “lag-time” with not just movies, but good movies that people would come in to see. Plus, the Enid theater’s chain went bankrupt and did not re-open any of their small rural businesses. While a local theater in Fairview has a community that can come in and take care of it, Enid is not allowed to do such a thing.
Mason continued by explaining one attempt to get a movie theater back into Enid.
“We had worked for two years trying to get a project done. It’s going to be about $21 million dollars for a theater. It was with a private entity because the city can be involved in some things, we don’t operate movie theaters,” Mason said. “This person has worked with the city, and the city had put up some money on a small loan in order to get an equity position to the point that they could go get financing. What they found was following COVID…they could not after two years secure the necessary financing for it.”
However, there is a silver lining. Mason discusses how another opportunity has opened up.
“Just a few weeks following that disappointment of that deal falling through, another opportunity opened up when a chain called and had interest in Enid. [They] contacted our ERDA and said ‘hey, we would like to talk about doing a theater in the Enid area.’ We’re not going to do another two-year negotiation, were allowing six months to either get an agreement so that a project could get underway, or we’re moving on as a city to someone else that would be interested.”
In the next five months, the City of Enid will give an update on the movie theater. If not, they will move on to an alternate route.
