These small town neighbors bought vacant buildings, brought them up to code. Here’s what happened next

  Waynoka, Oklahoma, had a lot of vacant run-down buildings in their downtown. In a town of 900 people, the prospects didn’t look great. At an all-class reunion, a group of alumni got together and decided to change that. They called themselves Project Waynoka, our friend and early contributor Jeanne Cole said. They started raising money. […]

 

Waynoka, Oklahoma, had a lot of vacant run-down buildings in their downtown. In a town of 900 people, the prospects didn’t look great. At an all-class reunion, a group of alumni got together and decided to change that.

They called themselves Project Waynoka, our friend and early contributor Jeanne Cole said. They started raising money. They bought one building. They raised more money with community events. They scrounged for materials. They rallied volunteer labor. They brought this one building up to code, then sold it.

With that money, they bought another building. More work, more fundraising, even more work, and there’s another building brought back into productive use.

They just kept saving buildings. Buildings that now house locally-owned businesses. The public library. The popular German restaurant.

A few buildings turned out to be in such bad shape that demolition was the best choice. So they took them down and then cleaned up the empty lots.

After decades of working on the project, the volunteer momentum had run down a bit. One key source of low cost labor was no longer available. But they didn’t quit entirely, they just slowed down.

They took on a big