With a parent who experienced mental illness, Deneisha Johnson used a similar crisis center while growing up in Texas. But it was, in her words, “a lot scarier” than the one she walked into Wednesday as an adult in Tulsa.
“This is nice; this is calming,” said Johnson, now board chairwoman for Counseling and Recovery Services of Oklahoma, or CRSOK. “What if there had been a YES Fort Worth? How would my adult years have been transformed?”
Until recently, Tulsa didn’t have Youth Evaluation Services, either. CRSOK launched the city’s first YES crisis center last June at Saint Francis’ Laureate psychiatric hospital. But the program quickly outgrew the space and has now moved to a larger facility at 9912 E. 21st St.
The current location, however, likely will remain open only for 18 months while CRSOK plans to build an even larger facility.
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The group announced a campaign Wednesday to raise as much as $10 million to open a permanent YES center near 31st Street and Sheridan Road.
“This is only the beginning,” said Johnson, who will lead the fundraising effort. “This is the first step in what we want to do for the Tulsa community.”
A YES center, aimed at people between the ages of 5 and 17, offers a place to turn when a young patient seems to need more than routine mental health care but might not need hospitalization, officials said.
“It fills a gap,” said Andre Campbell, clinical director of CRSOK. “Let’s assess. Let’s stabilize. Let’s just see what needs to happen next.”
The YES center, open 24 hours a day and seven days a week, can provide immediate help and, if needed, make referrals for additional treatment, officials said.
“What the YES program is bringing to the community,” Campbell said, “is that ability for us to make sure there is the best placement. And the best placement brings about the opportunity for quicker recovery.”
Last month, in his annual State of the City address, Mayor G.T. Bynum described the YES center as “a one-stop triage center for families in immediate mental health crisis.” And he announced $1 million in funding to open the new facility.
“It is now estimated that 4,000 Tulsa County children attempt suicide annually,” Bynum said at the time, “and in the last year a record 1,300 kids in mental health distress flooded Tulsa County emergency rooms.”
The YES center’s operational costs will be funded by the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, allowing it to provide care at little to no cost to patients.
Featured video: More about 988, the new crisis helpline for mental health
988. That’s the new number anyone in America can call or text for help if they feel suicidal or experience mental distress. It is hoped that the shorter number will help people remember the free service and know who to contact.
Staff Writer Michael Overall’s most memorable stories of 2022
Claremore embraces a cutting-edge plan to ‘save the suburbs’ — Should other Tulsa communities do the same?
With the ongoing revitalization of downtown Tulsa, even the suburbs are wanting to be more urban.
This year, Claremore became only the second community in the United States to adopt a certain version of “pattern zoning,” an innovative approach to city planning.
In pattern zoning, officials pre-approve a set of architectural designs for a given neighborhood. Developers simply choose which designs they want to use from a pattern book, much like shopping from a catalog. That way, officials know that new housing projects will meet the aesthetic standards they want for a certain part of town.
Meanwhile, Jenks adopted new zoning regulations for its historic downtown district, where officials wanted to promote “Norman Rockwell-style” development. With the continued success of the Rose District in Broken Arrow, Tulsa’s suburban development seems to be growing less suburban.
Reintroducing Tulsa to a ‘forgotten’ Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece
Westhope has remained one of the most famous houses in the city for decades, even if a lot of Tulsans have never seen it.
Frank Lloyd Wright designed the house at 3700 S. Birmingham Ave. for his cousin, Tulsa newspaper publisher Richard Lloyd Jones, at the start of the Great Depression. And the masterpiece still attracts architecture fans from around the world. But locals had little reason to go there, until recently.
Tulsa real-estate developer Stuart Price bought the house and embarked on a sweeping restoration project before allowing the Tulsa Ballet and a few other lucky groups host events there.
Price hadn’t announced long-term plans for Westhope but suggested that it might have a more visible role in the years to come.
“It would be incredible if this house could serve as a cultural and community asset for Tulsa,” he told the Tulsa World.
Broad-daylight attack leaves ‘weird feeling’ in downtown Tulsa, says hotel manager still on medical leave
Downtown hotel manager Stephanie Pomeroy was brave enough to return to work after a brutal assault in broad daylight, and brave enough to share her story with the rest of Tulsa.
Pomeroy suffered a concussion, broken nose and several bone fractures March 23 in an assault outside the Hampton Inn & Suites, where she worked. The attack highlighted downtown’s growing problem with homelessness and mental health.
“It’s a very weird feeling being there,” Pomeroy said about coming to work downtown after the attack. “It’s not that I feel unsafe or scared. I just feel uneasy.”
When Bruce Goff designed a house for Adah Robinson, they made Tulsa history
The property going up for sale this year gave Tulsa the rare chance to see inside the Adah Robinson House, an early masterpiece by world-famous architect Bruce Goff. He designed the Art Deco home in the 1920s for his mentor and art teacher, who fostered Goff’s talent at Tulsa Central High School.
Robinson made the house famous by hosting “salons,” where Tulsa artists and intellectuals would get together to discuss the issues of the day.
The new owner, attorney Rod Yancy, was planning a sensitive restoration that would repair broken plaster, restore stained-glass windows and replace a 1970s-era addition with a new sun room that blend in better with the original Goff design.
Maybe more importantly, Yancy suggested that he might bring back an old tradition at the house, 1119 S. Owasso Ave.
“My dream,” Yancy told the Tulsa World, “would be to bring together other creative types, other entrepreneurs, also visual artists, and use this space like it was originally used — as a ‘salon’ from time to time.”
Shopping center owner finds hidden potential and ‘West Tulsa Renaissance’
While downtown Tulsa’s revitalization continued to draw news coverage in 2022, a nearby neighborhood was quietly launching a comeback of its own.
“Not a lot of people really know about what I call the West Tulsa Renaissance,” said real-estate agent Larry Kelley.
The once dilapidated Eugene Field neighborhood, just west of the 21st Street bridge across the Arkansas River, now had hundreds of new housing units along with newly renovated store fronts and a brand new public park.
“Honestly, it used to be a not very good place to invest,” said Simon Khatib, co-owner of neighborhood’s new Apple Barrel Café. “But now it’s growing. The area is changing big-time, and I think it has big, big potential.”
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