The historic Rose Bowl building along 11th Street (aka Route 66) in Tulsa now has become the home of the One Hope Tulsa training center for youth, according to a report from KTUL-TV in Tulsa.
The station reported:
This organization reaches out to disadvantaged and at-risk students through sports and tutoring. Rex Blankenship, the One Hope Training Center President, says his family grew up knowing how important sports, education, and faith are in life. He also says research shows, students involved in these type of varsity sports are 75 percent more likely to graduate.
“We introduce them to new sports besides basketball or soccer and to help them to see that they could maybe excel in one of those areas,” says Rex Blankenship.
The program already reaches two hundred kids each week but with the new basketball court and the place to grow they are expecting more.
On One Hope Tulsa’s website about the Rose Bowl’s history, it said:
New ownership came to this distinctive landmark at the beginning of 2012 as One Hope Vision Ministries purchased the building with plans to restore the outside of the Rose Bowl to its original historical appearance while renovating the interior for use as a youth training center for sports clinics, tutoring, and mentoring relationships.
The page shows the new layout of the Rose Bowl, with the basketball court on one section and a large, open “sports turf” area on the other. A library, classroom, coffee shop, kitchen, welcome center, media game room, and tables and viewing areas are found on the sides.
The distinctively shaped Rose Bowl at 7419 E. 11th St. (aka Route 66) was built as a bowling alley in 1961 until its closure after two arson fires in 2005. After it closed, AMF slapped the facility with a noncompete clause, rendering it useless to be reopened as a bowling alley.
Chris Whinery of Whinery Mortgage renovated the facility and reopened it as the Rose Bowl Events Center in 2008. However, the 33,000-square-foot building opened only sporadically.