25 years later, Norman citizens are still taking their case to the City Council, again
NORMAN, OK. Of all the citizens in all the cities of Oklahoma, none have gone toe-to-toe with the Governor and the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority like the citizens of Norman.
NORMAN SAYS NO IN 1999: THE OUTER LOOP MIS
State laws have been on the books since the 1950’s describing turnpikes the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority (OTA) can seek to build (69 OK Stat ยง 1705), but no serious public efforts to build them in the Norman area happened until 1998. At a public meeting held June 16 in Norman, the Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT), the Association of Central Oklahoma Governments (ACOG) and the OTA announced they were going to spend $375,000 to study highway routes in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area under the banner of the “Outer Loop Major Investment Study (MIS).”
At that June 16 meeting, the Outer Loop MIS group released a map showing various routes they deemed viable to study, and to eventually construct a massive multi-lane highway that would become the Eastern Outer Loop. Proposed routes began in the vicinity of Norman and traveled east through the city limits of Norman, Moore, Oklahoma City, Midwest City, Harrah, Newalla, Choctaw, Jones, Arcadia and Edmond.