Close to 14 years after acquiring the former Bill’s DX station just east of the Main Street intersection on S.H. 33, Kingfisher Trails Inc. hopes to begin construction of the long-awaited Kingfisher Visitors Center.

Last month, Kingfisher Trails accepted Greystone Construction as the low bidder on the project, but must have enough additional donations pledged by Nov. 1 to cover the last $125,000 of the project cost in order to sign the contract, Trails President John Gooden said.

Originally conceived as a project that would include the Jesse Chisholm sculpture, the center will house the Kingfisher Chamber of Commerce and serve as a visible stopping place for visitors and new residents and businesses to find information about the city.

“We first imagined the visitors center underneath the sculpture,” Gooden said.

However, as an Oklahoma Centennial project, the sculpture had to be completed and installed for the state’s 2007 Centennial celebration, before the center could be funded.

Gooden’s organization next sought funding through an Oklahoma Department of Transportation enhancement grant for the city of Kingfisher, a lengthy process that first required Gooden to seek inclusion for Kingfisher’s center in the state network of visitors center.

While he was successful in obtaining that designation, funding for the center was ultimately excluded from the city’s enhancement grant which helped finance the downtown streetscape project.

“The ODOT grant reviewers concluded that our visitors center would open the floodgates to other towns wanting the same sort of funding,” Gooden said. A more elaborate design

A more elaborate design for a two-story facility to be funded by a former local oilman was commissioned and then scrapped when the private backer ran into economic difficulty and withdrew his support the day before bids would have been opened, he said.

Local retired contractor John Gilmour stepped into the gap.

“John conceived of a plan that would incorporate the old gas station where he worked in his youth,” Gooden said.

One of Gilmour’s designs was approved by the city, which provided the initial funds for purchase of the property and at that time still held a mortgage, and became “the guiding vision for the project.”

But that still left the issue of how it would be funded and eventually led to the assistance of another long-time resident.

After some time had passed, Dorma Hobbs decided to see the project completed. She gave $200,000 as seed money for the “Kingfisher Forward Fund,” administered by her daughter Jamae Frey and Dennis Mueggenborg, under the umbrella of the Communities Foundation of Oklahoma.

She later committed another $50,000 and her donations encouraged other local gifts to grow the fund to its current total of $426,000, Gooden said.

“Her gift was unsolicited and speaks to her vision and dedication to the Kingfisher community,” he said. “That prompted Kingfisher Trails to coordinate again with the city of Kingfisher and the Kingfisher Chamber of Commerce.”

Kingfisher Trails paid off the city’s mortgage and plans to transfer ownership of the facility to the chamber, debt-free, once construction is completed.

“The chamber was always imagined as the proper occupant of the visitors center and now with the new hotel/motel tax and the Holiday Inn Express in town, it made more sense than it had previously to see this as their new home,” Gooden said.

“The tax is for tourism and promotions, as is the visitors center.”

The new plans for the center include a sculpture out front of Lame Bull, a Cheyenne medicine man who lived in the Kingfisher area in the early 1800s. The sculpture is based

The sculpture is based on a sketch of Lame Bull by famed western artist Charles Russell and financed by Lame Bull’s descendant Bob Lamebull, Gooden said.

Anyone interested in donating toward the completion of the visitors center can do so via check to the Communities Foundation of Oklahoma, noting “Kingfisher Forward Fund” on the memo line.

Donations of all sizes are welcome and all will be recognized at the completed facility, Gooden said. “Major donors at the $25,000 level will be recognized by the naming of rooms after them. Donors at the $5,000 level will be recognized outside the facility on the wall at the entrance and under the protective awning,” he said. “Smaller donations will be recognized inside. “Donations can be made this calendar year or the next, but we need the pledges before Nov. 1.”

While the city will ultimately determine a use for the current chamber offices at Memorial Hall, Gooden said the Kingfisher County Development Foundation, which he also serves as president, has been exploring ideas.

“It is our hope to sponsor an investment program in Kingfisher that will bring our own resources and other community resources together in a local version of ‘Shark Tank,’ where those ideas put forth will be for companies that will put down roots in Kingfisher,” he said.

“We would like to see the old chamber location in Memorial Hall serve as one of the tools we can use as a business incubator.”

For more information about the fundraising drive, watch for an advertisement in a future edition of the Times & Free Press.