News & Updates

Summary

Christina Brightwell-Thompson has been instrumental in transforming Oklahoma City's Metro Park Neighborhood through the Strong Neighborhoods Initiative. Despite challenges like language barriers and vacant properties, her leadership has led to significant improvements, including public art installations. Since becoming an SNI community in 2020, Metro Park has developed a stronger sense of community and identity.

On a hot Saturday morning, Christina Brightwell-Thompson gathered with a group of devoted neighbors and volunteers to clean up the Metro Park Neighborhood Association, one of Oklahoma City’s three current Strong Neighborhoods Initiative communities. Neighboring Classen-Ten-Penn (the city’s first SNI) and abutting downtown, Metro Park is in Ward 6; the boundaries are unique based on the mixture of residential and industrial buildings intertwined each block. More importantly, it is a resilient neighborhood, a fact supported by the neighbors’ willingness to spend their Saturday pulling weeds and picking up trash. But it hasn’t always been a close-knit community. Neighbors and leaders like Christina have worked tirelessly the past several years to improve their little slice of OKC.  

After spending a few hours weeding and picking up trash, we sat down with Christina at Big Truck Tacos; a fitting lunch spot, considering her neighborhood’s inspiring story begins with a taco Tuesday special. 

“I used to go to this restaurant on the railroad tracks-I think its closed now- where they had ninety-nine cent tacos. And I ran into a guy there who worked for the city planning department. And I was talking about how ‘I’m in this neighborhood, and it could be great, but it’s not’. He said, ‘You should apply to be an SNI neighborhood’. I hadn’t heard of that before,” Brightwell-Thompson recalled. “So, if I hadn’t had this chance encounter, I wouldn’t have known the program even existed. And so, I ended up applying and I had never applied for a grant or written for something of that nature before. So, we lost the first time-it was probably 2018. Capitol Hill is who beat us… At that point we didn’t even have a neighborhood association. It was just me and a couple other people who filled out the application. So, we started the Neighborhood Association hoping that at the next round of SNI we’d get selected.” 

And they did! Iin 2020, Metro Park was officially welcomed into the Strong Neighborhoods Initiative program. Unfortunately, around the same time, the world came to a halt. 

“Covid was happening,” said Christina. “So, we were an SNI neighborhood, but we could get almost no traction because the whole world was a disaster.” 

Brightwell-Thompson was born in raised in Oklahoma City and has deep connections to the area. She reminisced about moving into the neighborhood over a decade ago when her family bought property there.  

“When we got to Metro Park, the apartment next to us had two residents and the other six apartments were empty. The house next to us was vacant and the house next to that was vacant. And three across the street were vacant. So really, when we got there it was like an old west ghost town. It was 2013, cause that guy” Chrsitina said, pointing to her son sitting next to her, “was born in the kitchen of that house.”  

Christina saw the potential in Metro Park right away and has dreams of making it a vibrant walkable community. But this hasn’t come without its challenges. She was new to the community when her family first moved in, and they faced language and cultural barriers.  

“There was definitely a language barrier, there is still a language barrier… I worked really hard to do everything in two languages, but it was still really hard to make the connection with that community. I felt untrusted, I guess? I felt like an outsider and I get that,” she told us.  

“We still accomplished a lot though, especially in our first year and a half of being an SNI,” said Brightwell-Thompson. “Even before SNI we did all sorts of stuff. The main thing we got out of it was the public art and then the area we were working in today.” 

The area Christina is referring to is “The Linwood Triangle”, a little piece of land at Linwood and Western. It greets visitors as they enter the neighborhood off Western, with a large Metro Park Neighborhood Association sign, foliage, and large rocks where people rest and can escape the sun under the canopy of Juniper trees. This is one of the many areas in Metro Park that has been beautified with the SNI project. When asked what positive impact the public art has had on their community, Christina answered;  

“One positive impact is that I think this area is one that no one in many, many years has asked what they want, or what they think, or their opinion on anything really. So, I think people are just excited that anything is happening.” 

The art in Metro Park has created a sense of identity to the community that will long outlast Christina and other neighbors. She emphasized how important it was to the neighborhood that the impact of these projects be long-lasting. Metro Park has currently installed their fifth art piece on the medians along Linwood Boulevard; most recently the neighborhood celebrated the installation of “(unconfirmed) the Biggest Pink Skateboard”. Other pieces include “Zephyr,” “Knot Column,” and “Bloom.” 

However, even with the art, Brightwell-Thompson admits that there are still many challenges they face as a community. When asked what their biggest problem is? 

“I think the problem is we have so much speculation. We have a lot of people holding property. I’m not sure what they’re waiting for but it’s just sitting indefinitely.”  

This is a real problem across the city, but especially in Metro Park. Faceless LLCs hold on to vacant buildings and lots with the promise of financial gain down the road. This means that places that could be occupied by businesses or be people’s homes sit empty.  

“It makes it dangerous, for sure. Because people go into those spaces and people could be hurt. There are a lot of fires. We have more fires than any neighborhood in Oklahoma, maybe in the country. So, you are just always on edge. I had several fires behind my house and it’s one of the things that really spurred me to work on the neighborhood. It’s scary… It [the building behind Christina’s house] caught on fire and the second time it caught on fire it caught my guest house on fire… the kids remember the fires.”  

Despite the challenges they face, Christina is determined to see Metro Park succeed.  

“I guess I just don’t give up,” she told us.  

And she hasn’t. From getting her hands dirty at neighborhood cleanups to planning new art installations with the rest of the neighborhood leadership, Christina continues to show unique ways to care for her community. Her favorite way to show how much she cares? 

“What better way to say ‘I love you’ than with art? With providing something beautiful. Something created and juried just for them,” she asked.