Lone Oak Park Broke Ground This Month, Paid For by the Growth Around It

"Dean McGee loved the tree and spent a lot of time around it," Ward 8 Councilman Mark Stonecipher told the crowd at the groundbreaking, as reported by OKC Friday. "He called it Lone Oak."

That tree stands alone on 131 acres between NW 150th and NW 164th, along Bluff Creek. Earlier this month, Oklahoma City officials and a group of Deer Creek Intermediate students started turning that ground into a public park. Most of the money that bought the land came from the homebuilding around it. The park plan has changed more than once since then, but the tree has been at its center the whole time.

A tree with a 123-foot spread decides the layout

OKC Friday puts the oak at 100 to 150 years old and 123 feet wide. When the city first took up the land in 2018, KFOR quoted Stonecipher saying "some would say it's been out there 150-200 years." The age estimates differ, but the plan for the tree has stayed the same. "It's going to be the centerpiece, the focal point of the park," he said then.

The master plan the city approved works around the tree and Bluff Creek, which runs through the property. OKC Parks & Recreation built the first layout from input gathered from neighborhood residents, and it has two main parts:

• A multi-use trail network of nature and walking paths, winding through the rural landscape and following Bluff Creek
• A playground built to fit naturally into the rural setting around it

The list is short, and there are no ballfields, courts or splash pad on it. The plan amounts to the creek, the trails, a playground and a very old tree. That restraint fits a promise Stonecipher made in 2018, when he told KFOR that nearby residents would shape the park. "We don't dictate what the park is," he said. "They dictate to us what they want in a park."

The rooftops paid for the land

The part of this story that matters most to people living near Portland Avenue and NW 150th goes back to October 2018. That week the City Council voted to acquire the 130 acres from the Lone Oak Homeowners Association and Lone Oak LLC, the developer of one of the newest neighborhoods next to the farm. KFOR reported a price of $817,000.

KFOR also reported how the city split that cost:

Impact fees are charges paid on new development, so the subdivisions going up across Ward 8 covered roughly nine-tenths of the land cost. Stonecipher tied the two together at the time. "Ward 8 is seeing this incredible development, single-family development and so there's a need for parks," he told KFOR. He added that the 2017 general obligation bond planning had found a need for three more parks in the ward, and Lone Oak would be one of them.

Not every account of the land deal matches. The 2018 coverage from KFOR, VeloCity and The Oklahoman describes the city voting to accept or purchase land conveyed by Lone Oak LLC and the homeowners association. In the 2026 groundbreaking story, OKC Friday tells it through Stonecipher. He says he persuaded property owner Tim Smith to donate the land, first for soccer fields and then for a park. Both versions say the land came from the people who owned and developed around it, and Smith was at the groundbreaking with a shovel.

Eight years from council vote to shovel

On paper, the park has been "coming soon" for most of a decade. Here is the record:

1. October 2018. The City Council votes on the 130 acres, and KFOR reports access "most likely will come from Northwest 164th street." At that point you could only reach the oak through a nearby neighborhood.
2. April 2019. The Oklahoman reports that work will start that spring and that the park is "expected to open this year."
3. Somewhere in between. Stonecipher describes a detour. City utilities expected to expand into the NWOKC soccer fields at C.B. Cameron Park, so those fields looked like they would have to move, and Lone Oak was the planned new home. The move turned out to be unnecessary, and the request became a park again.
4. Fiscal 2023. The city's FY 2023–2027 capital improvement plan includes a line for "Lone Oak Park - Consulting" at $3,000,000.
5. October 2026. Officials and Deer Creek Intermediate students break ground, and OKC Friday reports work began after the ceremony.

The 2019 estimate was a projection, not a deadline, and plans changed after it. As of this week the city has not announced a completion date, a final entrance or a construction schedule. The oak and Bluff Creek are the only details that show up in every version of the plan from 2018 through 2026.

Same creek name, separate park

Bluff Creek already means trails to some people in northwest Oklahoma City. OKC Parks lists Bluff Creek Park at 11301 N. Meridian, with 3.5 miles of single-track dirt trail. Lone Oak sits much farther north along the same creek system. Its plan calls for nature and walking paths rather than single-track. No connection between the two has been announced, so the creek name is the only thing they share for now.

While the park is still dirt, the rest of the corridor is open

The growth Stonecipher pointed to in 2018 is easier to see a few miles from the oak, where private businesses have opened on their own schedules. Three stops are worth knowing this fall:

Hideaway Pizza opened on September 21 as the chain's 26th location, in a two-story building with a patio near NW 178th Street. The Stillwater-born chain modeled it on its location at NW 50th and North Western, which also has two stories. The location's page lists free parking, curbside pickup, a full bar and an online waitlist.

The Patch Family Farm has three weekends left after this post goes up. According to The Journal Record, the patch is open Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sundays from 2 to 6 p.m. until November 8. That leaves October 24–25, Halloween weekend, and November 7–8.

Shay Cookies Co. is next on NW 178th. The Oklahoman reports it will sell fresh-baked cookies and ice cream, with an opening expected in winter 2026.

The pizza place and the cookie shop are opening on their own timelines. The park will open on the city's, which has not yet been published. Both come from the same thing, a corridor that filled with single-family homes fast enough to fund 130 acres of public land before most of the people living nearby had ever walked it.

When we help families compare homes in far-north Oklahoma City, we look closely at things like where a future park entrance might land or a trail along a creek line. They can change how a street feels long after closing day. If you want to talk about how Lone Oak Park and the growth around it fit into a move, Kelli Osterman and Mark are glad to go through it with you. Get in touch.