The Work
Things we've done, things we're doing, and things we plan to do. Every item links to a source you can check for yourself.
6Done
2Doing
1Planned
Things we've done6
A movie theater again, after five years dark2026Economic DevelopmentIcon Cinemas reopened the Prospect Avenue theater through a partnership with the Ponca City Development Authority, projected at more than $10 million in economic impact.
The AMC closed in 2020 and Ponca City went without a movie theater until November 2025. PCDA purchased the AMC property and signed a seven-year lease-to-own contract with Icon Cinemas, which then fully renovated the building.
The reopened four-plex has luxury recliners, upgraded digital projection and sound, and refreshed concessions. PCDA put the economic impact of the theater at over $10 million.
It is the kind of quality-of-life win that keeps families spending their evenings and their money in Ponca City rather than driving out of town for them.
The Depot District2026DowntownA second named district for downtown Ponca City, south of Grand Avenue — giving the blocks around the depot an identity, a boundary and a reason for investment to follow.
Downtown Ponca City already had the Arts and Culture District. The blocks around the Santa Fe Depot — running from Fourth Street west to the depot, and from Central Avenue south to Walnut Avenue — had no identity of their own, and no framework to organise investment around.
The City has put approximately $2.7 million into renovating and preserving the 1911 Santa Fe Depot, which is on the National Register. The resolution ties that building to the blocks around it and connects the new district to the Arts and Culture District next door.
Taking vacant buildings to the state CapitolAugust 2025NeighborhoodsTestified at an Oklahoma interim study on what cities can actually do about long-vacant buildings, alongside a Ponca City state senator running the study.
A city can only reach so far on its own. Ponca City has buildings that have stood empty for decades, and the tools available to a municipality run out long before the problem does.
In August 2025 lawmakers at the state Capitol heard testimony on what rights cities have over unoccupied buildings and what new state law could give them. “We have one building that’s been vacant for 37 years, and that’s only one of many,” Mayor Wagner told KOCO. “We want to have vibrant communities. We want to have places where people can live and be happy and be economically feasible.”
The study was run with State Senator Bill Coleman of Ponca City, who framed the aim as protecting responsible property owners from irresponsible ones. Several legislators raised concerns about government overreach, which is the argument any such law has to answer.
Abandoned Building Ordinance2023NeighborhoodsAsked city staff what could be done about derelict property during budget hearings. The ordinance that came back has been clearing abandoned buildings ever since.
Derelict buildings attract crime and pull down the value of every house around them. During 2023 budget hearings the question was what the city could actually do about it.
City staff brought the Commission a new Abandoned Building Ordinance, passed in July 2023. It lets the city maintain a list of abandoned buildings and charge owners for the inspections, clean-up and staff time their property costs the public — pushing owners to repair or remove rather than let a building rot.
By the October 2024 update the ordinance had driven real progress, with buildings originally placed on the abandoned list since redeveloped.
$1 million committed to housing2023 – 2024HousingServed on the five-member committee that recommended expanding the PCDA charter to include housing and retail. Both votes passed unanimously, and PCDA committed $1 million to housing.
The case was made by the employers themselves: the people hiring in Ponca City said a shortage of homes was capping how much they could grow here. The committee's job was to decide whether an economic development authority should be allowed to act on that at all.
Over eight months, the committee worked through whether the Ponca City Development Authority's mission should expand to cover housing and retail. It recommended that it should. The PCDA Trustees voted unanimously in April 2024; the City Commission followed unanimously later that month.
PCDA then committed $1 million over three years to housing, designed to complement the city's existing Housing Incentive Program.
The Grand Arts District2016 – presentArts & CultureGathered the letters of support and wrote the grant that funded an arts district. Downtown Ponca City now has one of the most vibrant art scenes in Oklahoma.
Two years of groundwork went in before anything was awarded. The file of endorsements runs to sixty-seven pages and opens with Governor Mary Fallin's, written in March 2017 in support of the application to the Oklahoma Arts Council's Cultural District Development Program.
The first project was the Daybreak mural, the first non-historic mural in downtown Ponca City. Art in the Alley and Outside the Box followed, both built around paying artists for public work.
Down by Downtown grew from 50 people at its first event in June 2021 to over 300 by June 2022, and relocated to Veteran's Plaza in 2023.
Things we're doing2
Mayor's Task Force on Downtown RevitalizationMarch 2026 – presentDowntownA working group charged with turning what residents said at the town halls into policy the City Commission can actually vote on.
Over 100 people came to the downtown revitalization town hall in May 2025. The task force's final report records the consistent message as dilapidation, vacancy and apathy — “not each other” — being the primary obstacles to a thriving downtown.
Eleven voting members — downtown property owners, business operators and commissioners — plus five ex-officio advisers from city staff, PCDA and Main Street. It met three times, on 12 March, 9 April and 14 May 2026. The mayor chaired and voted only to break a tie, decisions were taken by consensus where possible, and dissenting views were recorded.
It approved four recommendations: a Central Business District Occupancy and Building Standards Ordinance with an A-to-D building grade classification, a six-month vacancy trigger for Grand Avenue storefronts and twelve months for the wider district, and escalating quarterly fees; a CBD Adaptive Reuse Incentive Program offering a fifty per cent match up to $75,000 for building envelope and life-safety work, funded at $300,000 a year; precluding passive storage and warehousing as permitted uses downtown; and folding design guidelines into the Unified Development Code rather than creating a historic overlay district.
That work produced two concrete things, in order. In June 2026 the Commission approved an ordinance creating a Central Business District occupancy and building code chapter: Code Enforcement inspects every building in the district and grades it, and unoccupied buildings graded at-risk or critical become subject to abatement. The same meeting approved a CBD Adaptive Reuse Incentive Program.
Then in August 2026 the City and the Ponca City Utility Authority opened the Downtown Incentive Program, offering financial assistance toward roof replacement, code and life-safety upgrades, and bringing upper floors and vacant spaces back into use. It gives priority to the buildings graded C or D — which is what the June ordinance had just made it possible to identify. The first application window closed on 1 October 2026.
“Over 100 people showed up last May because they care deeply about the future of our downtown,” Mayor Wagner said. The goal is “a list of policy recommendations for the City Commission to take up that will have generational implications on the vibrancy and economic vitality of downtown Ponca City.”
Operation: Transformation2025 – presentNeighborhoodsA city-wide push to clean up, invest in and reimagine Ponca City block by block — starting by asking residents what they needed.
Operation: Transformation set out to unlock the city's potential block by block and street by street, as a collaborative effort between residents, property owners and the city.
It opened with two town halls in May 2025, one on neighbourhoods and one on downtown. More than a hundred people came to the downtown session alone, and what they said there became the brief for the task force convened the following March.
The town halls produced written recaps, and the downtown session led directly to the Mayor's Task Force on Downtown Revitalization.
Things we plan to do1
Vision 20402026 – 2040Economic DevelopmentA community-driven plan for the next twenty years of Ponca City, inspired by the way Oklahoma City reimagined itself through MAPS.
Vision 2040 is Ponca City's chance to decide together what the city looks like two decades from now. It is built around four focus areas: safety, transportation, quality of life, and health.
The first step was a community survey asking residents, business owners and community members to name the priorities, opportunities and challenges facing Ponca City — covering economic development, housing, tourism, parks and recreation, infrastructure and community investment.
A visioning committee forms in the fall of 2026 to gather community input, with a public launch and project selection beginning in 2027 and implementation running through 2040.
Something we should be working on?
Vision 2040 is built on what residents say they need.