NEDC Purchases Former Saxon Property For Office Park

By Randall Turk

Transcript Business Editor

The Norman Economic Development Coalition (NEDC) last week opened Chapter Two in its history of developing Norman.

The coalition purchased 47.5 acres of the former Saxon Publishers property adjacent to the NEDC’s Norman Business Park for $475,000.

“Our goal is to develop an office business park to complement the Norman Business Park next door,” said Don Wood, NEDC executive director.

The Norman Business Park, a mixed use development of service businesses and light industrial manufacturing occupying nearly a quarter section of land, has grown to near capacity in the past several years. It began as an idea to attract new employers to Norman by providing low cost developed land, an incentive that did not exist in Norman until Wood approached banks several years ago.

A consortium of a dozen banks put up the funds to purchase property along Highway 9 south of the Postal Service Technical Training Center. The property has been paid off by revenues generated by new tenants and only three sites remain there for development, Wood said.

Wood plans to use the same concept to develop the tract newly acquired from the former Saxon Publishers.

“This is a great piece of property with upside potential for recruitment of office centers,” Wood said. “We are developing the land and will make it available to new employers.”

Wood foresees three or four office buildings on the site, which will be landscaped to blend with the Norman Business Park.

Wood also is proposing a software development incubator for Norman. The incubator concept involves providing reasonably priced facilities and services to nurture new businesses before they can “leave the nest” with their own products and a dependable revenue stream.

“This is an investment in Norman’s future,” Wood said. “We’re able to use the asset base of Norman Business Park to build more potential for bringing more employers with highly paid jobs to Norman.”

Once again, Wood said, Norman banks will be invited to participate in a consortium to fund the project, which will cost an estimated $800,000, including the cost of the land.

“Norman does not have the resources that Oklahoma City and Tulsa have to attract major employers,” Wood said. “The office park development will give us a new tool to make it happen.”

The office park on the former Saxon Publishers property will be the highest and best use for a Norman tradition, he said.

Saxon Publishers began over 30 years ago when the late John Saxon, a retired Air Force Pilot, encountered flak when teaching math classes at Rose State College. The frustrated Saxon, aided by Norman High School student Frank Wang, worked evenings at a kitchen table to invent a new system of math instruction that proved overwhelmingly successful in helping students achieve success. The company grew to build a distribution warehouse and a headquarters complex south of the Postal Service Training Center in late 2000.

The Saxon system, the company and its new headquarters were sold last year by Saxon’s children to Harcourt Achieve, which is capitalizing on the Saxon system of mathematics instruction.

The property and the adjacent Norman Business Park are within the state’s first “technology corridor,” a concentration of scientific, research and high-tech businesses along an 8½-mile stretch of Highway 9, east of I-35. The corridor includes the new University of Oklahoma research campus; the nationwide manufacturing headquarters of Astellas, a pharmaceuticals company; Hitachi Computer Products, Inc., and the U.S. Postal Service National Center for Employee Development.