Community entities win $2.26 million in grants from McMahon Foundation

McMahon Foundation is working to ensure that community entities have a good holiday.

The foundation allocated more than $2.2 million in grants this month to four entities: Lawton Public Schools, Great Plains Technology Center, Salvation Army and United Way of Southwest Oklahoma. The bulk of the funds — $2 million — was split equally between Great Plains and Lawton Public Schools.

Great Plains Superintendent Clarence Fortney said the funding will help his campus do something administrators have been planning for most of this year: purchase, then renovate the old Serco building at 6501 W. Gore into a corporate training facility to serve entities such as Goodyear and Republic Paperboard. Fortney said McMahon’s grant will be given to the campus over a four-year period, at $250,000 a year, providing the funding that will allow administrators to move training off campus. That replaces plans Great Plains had been exploring to add 20,000 square feet of space to Building 600, ultimately providing needed space for less cost.

“We’ll repurpose it, to corporation training operations,” Fortney said, adding his Board of Education approved the purchase of the building in early December.

That 52,500-square-foot commercial building is sufficient for industrial maintenance safety training and soft skill leadership training for adult and post-secondary students, Fortney said in an interview earlier this month.

Fortney said it’s not the only recent campus program upgrade McMahon has supported. The foundation also awarded Great Plains a grant for its new culinary arts complex that helped administrators modernize their culinary training, and also has supported upgrades at the Business Development Center.

Lawton Public Schools Superintendent Kevin Hime said LPS’ $1 million allocation from McMahon Foundation complements upgrades already taking place on campuses across Lawton. In this case, the grant will fund renovation of auditoriums at all three high schools, a modernization project the district estimate at $3 million.

“We know there are areas that are different at each high school,” Hime said of the individual needs of each auditorium, adding work already is under way at MacArthur High School.

Hime said the district will complete the MacArthur modernization before determining the needs of auditoriums at Lawton High and Eisenhower High. While the district still is analyzing the work, administrators have rough-guessed a cost of $1 million per school, a total that may change — up or down — depending on what must be done.

Hime said all the auditoriums need seats, and he expects lighting and curtains to be another common upgrade (both are part of the MacArthur work). The district started with MacArthur High because its auditorium “was in the worst shape,” Hime said, adding administrators will analyze the other two auditoriums to see exactly what needs to be done and those findings will determine how quickly upgrades can be completed.

While the upgrades were estimated to be done over three school years, matching McMahon’s grant with other funding may allow work to be done more quickly.

Hime said the auditorium upgrades fit into an overall district plan to focus on highly visible projects, such as the fencing and new athletic buildings already under way.

“My plan was to make sure we do things that you can see,” he said, adding the auditorium work also fits into the district’s plan to upgrade its arts programs.

McMahon Foundation Chair Phil Kennedy said the grants are part of the foundation’s effort to support community entities that focus on Lawton’s quality of life. He said those decisions fall within the guidelines Louise McMahon set decades ago when she and her son Eugene created the McMahon Foundation.

“They’re doing great things in the community,” Kennedy said.