Villa Teresa: From School to Multi-Use Development
Marva Ellard
Since 1983, Marva Ellard has successfully managed the rehabilitation of single family, multi-family and commercial projects in the Oklahoma City area. She has also worked in the oil and gas, restaurant, and wholesale businesses.
Marva is probably best known for revitalizing the historic Sieber Hotel, at 12th & Hudson, into 38 market rate apartments. The project opened in 2008, and helped kick off the resurgence of the Midtown area.
Over the past 37 years Ms. Ellard has been a part of the Mesta Park and Heritage Hills revitalization efforts. She currently owns five properties in the area including a recent acquisition of the original Sunbeam Family Services campus. This project includes a three-story multi-residential building built in 1928, a two-story Mid-Century Modern office building built in 1962, and three, 3,000 square foot group homes that have been converted to single family homes and sold to owner occupants.
The office building is called the ARC and is a co-op office building. There are 17 offices occupied by 12 tenants. It opened in the summer of 2015 and is currently 100% occupied. The three-story building is under construction and opened as 13 mixed income apartments in September.
Ms. Ellard was integral in the development of the Mesta Park Historic District and the redevelopment of Shartel and 18th Street into a beautiful, landscaped boulevard. Other projects include street lighting for Mesta Park and the redevelopment of the Wilson Elementary School playground. She is also responsible for writing approximately a million dollars of grants that were awarded to Mesta Park Neighborhood Association to help fund these projects.
Ms. Ellard is the managing partner of a large mixed-use development in Paseo which includes approximately three acres. This project is currently under construction, and includes 4 bungalows, 1 duplex, and a 4 plex in its first phase.
Most recently, Ms. Ellard and partners have acquired the historic Villa Teresa site in Midtown. Plans include construction of new for sale housing and rehabilitation of existing properties into for-sale housing and a boutique hotel. It is currently under construction.
She is a former member of the Oklahoma City Historic Preservation and Landmark Commission and served as the Chairman for many years. Ms. Ellard was also on the board of the state-wide historic preservation organization, Preservation Oklahoma, Inc., and served as its Chairperson. She is currently the vice-president of Historical Preservation, Inc., the Heritage Hills Neighborhood organization, and serves on the Downtown Oklahoma City Business Improvement District Advisory Board.
Jane Jenkins has been the President and CEO of Downtown Oklahoma City, Incorporated since 2009. With 30 years of experience in downtown revitalization and management, Jane is an internationally recognized speaker and expert on urban issues. She is a former Chairman for the International Downtown Association Board of Directors and is also active in the International Economic Development Council, Urban Land Institute, and the American Institute of Architects. In 2014, Jane earned accreditation from the Congress for New Urbanism and she was recently named a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Place Management in Manchester, England. A former high school educator, Jane was named 1982 Teacher of the Year at Union High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She holds a Master of Public Administration from the University of North Texas in Denton.