Team Durant is working closely with a developer and theater company to bring a new eight-screen digital theater to Durant.

The project was just one of the items discussed at this morning’s meeting of the Durant Economic Council at the Chamber of Commerce in Durant.

John Rupe, a developer out of Tulsa, and B & B Theaters, a nation-wide theater company, are working with officials to bring the $5 million, 800-seat theater to the city.

“We’ve been working with these companies for two years on bringing a new theater to town,” said Tommy Kramer, executive director of the Durant Industrial Authority.

Team Durant will present a resolution to the Durant City Council to establish a TIF (tax increment funding) for the theater.

“The TIF does not involve any new taxes. It just relieves city taxes from the price of a theater ticket, to establish a fund to help the developer with the cost of building the new theater,” Kramer said. “If the mayor and city council approve the establishment of the TIF, the theater would be cleared to begin construction near Red River Ford, on the west side of Durant.”

The new theater will hopefully keep more entertainment dollars here in Durant, entertainment dollars the city now loses to theaters in Caddo and to the south in the Denison/Sherman area.

“My wife and I went to a movie last Friday in Caddo and it was like a Durant reunion up there,” Kramer said. “Most of the people in the theater were from here.”

In other business, city manager Jim Dunegan reviewed the numbers on the City of Durant sales tax report for the month of November 2009.

Sales taxes collected by the city were $221,173, down some 24 percent from the $291,459 collected by the city in November 2008.

“The city has had to make some adjustments due to the smaller sales tax receipts,” Dunegan said. “We’ve lost no jobs and it hasn’t affected capital improvements, but we have had to tighten our belts a little bit to live within our budget.”

One of the reasons for the decreased numbers, according to Dunegan, was the opening of the new Super Walmart in Madill, which has affected business at the Durant store, one of the biggest sales tax contributors in the city.

Finally, a presentation was made by James Dalton, director of Emergency Management for the city, who outlined a number of projects in which his office was involved.

The new outdoor emergency sirens are almost ready, and are expected to be online county wide in about a month. Some of those sirens, including the ones at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, the Durant Multi-Sports Complex and the Bryan County Fairgrounds, are equipped so the emergency management office can give voice instructions in case of an emergency.

Dalton also said that his office is working on a number of other ways to notify the public in emergency situations, including texting, reverse 911, weather alert radios, mass e-mails and message boards along the Highway 69/75 corridor.