The economic outlook is bright for one manufacturing company in Chickasha, thanks in part to an iconic 40 foot leg lamp they've built in the heart of town and to the international marker they've built for their other products. Steve Shaw reports from Grady County.
Midwest Cooling Towers has been a solid business in Chickasha, an hour southwest of Oklahoma City for nearly four decades. Cooling towers are basically giant radiators and are a must for power plants, chemical plants, and oil refineries. Midwest Cooling Towers ships them all over the U.S.
"Typically starts from 18 foot by 18 foot wide, by 18 foot long to about 20 feet tall, let's say on a small side. On a big size they range quite a bit." says Manish Puri, Manager at Midwest Cooling Towers. "I've seen some that are 50 foot wide by 700 feet long."
Production Manager Alan Williams says, "They are important as far as the refinery parts of it. Anything as far as generating electricity, and stuff like this, they have to have them to cool the motors and the turbine."
Their hard work was recognized earlier this year when Midwest Cooling Towers received an innovation expansion award from the State Department of Commerce. In October of last year, Midwest Cooling Towers took a phone call from the City of Chickasha. No, not about cooling towers, about something completely different.
During the pandemic, Chickasha Economic Development Director, Jim Cowan, came up with an idea to erect an inflatable leg lamp downtown. It was an homage to the 1983 cult classic movie, A Christmas Story.
"It was 2020. It's Covid. It was crazy with what's going on in the world. Why not put up an inflatable leg lamp? The problem was people loved it and they were driving from all over, but the Oklahoma weather didn't love it. And so winds like we had last night would just rip it right down." said Cowan.
Cowan was looking all over the country for somebody to build a real leg lamp then heard Midwest Cooling Towers could maybe do it.
"This is something that we can accomplish because we have some mold making techniques that we use for our projects already." says Manish Puri.
Ken Pate is a company spokesman. "If we can draw it, we can make it. And our drafting team's very good back there."
Javier Rodriguez had just learned to be a draftsman at Canadian Valley Technical Center in Chickasha in 2021 when his bosses at Midwest Cooling Towers asked him to begin the process of imagining so they could build a 40 foot tall leg lamp. Not bad for a kid who just graduated from Chickasha High School in 2020.
Pate says private donations paid for the venture. "I said, we're really not doing this for the profit. We're doing it for the exposure. So if we don't do nothing but break even, we're fine. Which we spent a lot more hours on the drafting side then we thought we were gonna, and actually spent 2,200 man hours of sanding. So there was a lot of sanding to get the shape of that leg."
Fiberglass operations manager, Steve Watt embraced the challenge. "Yeah, that was an interesting project. The leg lamp, when they came to us with the idea, we met with 'em like in 2021 and we were excited about it. We thought, oh, that'd be an interesting project. Everybody was involved at Midwest Towers. It was a truly a complete effort there. And it's one that was a challenge, but satisfying when we're done."
"No big deals. Nothing we can't do. I think we can do just about anything we wanted. If somebody can bring it to us, I think we can do it." says Production Manager Alan Williams.
So on the eve of Chickasha's 30th Annual Festival of Light, which began on Thanksgiving, the city of Chickasha took delivery of the massive conversation piece.
Cowan said, "It's over 9,000 pounds. It's made out of fiberglass, and it's just the fact that they could do it. I mean, we were just shocked. We've got new restaurants that are opening up because of this. We had a developer come into town a couple of weeks ago, and he's proposing a 5.5 million dollar development right here and a lot of it has to do with the fact that we put this silly leg lamp up."
Javier Rodriguez, designer of the lamp, said, "Yeah, It's gonna be great. I mean, I think even though how weird it is, you know, being a literal leg lamp in the middle of downtown, I think it is pretty cool to be able to be a part of that. Not only I, but for Midwest and all the team."
