A drive to keep a local shoe store chain in McAlester failed. Despite area business leaders' best efforts, the store closed Monday.
The local Blockbuster video will soon follow suit, just as has been the case in other cities and towns.
Despite the closings, city leaders in McAlester say they see positive change in the community of about 18,306.
The local chamber of commerce chief points to the recent addition of two new national restaurant chains and the recent lowering of fire insurance rates as evidence of a still-vibrant city.
Yet, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the McAlester area was the 13th-fastest shrinking "micropolitan" area in the United States from July 1, 2011, to July 1, 2012.
The McAlester micropolitan area, which amounts to the Pittsburg County population, shrank by 1.3 percent, from 45,645 to 45,048 people during the one-year time period.
Mayor Steve Harrison said some of the population decline may be attributed to the continued reduction in area natural gas production.
Once a hotbed of gas drilling, the area has seen large declines in production as prices declined.
"Gas drilling activity has dropped a bunch," Harrison said.
Today, companies are drilling just enough to hang onto their leases until the price of gas rebounds, he said.
A smaller cousin of metropolitan areas, the Census Bureau defines a micropolitan area as one that contains an urban cluster of between 10,000 and 49,999 people.
McAlester is one of 18 Oklahoma micropolitan areas designated by the Census Bureau and 536 nationwide.
Four other Oklahoma micropolitan areas also lost population in the past year.
Ironically, Census Bureau officials said in the last batch of population figures, released Thursday, that there is no doubt that the energy boom was a chief factor in driving population growth in the Great Plains.
"After a long period of out-migration, some parts of the Great Plains - from just south of the Canadian border all the way down to West Texas - are experiencing rapid population growth," Thomas Mesenbourg, the Census Bureau's senior adviser, said in prepared remarks.
The Census Bureau said the energy boom resulted in three other Oklahoma micropolitan areas - all in western Oklahoma - to be among the top 15 fastest growing in the country.
The Elk City area was the seventh-fasting growing micropolitan area in the United States. It grew 3.5 percent from July 1, 2011, to July 1, 2012.
The Weatherford and Woodward areas were the 12th- and 15th-fastest growing micropolitan areas, respectively.
But Harrison said drilling in the McAlester area was primarily limited to natural gas production, while the activity in western Oklahoma and other Great Plains states was both gas and oil production, the latter of which has continued to be strong.
Local residents offered mixed views on the population change issue.
Janice Brillo said she has noticed the outflow of residents at her McAlester U-Haul business.
"Lately, more people have been moving out than moving in," she said.
She blamed bad economic conditions on much of the outflow.
"Businesses closed down, and a lot of people lost jobs," Brillo said.
Others, though, said any population change has had a minimal effect on the local economy.
Dustin Vicars of Vicars Furniture said business seems to be as good as it ever was.
"I don't know why people are moving out," he said. "I haven't noticed a big decrease in population or shoppers."
He urged caution in reading too much into the population figures.
"If you are looking at 500 or 600 people moving out and the population of McAlester is probably around 20,000, I wouldn't say it is a real large percentage," Vicars said.
Meanwhile, the Tulsa County population grew at a slower rate for the third consecutive year.
The Tulsa County population as of July 1 was 613,816, up 5,611 residents since that date a year earlier. That equates to a 0.9 percent annual increase.
That's slightly faster than the state population rate of change, which was 0.8 percent for the one-year period. But it also marks the third year Tulsa has seen a decline in its rate of population increase.
In the past decade, Tulsa County's gains in population peaked during the 2007-08 period, when it increased 1.67 percent.
Since 2008, the percentage increase has been smaller each year.
Meanwhile, three Oklahoma counties - two near Oklahoma City and the other in western Oklahoma - are among the fastest growing of U.S. cities with 10,000 or more population.
The population of Canadian County, located just west of Oklahoma County, grew by 6.1 percent since the 2010 Census, ranking it as the 46th-fastest growing county in the United States. The population in Canadian Country grew from 115,541 to 122,560 from April 1, 2010, the date of the 2010 Census, to July 1, 2012.
The population of Beckham County, which includes Elk City, grew by 4.3 percent during the past year, ranking it as the 98th-fastest growing county in the country.
Logan County, just north of Oklahoma County, ranked No. 100 among the fastest growing U.S. counties, with a 4.3 percent increase in population since the 2010 Census.
Census officials attributed the energy boom in the plains to making Williams County, N.D., the nation's fastest growing county.
Williams County grew by 19.2 percent, from 22,398 to 26,697 people, since 2010.
Curtis Killman 918-581-8471
curtis.killman@tulsaworld.com
Original Print Headline: Small-town change
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