The end of an era – the passing of Earl Neighbors

By: J. David Chapman//Guest Columnist//September 9, 2021

During February of 2019, Bert Belanger was pinch-hitting for me as I ran for City Council. Bert wrote in this Lot Lines column that his friend Earl Neighbors turned 92 years young. About a week earlier, Earl’s family trust sold the last property that he owned in Automobile Alley. At the time, Bert expressed his admiration of Earl and the Neighbors family.

Bert wrote, “newbie observers may not know that Earl’s fingerprints are all over Auto Alley; after a stint serving his country in the Marines, Earl began his career in coffee, working his way up to general manager for Cain’s Coffee Co., whose ivory brick headquarters on NE 12th Street is now slated for a massive retrofit. Earl’s oldest sons, Steve and Fred, were buying coffee from Cain’s until they decided to roast their own, and soon after his retirement from Cain’s, Earl was knee-deep in working with these two sons at Neighbors’ Brothers Coffee. A few years later, Earl helped son David start a totally separate business based in Tulsa around his own brand of the brew – Java Dave’s.”

Bert met Earl during Earl’s Cain’s tenure in the ‘70s (Bert’s dad bought his coffee for their family’s restaurants), but it was around 2004 that Earl and Bert became well-acquainted. Bert felt privileged to observe as Earl worked tirelessly to squeeze income from his collection of buildings that he and his sons had cobbled together when no one else wanted them. Starting at NE 12th Street and working south, the Neighbors clan amassed well over 300,000 square feet, spanning both sides of 10th and Ninth streets and most of the north side of Eighth Street. Being from the waste-not, want-not WWII generation, Earl showed amazing creativity in developing a large portion of Automobile Alley.

This past Thursday, Sept. 2, Earl passed on to his great reward; Bert had been able to drop by his house several times over the past few years, each time was a sweet visit with a smiling and joking man. Earl Neighbors was 94 years young, and finished his race well, indeed. Cheers to Earl Neighbors, the impact that he had on the coffee scene in Oklahoma City, and the real estate in Automobile Alley!

J. David Chapman is an associate professor of finance and real estate at the University of Central Oklahoma (jchapman7@uco.edu).