Building Opportunity: Greg Taylor Brings a Builder’s Perspective to TEDC’s Board
Ask Greg Taylor what he is building and there may be more than one answer.
On a recent afternoon, the answer was a wooden cargo station where children could build toy cars and trucks. Taylor was working in his North Tulsa woodshop, where construction scraps get a second life and community members get the chance to learn how to use tools, make something with their own hands and develop practical skills.
But Taylor has spent much of his life building on a much larger scale.
He grew up in the homebuilding business and remains involved with his family’s company, Taylor Homes. His experience includes building single-family and multifamily housing, developing property, managing residential properties and navigating the costs, permitting, inspections and decisions that take a project from an idea to a completed home.
Now, as one of TEDC Creative Capital’s newest board members, Taylor brings that experience to an organization focused on helping entrepreneurs and communities access the capital needed to build something of their own.
“I’ve developed land, I’ve built homes, I’ve been in that space,” Taylor said. “So I feel like I can be an asset in bringing some wisdom to those decisions that we make on those loans.”
Experience Beyond the Blueprint
Taylor understands the practical side of development because he has lived it.
He has experience pricing construction projects and working through the realities that can make or break a development, including whether the proposed budget is realistic in the first place.
“I have my finger on the pulse of what things cost for the most part,” Taylor said. “It’s always a moving target.”
He has also spent years informally mentoring people entering the building and development business. Sometimes that means helping someone think through a project. Other times, it means recognizing an estimate that is unlikely to hold up once construction begins.
That firsthand experience gives Taylor a perspective he believes can complement the financial and banking knowledge already represented on TEDC’s board.
He is also quick to acknowledge what he is still learning.
After attending his first TEDC board meetings, Taylor said he has been learning “the language of banking loan approvals” and approaching the role the same way he approaches many new situations: by listening.
“I’m learning,” he said. “Just listening more than I speak, which is my mantra anyway.”
Asking a Different Question
Taylor’s interest in housing and development is also closely connected to a larger question that has shaped his work over the past several years.
“How am I a part of this history? What can I do about it?”
The question emerged during Taylor’s doctoral studies at Phillips Theological Seminary, where his research focused on the Tulsa Race Massacre and the history of Black suffering in Tulsa.
As he studied that history, Taylor began looking at his own background in homebuilding and considering how that experience could be used locally.
“I grew up in the building business,” Taylor said. “I’ve been privileged in a lot of ways to be part of a business that has built homes for lots of people. And how can we bring that to bear on the history in Tulsa?”
One answer became the 1256 Movement, a nonprofit Taylor and his family started with a focus on supporting Black homeowners. The name refers to the 1,256 homes that Taylor learned were destroyed during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
Over the past six years, Taylor said the organization has distributed approximately $300,000 to 30 Black homeowners for home improvements. What began as an effort to help individual homeowners has also given Taylor and the organization years of experience learning what works, what does not and how the model might eventually reach more families.
That work later led Taylor to serve on the City of Tulsa’s Beyond Apology Commission, where he has continued learning about housing, reparative efforts and the effects of historic barriers to ownership and investment.
For Taylor, those experiences intersect directly with the perspective he hopes to bring to TEDC.
“I bring some broad understanding of building development and systemic racism and housing, where others bring banking,” he said.
Capital That Helps Communities Grow
Taylor sees access to capital as one of the clearest ways TEDC can make a difference for entrepreneurs and emerging developers.
“The best thing that TEDC can do is the obvious, which is capital,” he said. “It can be good capital. It can be capital put in the right places and more strategically placed so that development is more effective.”
But his vision of development does not stop with putting more houses on the ground.
Taylor believes healthy neighborhoods require businesses and services that support the people who live there. As new housing is built, he wants to see thoughtful investment in grocery stores, retailers, small businesses and other resources residents can easily access.
“There’s just an important role for TEDC to play in supporting businesses that support homes,” Taylor said. “When there’s rooftops, there need to be businesses that are supporting those homes and those lives because just having housing, it just doesn’t cut it when they’re isolated.”
That perspective is especially important to Taylor in historically underserved areas of Tulsa.
He describes himself as an advocate for continued investment in North Tulsa and East Tulsa, where the traditional market has not always produced the same concentration of businesses, services and development found elsewhere in the metro area.
“The market’s going to keep repeating those things,” Taylor said. “But I think it takes some special people to say, ‘This has been a historically neglected area. Let’s do some special things here.'”
For Taylor, TEDC’s role in providing capital to promising businesses and communities creates an opportunity to be part of that work.
Helping People Build for Themselves
It is easy to view Taylor’s interests as separate pursuits.
There is the family homebuilding business. The nonprofit. The woodshop. His work with emerging developers. His service on the Beyond Apology Commission. And now his role with TEDC.
Taylor sees a common thread.
At his North Tulsa shop, he uses construction scrap to make toys while teaching woodworking, DIY and carpentry skills. Rather than simply making things for people, Taylor is more interested in giving them the knowledge and opportunity to make something themselves.
That same idea carries into his approach to housing, business and community development.
“I want to see people build for themselves, do for themselves, learn in the wood shop, build their own homes, own their own homes,” Taylor said.
It is a philosophy that fits naturally with the work ahead at TEDC.
Taylor knows how to build. He knows what it takes to move a project from an idea through the practical realities of costs, materials, land and construction. He also understands that access to knowledge and opportunity can determine who gets the chance to build in the first place.
As he begins his service on TEDC’s board, Taylor is bringing both perspectives with him.
And the question that has guided much of his recent work remains relevant:
What can I do?
For Taylor, part of the answer is helping more people gain the resources, knowledge and opportunity to build something of their own.
Bio: Greg Taylor, TEDC Board Member
Greg R. Taylor is married to Jill R. Taylor, a Tulsa Community College math professor, and they are pictured here on Greenwood. They have three children, and two grandchildren. Greg and Jill founded 1256 Movement and moved to North Tulsa where the nonprofit conveys funding to improve Black homeownership. Greg is a residential general contractor with Taylor Homes and owns Northside Woodshop, where he and other instructors teach DIY and carpentry skills. He has a doctorate from Phillips Theological Seminary that focuses on the 1921 Race Massacre and what white people can do about a history of perpetrating hate and harm to bring healing and love. Greg is honored to serve on the board of TEDC and with the Beyond Apology Commission of the City of Tulsa.