City of Choice
With an abundance of amenities from recreational opportunities to state-of-the-art health care facilities and highly-ranked schools and universities, there’s a lot to love about Lawton-Fort Sill and it shows. The city earns kudos for highly affordable housing, cultural and historic assets, a central location, easy access to air travel and so much more.
“My husband’s parents retired here and we moved from London, England, to Lawton-Fort Sill to come home,” said Yvonne Landmark. “We opened two new businesses here, The UPS Store and my husband’s technology consulting business, and both are going extremely well. We were ready to leave the hustle bustle behind us and feel very positive and happy about the move. Lawton’s future is very bright and moving in all the right directions.”
For Vincent Saylor and his family, the decision to choose Lawton two years ago was practically seamless.
“I was practicing law in a Birmingham firm for eight years before the move, but my wife and I really wanted to open our own business,” said Saylor, owner of Vincent Saylor State Farm in Lawton. “We could have chosen multiple places, but the availability of housing, recreational opportunities like water skiing in Lake Lawtonka or hiking in the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge and finding a secure and progressive place to raise our daughter all added up to Lawton. We looked at schools, places to go and things do and the business outlook for opening the insurance firm. We discovered that Lawton was the perfect fit.”
Janie Billingsley, marketing director of the Billingsley Family of Dealerships, moved to Lawton nearly 23 years ago from a neighboring city and took plenty of time to evaluate quality of life and business opportunities.
“We visited every weekend for eight months,” Billingsley said. “I told my children we were going on an adventure and if they weren’t having fun, we wouldn’t stay. The kids loved it and now Lawton-Fort Sill is our forever home. We couldn’t have found a better place for our multi-generational business and the Ford and Hyundai dealerships our family owns. The city still retains a hometown feeling, while being very up and coming with its own airport and central location.”
Business is what brought Bridget and Ervin Randle to Lawton-Fort Sill, too.
“We had an opportunity to purchase the existing Chevrolet store and we opened our business, Classic Lawton Chevrolet, in 2015,” Bridget said. “The city is moving in a direction of strategic growth; improvements are being made to many local schools and a brand new middle school is being built, and we have two great hospitals as well as the Leah M. Fitch Cancer Center. From the time we arrived we’ve loved every minute of living in Lawton. People are warm and welcoming and everyone is friendly.”