The inside of Tulsa's new cancer center now has a number on it. A City of Tulsa permit dated Oct. 21 covers interior work on the OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center building at 4150 S. Yale Ave., with a reported value of $40.9 million.
The permit is short and plain. It calls the work an "alteration following shell," meaning the building's outer structure came first, and describes the project as "a cancer treatment facility located on the OU Tulsa campus at 41st and Yale."
A year from groundbreaking to the inside work
The University of Oklahoma first announced it would bring Stephenson to Tulsa in April 2024. At that press conference, Mayor G.T. Bynum said, "This center has our 100% support," KGOU reported.
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The building came next. State leaders, doctors and donors held a ceremonial groundbreaking on Nov. 13, 2025, on OU's Schusterman Center campus, according to the university. A month later OU put the cost at $189 million for a building of about 176,000 square feet, set to open in 2028, in its announcement of a state grant.
The October permit is the only one we hold at the address. Its text points back to an earlier shell permit that isn't in our records.
The two dollar figures measure different things. The $40.9 million is the value reported to the city for this interior permit, not a contract amount. The $189 million is the university's figure for building the whole center.
What goes inside
The plans call for 70 exam rooms, 45 infusion spaces and three linear accelerators for radiation treatment, along with MRI and PET-CT imaging, according to OU. The state's description adds a brachytherapy suite, four theranostics rooms, a centralized infusion pharmacy and lab space for clinical trials, according to the Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services.
A whole floor will be given over to clinical trials, OU said, along with a pharmacy for experimental drugs and a lab that studies how the body processes them. Stephenson offers about 300 trials today.
That's the point of the Tulsa building. Tulsa and northeastern Oklahoma hold about a third of the state's people, yet fewer than 5% of patients in national cancer trials come from the region, KRMG reported. "Clinical trials are bringing tomorrow's therapy here today," center director Dr. Robert Mannel told the station.
Demand is expected to keep climbing. OU projects outpatient cancer care need in northeast Oklahoma will grow 14.2% through 2034.
Who's paying for it
The money has come from several directions. OU Health lists $25 million from Charles and Peggy Stephenson and their family foundation, $50 million from the Oklahoma Legislature and $8 million from the Cherokee Nation on its project page.
On top of that, the Oklahoma Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust gave a $25 million grant in December 2025. In April the Stuart Family Foundation added $2 million, and the first-floor café will carry its name, OU Health said.
The sources don't line up neatly on two details. OU gives the size as about 176,000 square feet, while OU Health's page says 176,100. And while OU says the center opens in 2028, OU Health's page says summer 2028 and News On 6 reported spring 2028.
Health care building is picking up
Tulsa's project lands as hospital and clinic planning is gaining ground nationally. Institutional planning, which covers schools, hospitals and government buildings, rose 9.4% in September, and Dodge Construction Network's Sarah Martin pointed to "a strong uptick in education, healthcare, and government building planning," Construction Dive reported.
At 41st and Yale, the interior work is next, with the doors set to open in 2028.
How we count
The permit comes from the City of Tulsa's permit records for 4150 S. Yale Ave., dated Oct. 21, 2026. The value is the one reported on the permit. Project details and the names of the people and groups behind the center come from the reporting linked here.
See Tulsa's latest permit numbers, updated weekly.
Sources
- University of Oklahoma, "Groundbreaking for Major Tulsa Expansion of OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center" (Nov. 2025): ou.edu
- University of Oklahoma, "OU Receives $25 million Grant from TSET to Expand Statewide Cancer Care" (Dec. 16, 2025): ou.edu
- OU Health, "Transforming Cancer Care for Northeast Oklahoma": ouhealth.com
- OU Health, "Stuart Family Foundation Gives $2 million to Support OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center Expansion in Tulsa" (April 30, 2026): ouhealth.com
- Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services, "New Tulsa cancer center expands access to advanced care" (Dec. 30, 2025): oklahoma.gov
- KRMG, "Oklahoma TSET awards OU $25 million grant to build new cancer center facility" (Dec. 19, 2025): krmg.com
- KGOU, "OU cancer center expanding to Tulsa" (April 24, 2024): kgou.org
- News On 6, "OU Health receives $2 million donation to expand Tulsa cancer center" (May 21, 2026): newson6.com
- Construction Dive, "Education, healthcare projects boosted construction planning in September" (Oct. 8, 2026): constructiondive.com
- City of Tulsa permit BLDC-251330-2026.
- Photo: OU-Tulsa, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons: commons.wikimedia.org
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