Will the blighted and substandard designation creep west over 72nd Street to the old Shark nightclub and Quality Inn grounds near West Center Road?
City planners have given their green light to calling the 4-acre site a community redevelopment area, also known as blighted and substandard — which then would allow an interested developer to apply for a property tax break known as tax-increment financing.
The City Planning Board on Wednesday is to entertain the request, which also needs City Council approval.
Omaha planners said that without the incentive, redevelopment likely wouldn’t occur and the “empty, deteriorated hotel structure will continue to exert a blighting influence on the neighborhood.”
Currently, a swath on the east side of 72nd Street, including Aksarben Village, is a legally designated CRA blighted zone, opening it to the tax-increment financing designed to spur private investment.
City Planning Director Dave Fanslau said agents of a developer have been meeting with neighbors and city officials in pursuit of the designation southwest of 72nd and West Center Road, where the developer is interested in razing the old hotel and nightclub to build apartments.
Changing Omaha: More than 50 stories of local development projects in the works
An ongoing list of some our development stories from 2018-20, with the most-recent stories at the top.
The College of St. Mary is planning to build a new $18 million field house with a 200-meter indoor track, plus courts for basketball and volleyball and batting tunnels for softball, among other facilities. This artist’s rendering shows the planned Wellness and Athletic Center, connected to the Omaha women’s college’s current Lied Fitness Center. Read more
Mary Our Queen's new Early Childhood Education & Youth Center is to open later in 2020 at 120th and Valley Streets. It will span about 10,000 square feet and its $3.1 million price tag is covered by a parish capital campaign. Read more
ONYX Automotive in January became the first business to launch operations on the 500-acre redevelopment site poised to become a mecca of office, housing and entertainment venues. Under construction are office campuses for local business biggies including Applied Underwriters, Valmont Industries and The Carson Group. Read more
The outdoor social plaza in the Capitol District, which currently includes an ice-skating rink, can fit 1,500 to 2,000 people. Apartments are in the background, with a three-story office building at left. When the office building finishes construction this spring, it will be the final structural piece that fully wraps the project’s much-touted outdoor entertainment plaza. That milestone — which caps major landscape changes at the site at 10th Street and Capitol Avenue — comes nine years after the $200 million-plus redevelopment was announced. Read more
Curt Hofer and his son, Jeff Hofer, are developing land near 192nd Street and West Dodge Road as part of the billion-dollar Avenue One project. The land shown here is on the southwest corner of the intersection looking from the south to the north at Lawrence Youngman Lake. Read more
A former one-story furniture store that has been vacant for several years is to stretch up and out as J. Development plans to integrate a new five-story apartment building into the existing property. When done, the $17.8 million project at 119 N. 72nd St. will contain indoor parking, community and fitness rooms and 158 market-rate apartments ranging in rent from $800 to $1,100. Read more
The long-awaited Dundee Flats (shown above) at 49th and Dodge Streets is finished, and its development team, Sage Capital, is now planning its next apartment project in another “emerging” pocket of the city. That future apartment property in the Benson area is to be called the Mill, a nod to its past as a grain mill, and would become home to 95 market-rate units. Read more
The Centerline apartment complex, a J. Development project on the 72nd Street corridor north of Spring Street, is open for business. Nearly 80 of the 162 units, at 7007 Oak St., are ready and other floors are opening in phases through November. Read more
A batch of 12 newly constructed single-family homes — selling for upward of $300,000 and featuring rooftop decks and garages — is poised to open along the corridor next spring. Milestone Development’s $3.6 million Courtyard on Park Townhomes project stands out on that re-energized stretch between about Harney Street and Woolworth Avenue in that it’s new construction targeting homeowners rather than renters. Read more
Helping to change the downtown Omaha landscape north of Dodge Street are three districts, including the $300 million Millwork Commons. The project was launched with the (ongoing) restoration of the Ashton warehouse at 12th and Nicholas Streets into a new home for tech company Flywheel. Here, Flywheel employees check out their furture workspace in the Ashton. Read more
In June, John Schmidt unveiled a $5.5 million makeover of the Florentine, a historic stone apartment building west of downtown Omaha at 907 S. 25th St. It's a project 30 years in the making. Read more
Armed with a fresh CEO and more innovations in the pipeline, Valmont Industries is moving its headquarters to a 6-acre piece of the Heartwood redevelopment. Some people foresee the redevelopment, near 150th Street and West Dodge Road, as the new downtown of west Omaha. Read more
It's out with the old — that is, a 1970s-era storage structure at 14th and Howard — and in with a newly constructed bar and restaurant topped with an outdoor deck. Next door, at 1410 Howard St., a separate brick building erected in 1905 is to be restored and turned into retail and office space. Read more
People familiar with downtown real estate trends expect retailers — including specialty clothing, novelty shops, service retailers and even a grocery store — to increasingly fill north downtown gaps as more apartment dwellers come to the area and daytime workforces multiply. At the moment, vintage home décor store Prairies in Bloom is rather lonely at 17th and Cuming Streets. READ MORE
Newcomers are changing the face of 13th Street as Donut Stop closes and a new, hip joint moves in. READ MORE
A midtown Omaha hotel property that in recent years can’t seem to stick with an identity now has a new owner and is poised to become a Four Points by Sheraton. READ MORE
A South Omaha industrial site is poised to see new and big activity as the future headquarters of Elliott Equipment Co. READ MORE.
A hotel-condo project, a retail center and an apartment complex are among developments helping to fill gaps along or just off of Omaha's busy West Dodge thoroughfare. READ MORE.
A downtown building constructed in 1923 that once housed a cigar shop is to be restored in a $2.38 million project. READ MORE
A local development team has been quietly assembling property to make way for a new retail and housing district on a sleepy southwest fringe of downtown Omaha. But the build-out of that proposed mixed-use Flatiron District is “on pause” given uncertainty over what might rise on a nearby block that Douglas County has targeted for a youth detention facility. READ MORE.
Former Creighton University-turned-NBA baller Anthony Tolliver is bouncing back into town with a planned 150-unit apartment complex near Elkhorn. READ MORE.
A tavern in the form of a tiny house is preparing to open on 13th Street south of downtown Omaha. Called the Tiny House, the bar at 1411 S. 13th St. is being launched by a group including the real estate duo leading the broader effort to revive that section of Little Bohemia. READ MORE.
A hotel, a sports bar and bunches of other retailers soon will start filling out a corner of the Antler View mixed-use development near 192nd Street and West Maple Road. READ MORE
A trendy row house project is to sprout south of downtown Omaha where a family’s flower shop and greenhouse operation once stood. READ MORE
Picking up a development plan that was in place when Security National Bank started building its headquarters in 1999, SNB leaders are planning a new building at One Pacific Place. READ MORE
A $22.2 million housing development called the Bos is going up in the Morton Meadows neighborhood. 158 dwellings are planned for the 2.6-acre site near Saddle Creek Road and Pacific Street. READ MORE
The number of hotel rooms in the Omaha area has jumped about 16 percent in the past five years — higher than the 7 percent increase for the United States over the same period. READ MORE
As once happened for Florence, Benson, Irvington and a handful of other small towns, the buffer between Omaha and Bennington is disappearing. Families are flocking to the outskirts of town, building homes in brand new neighborhoods with brand new schools in the Bennington school district. READ MORE
Loft apartments and rehabbed commercial bays are poised to pop up along Omaha’s historic Auto Row — a stretch once bustling with showrooms of Studebakers, Hudsons and other classic cars. READ MORE
The midtown Omaha campus of the Atlas stands out not only for sheer size, but also its $108 million conversion from a sterile hospital. A mix of retail and residential residents have already started moving in. READ MORE
Sweeping change in Omaha's Little Italy area has neighbors banding together to make sure they have a say in future development. READ MORE.
After Eppley Airfield recorded its busiest month ever in May, airport officials are beginning the next stage of planning for future renovations and expansion. READ MORE
The century-old Blackstone Hotel, most recently used as an office building in midtown Omaha, is poised to be resurrected to its original use under a nearly $75 million plan by two Omaha developers. READ MORE
The Douglas County Board will consider using eminent domain to acquire a property near 18th and Howard Streets for its proposed $120 million juvenile justice center. Read more
The 130-year-old St. Agnes Catholic Church and related buildings appear headed for the same fate as a few other Omaha parishes in the past few years: The campus at 23rd and Q Streets has been sold to a developer who expects to replace it with rental housing. READ MORE.
A familiar Old Market warehouse — the 133-year-old Woolworth building — is now 44 residences. The homes were carved out of the top three floors of the five-story structure on the northeast corner of 12th and Howard Streets. READ MORE.
All Makes Office Equipment witnesses a revival of Omaha's Farnam Street corridor. READ MORE.
A $13 million headquarters for OCI is set to rise northeast of 204th Street and West Maple Road. READ MORE.
A growing Omaha-based Baxter Auto Group is revving up with a new corporate headquarters to be built northwest of 168th Street and West Dodge Road, near three dealership structures the company currently has under construction. READ MORE.
Several projects in the works could bring bustle back to Omaha's 16th Street corridor. READ MORE.
A company that builds senior living communities has staked out an 8-acre spot on Omaha’s sprawling West Farm development. The Avamere Family of Companies, based in the Portland, Oregon, area plans an $84 million project featuring a pair of upscale residential structures with independent senior living, assisted living and memory care units spanning 325,000 square feet. READ MORE.
The former Creighton University Medical Center is becoming the state's largest single structure of market-rate apartments, near 30th and Cuming. READ MORE.
Officials continue to move closer to developing Lot B, an 8-acre piece of downtown real estate near the CenturyLink Center. Plans calls for a $125 million mixed-use development with restaurants, stores, apartments, open spaces and possibly another hotel. READ MORE.
NuStyle Development is poised to convert another downtown Omaha building into housing — replacing much of the Wells Fargo Bank center at 1919 Douglas St. with about 200 apartments and indoor parking. READ MORE.
The 30 Metro residential and retail complex brings a five-story, $20 million investment to North 30th and Fort Streets. The building includes 110 apartments, 12,000 square feet of commercial bays — and the Icona, a sculpture that stands near the entrance to the 113,000-square-foot complex. READ MORE.
The Ponca Tribe of Nebraska plans to move its health clinic and administrative offices from South Omaha to the vacant former Infogroup headquarters campus near 84th and Q Streets. READ MORE.
Omaha's Intercultural Senior Center is building a 22,000-square-foot facility at 5545 Center St. Construction on the $6.2 million project is expected to be done by 2019. READ MORE.
Alvine Engineering is settling into a new home at 12th and Cass Streets, about four blocks north of the 127-year-old digs it had been in for three decades. The facility marks the first corporate headquarters to be constructed in that downtown area since 2013 when a $44 million, 130,500-square-foot facility at 13th Street and Capitol Avenue was built for grain-trader Gavilon. READ MORE.
Omaha’s movers and shakers, with more than half the funds pledged privately, are forging ahead with a $290 million proposal to breathe new life into the city’s downtown riverfront. A conceptual master plan calls for adding spacious lawns for events, a Farnam Street walking promenade that stretches past Eighth Street to the river, a ribbon-shaped rink for ice skating and rollerblading, a water plaza where kids can play and splash, and a dog park. READ MORE.
The Rohwer family is one of the last farm families on 204th Street, one of the final few trying to straddle the fuzzy line between this area’s rural past and suburban present. "My life is farming," said Alan Rohwer. "My life is this land." READ MORE.
Omaha-based Metonic Real Estate Solutions helped refine a project it thinks will target an unmet demand in the west Omaha area. Ravello 192, as it’s called, is planned as a sprawling 11-building town house development offering private entrances and garages for each of the 118 rental residences. READ MORE.
Rising southeast of 10th Street and Capitol Avenue is a six-story mostly residential structure with ground-floor commercial bays. Capitol Place, as the $27 million project is called, is the dream of two former city officials who are shedding a suburban lifestyle to help build Omaha’s downtown central business district. READ MORE.
Two heavy-hitter youth athletic organizations are teaming up to help build a $10 million Elkhorn facility set to sprawl across 135,000 square feet and host up to 400,000 visitors a year. READ MORE.
The century-old farm at 162nd and Fort Streets, which has evolved into mostly rental space for a landscaper, car fanciers and storage-seekers, is at risk. Omaha officials want the operations shut down, citing concerns with permits, zoning, life safety. READ MORE.
Urban Village Development is set to build 167 apartments on the site of the former Grace University administration and dorm structure at 1311 S. 9th St. READ MORE.
cindy.gonzalez@owh.com, 402-444-1224
Cindy Gonzalez
Reporter - Money
Cindy covers housing, commercial real estate development and more for The World-Herald. Follow her on Twitter @cgonzalez_owh. Phone: 402-444-1224.
