Nebraska gives grants to two groups planning a $60 million airport business park in Omaha

The State of Nebraska has awarded grants to the North Omaha-based Omaha Economic Development Corp. and to an affiliate of the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce to create plans for a $60 million business park development in North Omaha.

The decision by the Nebraska Department of Economic Development is an incremental step forward for a potential new airport business park, pitched as a potentially major employment center in North Omaha. The development is likely to be one of the largest single projects funded by the $335 million economic recovery act that the Nebraska Legislature passed last year.

“For industrial-type businesses that would come in and create jobs and business opportunities, it’s a tremendous opportunity,” said Michael Maroney, president and CEO of OEDC. “We’ve just got to make sure we do the best job we can to make that happen.”

The state announced recently that it will give a $400,000 planning grant to each of two nonprofit applicants: OEDC and the chamber-related Omaha Development Foundation. The state then will choose a plan and grant up to $60 million to acquire and assemble land and develop sites ready for such businesses as manufacturers, warehouses and distributors to build on.

Mark Norman, vice president of economic development for the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber “always has wanted to develop some additional business sites in that North Omaha area (near the airport).”

“This activity provides us with that opportunity to do so,” he said.

Norman testified at a hearing of the Legislature’s Urban Affairs Committee last year that seven business projects could locate in a potential 100-acre site, employing up to 1,700 people.

The Department of Economic Development originally planned to give just one $400,000 planning grant. The department actually awarded the planning grant in December to the Omaha Development Foundation. But the state pulled back the award and reopened applications for the planning grant due to what the department said were “technical challenges with the applications.”

OEDC applied the second time around, and scored the highest of three applicants. The chamber’s application scored second, according to the Department of Economic Development. The other application came from the Nebraska Enterprise Fund and the Omaha real estate development firm White Lotus Group.

OEDC is partnering with a private firm, Omaha-based Burlington Capital Construction Services, for the planning grant and potentially the development itself.

The Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce manages and provides staffing to the Omaha Development Foundation, which has no staff of its own.

The chamber’s and OEDC’s applications were “highly competitive,” according to a recent Department of Economic Development press release announcing the planning grants.

Department officials decided to give grants to two applicants because “providing different perspectives would benefit the North Omaha community and the state overall going into the next phase of choosing who’s going to get the opportunity to develop the overall airport business park,” said Trevon Brooks, chief strategy officer for the department.

Awarding two grants essentially sets up a competition between the two organizations who received them. It also sets up a competition between the chamber and two of its members, OEDC and Burlington Capital.

But Norman said he doesn’t see it that way.

“It think there’s an opportunity for everybody to to work together toward these same goals,” he said. “We’ll explore what those opportunities for partnership are. ... It’s not a competition.”

Maroney said they were just informed a little more than a week ago they were getting the competitive grant, so it’s too early to say how his organization might work with the chamber and Omaha Development Foundation.

“We will be meeting with the chamber to see if there’s collaboration that can work for the community,” Maroney said.

No businesses have officially committed to the future site, although the leader of a Nebraska-based manufacturer, Pacific Engineering, said last year that he wanted to expand at a new airport business park in North Omaha. Both applicants who won planning grants said they have heard from businesses who are interested in locating there.

Maroney said several businesses have indicated strong interest.

“But we’re not prepared to say who they are yet,” he said.

Norman also declined to name potential businesses.

The chamber has explored the development of such a business park as an employment center in North Omaha for more than 10 years, including working with the City of Omaha and the state to identify and study sites and what it would take to develop them.

The money for planning and developing the business park is part of the $335 million that the Nebraska Legislature allocated last year to help underserved areas of Omaha and the state. Most of the money, about $250 million, comes from the federal American Rescue Plan Act. The bill that allocated the funds, LB 1024 sponsored by Sen. Justin Wayne, specified that $60 million of the money should go toward an industrial park near Omaha’s airport.

The law doesn’t specify a site. But it does require that the business park be located within 2 miles of a major airport in a metropolitan-class city. The site also must be in, or adjacent to, qualified census tracts. Those are areas where a majority of the population has low incomes as defined by federal law.

The potential airport business park has the potential to bring many well-paying jobs and improve economic conditions in North Omaha, Brooks said.

“We talk to businesses all over the globe,” he said. “And a ton of them are interested in Nebraska. We talk to them continuously about where’s the best place for them to locate their business. A lot of times whenever we think about various communities, even downtown, because the infrastructure is older it’s harder to sell some of those areas. So this creates an opportunity for us to create shovel-ready opportunities for businesses.”