Where do you think Nebraska cities/rural areas will be/trend in the next 10 years? (Omaha: sales)

[MattDen]

Omaha: I think this city is really becoming an economic powerhouse for a metropolitan area of just over 800,000 people it has a big corperate economic base. I know one night I was looking at sales tax figures for Colorado and Nebraska cities and Omaha and basically around on the level of Denver per-capita taxable sales despite not having not having all the tourism.
Anyway, It seems like Omaha's economy will continue to be in excellent shape which means the sprawl will likely continue to the west. Itll be amazing with all the interest it seems like people have in Omaha how much the city expands to the west over the next 10 years.

As far as downtown Omaha I have a feeling they will build a few high-rises in the next 10 years but I think its just close to peaking. Its just not a highly residential downtown, its a corperate-feeling downtown and a very successful corperate downtown but as far as residential the retail selection is lacking and I dont see it getting much better. The area that probubly has the most oppurtunity and not even that much compared to alot of medium-sized cities is North Downtown the 16th to 20th street area. The area just east of downtown has just about peaked also the area between basically 17th and the interstate they have had some very high-profile nice renovation projects but overall that neighborhoods continues to have alot of image problems even if they are exaggerated, perception tends to win over reality.

As far as neighborhoods east Omaha is stable but I just dont see it getting any better. South Omaha doesnt seem to increasing its hispanic population as fast as it was (alot of cities arent it seems) and the hispanic population is becoming increasingly spread out so South Omaha will probubly even go down-hill a little bit.

North Omaha will probubly be stable. They will have their small in-fill devolopments but overall it will remain an area with alot of vacant lots, lots of boarded-up buildings, abandoned houses etc.

So basically, Omaha will probubly have a very good economy over the next decade but as far its neighborhoods go the sprawl fest will continue while the overall outlook for the inner-city area remains ehhh at best.


Lincoln is fast becoming just a dump in its inner-areas, it seems like the biggest priority is expanding to Yankee Hill Road and beyond and seeing how far south the city can go and how far east it can get. Then again when there is so much abandoned property, vacant homes and vacant apartment units in the inner-Lincoln area why would the city bother with improving the area that is a lost cause that few people have interest in and is a huge economic liability for the city when they can build custom-built property-tax rich homes for the upper-middle class in south Lincoln. On one hand I cant blame the city of Lincoln for just saying the heck with these old run-down areas that have such a low property tax base and favoring property-tax rich new home construction but then inner-Lincoln is starting to look like Lima, Ohio and Terre Haute, Indiana which arent exactly overall success stories.

Its economy is okay its got all that massive state spending on its university and the state-workers to keep its economy going along okay. Also, the governor seems to be a big cheerleader for a small city with such little ambition. I have to say I am not a fan of Dave Heineman but he really is the only person who seems to be commited and does all he can to improve Lincoln which has extremely, extremely poor civic leadership and a lack of community.

I think Lincoln's lack of community which is the worst I have ever seen people like their football team but seem to show little pride in their city or civic leadership which has gone from bad to even worse in my opinion is a big issue.

Overall, the economy in Lincoln is satisfactory its not in bad-shape but not nearly on the level of expanding like Omaha's economic powerhouse is.

Lincoln's real failing is its inner-neighborhoods which are going down-hill by the month. They have some very small historic districts in Lincoln just like the most blighted of cities but overall Lincoln's severe blight problems is becoming to the point where I think it would be very hard for even the most civic-minded politician to find a fix.

If Lincoln doesnt get its act to together and the trend continues itll be a town where the neighborhoods close to downtown are full of empty uninhabitable homes, increasingly occupancy hazards with people huge households in small houses, retail vacancies will increase even more then they are now. Overall, I just a feeling inner-Lincoln area is in very, very bad shape and I think over the next 10 years the amount of blight will rival the worst of cities. Downtown Lincoln has no where to go but down also, they might have an opening or two of a business but then it seems when this happens many others go out of business just because Downtown Lincoln is in such bad shape.

I also think alot of the areas of Lincoln from the 40s, 50s and 60s will be increasingly at risk of blight also they already have problems along the 48th street corridor that are increasing by the month. Alot of this is due to the increasing property taxes, the high house property values on small homes per square foot but overall I think alot of those neighborhoods from 44th to 70th and 0 to Cornhusker will go down-hill has increasing amounts of the older demographic in those areas get fed up with the property taxes and most of those houses arent big enough for the new Lincoln demographic where households have 3-5 babies.

Rural Nebraska with ethanol being very, very politically popular its all up in the air but if it remains very politically popular where the corn is growing great prosperity will be.

I am sure the cities in central Nebraska are very, very happy with the sales tax revenue with is gushing into their cities as of late, Hastings was up something like a 1/3rd over last year from Mar 2006-2007!

[DTO Luv]

Originally Posted by MattDen

As far as downtown Omaha I have a feeling they will build a few high-rises in the next 10 years but I think its just close to peaking. Its just not a highly residential downtown, its a corperate-feeling downtown and a very successful corperate downtown but as far as residential the retail selection is lacking and I dont see it getting much better. The area that probubly has the most oppurtunity and not even that much compared to alot of medium-sized cities is North Downtown the 16th to 20th street area. The area just east of downtown has just about peaked also the area between basically 17th and the interstate they have had some very high-profile nice renovation projects but overall that neighborhoods continues to have alot of image problems even if they are exaggerated, perception tends to win over reality.

I think me and the other 8,000 people that live down here would disagree with you about DT not being very residential. North Downtown does have alot of potential but other areas are seeing new developments, new residents moving in, more businesses, restaurants, hotels. More business are also catering to DT residents and staying open later, opening earlier. The best thing that could happen for DT right now is the first phase of the streetcar line being built.

[MattDen]

Every city can claim to have so and so many people in their downtown but how many per square mile? How much has it increased?

Denver for example has a very low population compared to what one would think in their downtown because it includes only the CBD it doesnt include many of the adjacent neighborhood areas like some cities do.

Besides what is the boundries for downtown Omaha and that population number?

Anyway, this is all small compared to how much Omaha's economy has grown. For a city with such a good economy, so much more should be going into the downtown area but it seems like the choice in Omaha is sprawl for the vast majority of people and moving way out to West Omaha.

Omaha has alot of good aspects and great things going for it but on the urban front it is very, very weak especially considering the economic vibrancy.

It seems like it takes unusually long periods of time for them to get residential projects in particlar moving. They just arent aggressive and serious enough. I think when a devoloper proposes a big project city services should take a back seat except for public safety for example. Even if it means shortening library hours, selling parks that dont have enough foot traffic or cutting back on maintance of infrastructure I think they should do all they can to make sure when something is proposed the site is prepared as soon as possible and built but some cities seem to just not be as agressive as others with that.

Another aspect that really holds Omaha back is the anti-social populous they have. Omaha is a very polite city but the populous is not social and a vast majority of people who want urban high-density lifestyle want to be around lots of people and different of people and interact with different people and Omaha is just not that type of town. This anti-social way of life in Omaha is why the sprawl-fest to the west will continue while downtown might improve a bit but relative to alot of other cities will not do nearly as well with its downtown residential or retail.

[DTO Luv]

Downtown's boundaries are the River (east), Leavenworth (south), I-480 (west), and Cuming St. (north). Downtown Omaha has been one of the fastest growing census tracts in the city since 2000.

Omaha is pretty far along in some aspects Downtown compared to other cities. River canals, warehouse districts, parks were done in Omaha before many cities recently started using similiar things to develop their DTs. The Old Market predates SoHo in NYC. Bet you didn't know that.

There are some things I'd really like to see Downtown still that I think we'll have in the next 5 years. A movie theater (not like the ones we have already that show foriegn, art, and classic films) and more places to shop for men's clothes.

[MattDen]

I agree the population growth with-in the census tract has probubly increased alot since 2000 with the condo and warehouse renovations in downtown Omaha along with the re-devolopment of Jones street from 19th to 24th.

Leavenworth and Cuming though is 25 blocks I believe so that is about 2 miles and the river to I-480 is about 20 blocks so that is probubly around 2 miles (the blocks in Omaha seem short, but thats just my opinion) so thats in the vicinity of a 4 square mile area with 8,000 people at last count that is only 2,000 people per square mile.

I realize that they have alot of commercial, city of Omaha space and park space down there but around 2,000 people square mile is not impressive at all and unless it because a regional destination it will not increase services with those low densities.

I think Omaha really needs to be very, very aggressive about devoloping the area between the convention center and 24th and Capitol and Cuming. They should literally have a tsunami of inventives from the state and city to devolop that area as that area is very close in, has alot of vacant and underutilized space and is between a huge university, one of the worlds most popular arenas and one the nations highest concentrations of large corperations.

Another thing is the Gene Leahy mall in downtown Omaha is old news, they tried that same thing with skyline park in Denver and it doesnt work they already have alot of green space along the Missouri river. That corridor seems like it would be ripe for condo devolopment also especially being that it is literally a minute walk to the Old Market (not impressive, but impresses the locals I guess) or the big nearby corperations.

As far as I am concerned the city should sell alot of the underutilized parks that are not on flood plains except for Memorial Park, also maybe cut the library hours in half and also close the community centers. Also the city should try to recapture all sales tax revenues from arena and convention center events. Just imagine the amount of devolopment they would have there if they put all those service cuts into tax incentives to have a very, very dense highrise corridor in that area.

The sad thing is though however is Omaha will never be very aggressive about downtown devolopment. It has been devoloping but its been a slow and steady mainly residential and commercial devolopment, retail devolopment has been pretty sorry. Even Des Moines seems to be trying a bit harder then Omaha, although Omaha is slow and steady it could be Wichita.

They just need alot more then in the vicinity of 2,000 people living per square mile to have the retail services that prosperous downtowns have!

[DTO Luv]

Omaha has been very aggressive in development Downtown. Since 2000 there has been over $3 billion dollars worth of new development. For a metro of 870,000 that's impressive considering bigger metros like KC (1.9 million), St. Louis (2.3 million), and OKC (1.2 million) have had the same amount invested. Per capita that puts Omaha way ahead since the amount spent on DT Omaha is disproportionate to the metro's size.

The area is listed size wise is a little smaller than what you say it is. I used mapquest to find the distances across DT and came up with 1.8 sq. miles. Kind of splittin hairs but still. One thing going for Downtown is being right by Midtown which has a population density of over 8,000 per sq. mile. With Mutuals new residential/commercial/retail center it will put Downtown residents within short distance to shopping once unavailble on this side of town.