Looking back at Omaha's redevelopment projects and projecting the future

Marty Shukert spent many of his teenage days grinding meat and loading boxes in a gritty part of downtown Omaha called Lower Douglas.

Business got done, even if the setting wasn’t so glamorous. Shukert, now 71, recalls the area that included his family’s butcher shop as a labyrinth of taverns, flophouses, supply stores and assorted trades.

Behind feathered bangs and typewriters, office workers of the mid-1970s watched as construction crews leveled a swath of downtown Omaha and then scooped out the sunken park that would become Gene Leahy Mall.

Forty-five years later, a newer set of downtowners sporting man buns and working on iPads have been seeing the same blocks refilled to street level to create a new version of the city’s signature park.

For 33 years, the question nagged Kevin Collison: What ever happened to the historic Scribbles facade?

As a World-Herald reporter in 1988, Collison covered plans to demolish the popular Scribbles restaurant that faced what was then called the Central Park Mall. It was housed in the Dewey and Stone building — downtown’s oldest commercial structure — which unfortunately stood in the path of a proposed office and business complex.

Hubs of commerce, housing, offices and entertainment are growing across Omaha and its suburbs.

One need only take a drive along the Dodge Street corridor to catch a glimpse. There's the new Crossroads under construction at 72nd Street. Farther west, the developing 500-acre Heartwood Preserve, West Dodge Pointe, West Village Pointe and the emerging Fountain Ridge and Avenue One campuses.

Big ugly red brick buildings.

When Conagra's chief executive dismissed a historic Omaha warehouse district as such, he ignited preservation rallies, local division and a national spotlight. But none of that could stop demolition of the six-block Jobbers Canyon to clear the way for the company's global headquarters.

Before demolition of Jobbers Canyon was even a thought, a piece of the historic warehouse district had been turned into a hip place to live.

RJ Neary remembers because he not only helped renovate the century-old New Idea building, he lived there after it became edgy apartments in 1986.

They were the glory days of downtown Omaha commerce.

When shoppers could stroll blocks of stores with elaborate window displays and smartly dressed mannequins. When families lined up for elevator rides to see Santa on the 10th floor of the Brandeis building.

If you’ve driven into downtown Omaha from the airport, you’ve seen them: four red towers that rise above the busy crossroads where Abbott Drive meets Cuming and 10th Streets.

Indeed, an untold number of people have passed by the monuments that adorn the four corners of the intersection near TD Ameritrade Park and the CHI Health Center.

Brad Ashford vividly recalls the invite, a half century ago, from Old Market pioneer Sam Mercer, who wanted to show him and his dad a downtown spot where Mercer planned to open a quaint French cafe.

At the time, in 1968, the end was drawing near for big downtown department stores such as the Ashford family’s Nebraska Clothing Co. flagship, which was demolished at 15th and Farnam Streets six years later to make way for the new public library headquarters.

Leo and Frances Kraft fought an uphill battle trying to make a home in downtown Omaha around 1970.

Back then, city officials balked at issuing permits necessary to transform a commercial structure, in this case the old St. Philomena school at 15th and Leavenworth Streets, into a personal residence.

Some downtowners may know the place as the “Piano Man building” — a nickname derived from the whimsical jazz pianist mural that adorned the front windows for 15 recent years. Others may associate 714 S. 15th St. with printing ink, rawhide or other assorted commercial smells that wafted out of its brick and limestone-detailed walls over the past century.

But today anyone passing by the historic Swartz-Driscoll will see its most dramatic metamorphosis yet: The Omaha landmark has become downtown’s latest condominium conversion project. A $3.5 million effort turned the former print and book-binding facility into five contemporary homes covered with the structure’s original skin and other features reminiscent of its 1910 roots. The Swartz-Driscoll, whose last few condo tenants are still building out their spaces, continues a trend that has turned numerous obsolete downtown commercial structures into urban living quarters.

When Mike Moylan bought his first downtown property in 1994, he leased out the bulk to commercial tenants — and set up his bachelor pad in a corner upstairs.

The warehouse, built in 1928 northwest of 10th and Dodge, was nothing fancy but did have a colorful pedigree.