Why Are Offices Moving West?

[PotatoeEatsFish]

It’s bugged me as a young professional who has finally moved to Omaha in the past couple years that all the corporate opportunities are out west now. I posted this under general discussion because I am genuinely curious to hear what options/perspectives others here have on this.
It just seems odd that we’re spending all this money to get young people downtown; then all the offices are leaving downtown to go as far west as possible it seems. In my opinion it is such a dumb idea if we are trying to push mass transit to compete with other cities.
I am loud and wrong a lot so I would love to hear other perspectives on this. In my opinion having a few orbit style buses but with less stops going downtown out to these office areas would be the best/cheapest/most-logical solution.

[TitosBuritoBarn]

Well if my office is anything to go off of, the somewhat conservative leadership team lives out west (St. Louis has similar growth pattern as Omaha) and located the office close to where they live, despite most younger employees living in more urban areas

[NEDodger]

It’s cheaper and it’s where the decision-makers live.

[Garrett]

And because of the way Omaha sprawls, downtown isn’t the center of population. If Council Bluffs had stronger growth there would probably be more incentive to be downtown.

[Greg S]

My understanding on one situation, HDR. For years they were 84th and Dodge. Then announced they were going to build new HQ downtown.

If you remember officially it got cancelled due to a parking issue and not being able to come to arrangement with Omaha Performing Arts.

However having spoke with some internally, HDR was receiving a ton of pushback from employees that didn’t want to make the move. The issues that arose downtown were a convenient excuse to make the switch to Ak Sar Ben.

Not saying this is always the case, but some don’t want to go downtown. That would not be me however.

[ThreeGGG]

Downtown is old, decrepit, crowded spaces, and too much crime. ---
West is modern, growing fast, sprawling open spaces, young and vibrant. ---
In as simple of terms as can be said.

[Garrett]

Pfffffffft

[Brad]

Our Omaha office is in Old Mill and we have about 100 employees based in Omaha. Around 1/3 of them are going out to jobsites multiple times a day. So for us, its important to be near the center of the city and near highways so our employees going to jobsites in Bellevue, spend about the same amount of travel time as the employees going to Gretna for Valley.

On the other hand, our Lincoln office is in the downtown area. However, Downtown Lincoln is more centralized than Omaha.

[JohnFN]

I don't actually know where the mean population center of the Omaha MSA is. I know about this website from the census beureau (https://mtgis-portal.geo.census.gov/arc ... 44c844edc2), which measures it for the county and each census tract, but a huge chunk of this discussion is about where the combined gravity of the MSA lies. Omaha's is in regency, and Sarpy's is more or less in downtown Papillion.



My guess for where it really lies for the whole metro is likely the 72nd street exit south of Aksarben. In any case, the interstate also skews the math a bit from the true "population center" because in order to give the largest chunk of population a 15-20 min commute, you'll want to move a bit closer to places that don't have those kind of beltways available (west O). Unsurprisingly, the malls that lived the longest had some of the best locations in Omaha for these conditions. Seems obvious, but the dodge/680 intersection would probably be one of the best spots in Omaha to put something new (it's one of my personal hopes that the NW corner with schrier/IPC/that strip mall gets a good piece of development one day, especially with the new road construction. That's probably not happening anymore though because first data/firserv put in a modest office building in the best place for any sort of vertical development)




Something that puts a wrinkle into this though is that compared to most of our peers, Omaha's beltway system kinda sucks at it's job. Which I personally think is a good thing in general, but obviously sucks for this discussion. 370 and 6 both have stoplights, are essentially capped at 50mph, and get congested way too easily. If they were a bit better, it'd probably be an easier sell to have population centers further to the east, but instead these job centers kinda drag the rest of the city's population with them (massive oversimplification).

Anecdotally, my work recently moved further west, and I know of quite a few people who commute from Lincoln/Fremont. We just moved offices though, and I feel like this discussion is more about new construction. Personally, my guess is that it is much cheaper and less ambitious to build new construction out West right now. This is mostly because the land is currently undeveloped, infill is usually more expensive without tax incentives, and comes with physical restrictions on what you're able to build. And when choosing between vacant office space to move to, companies will often be interested in the newer construction that has been built in the last 20-30 years out west rather than moving into the older buildings downtown. That was largely the reason why we moved out of our previous offices, was their age, and those had only been around ~60 years (give or take 10 years to not reveal too much info).

Personally, I think that most of those reasons are pretty superficial, and the possible advantages of being downtown for talent pool and collaboration would be more important. But I do understand the high rewards that comes with the risk of downtown moves/construction have probably tapered off recently. High value young professionals that you'd normally want to chase downtown are largely accessible through remote work, and collaboration is similarly happening online and between cities rather than within the city core now.

I would appreciate the opporitunity to live downtown, or at least east of 72nd. But ultimately, the commute is one of the most important things to me for work/life balance, so I will go wherever work does. At the end of the day, there are people who thought much longer and harder about this than I did, and I respect their decision making ability, even if I'd like it to change. I'd argue that the biggest issue is that these decisions are generally made thinking of the next 10-20 years in these companies' personal interests, rather than the next 50-100 in the cities' best interest though. But as we hit the Elkhorn river to the west, and all the reasonable spots for new construction are taken up, we'll see if there's a renewed interest in infill, at which point downtown probably looks the most attractive. (or maybe we'll spread our taxbase too thin at the same time as a recession before that and have our infrastructure unilaterally implode )

[Stan]

I live out west because Millard has good schools, but I've worked in a number of places around town over the past 20 years. Downtown was my least favorite driving into the sun each day. I still drive into the sun, but it's not nearly as long and I rarely have delays due to traffic.

[djc311]

I live out west because Millard has good schools, but I've worked in a number of places around town over the past 20 years. Downtown was my least favorite driving into the sun each day. I still drive into the sun, but it's not nearly as long and I rarely have delays due to traffic.

I had a job downtown for a very brief time... grew up by Target on Saddle Creek, went to Central High, etc. I consider myself quite experienced with the area. I am very happy to have a job that's not downtown at 50 years of age. Parking was a straight up nightmare (employer had a lot but I couldn't use it, and they didn't reimburse or discount parking for staff). Traffic was awful... it's just not my cup of tea.

[Stan]

I live out west because Millard has good schools, but I've worked in a number of places around town over the past 20 years. Downtown was my least favorite driving into the sun each day. I still drive into the sun, but it's not nearly as long and I rarely have delays due to traffic.

I had a job downtown for a very brief time... grew up by Target on Saddle Creek, went to Central High, etc. I consider myself quite experienced with the area. I am very happy to have a job that's not downtown at 50 years of age. Parking was a straight up nightmare (employer had a lot but I couldn't use it, and they didn't reimburse or discount parking for staff). Traffic was awful... it's just not my cup of tea.

Do I deal with the stress of I80 and the chance it's backed up at some point or do I risk it taking the suicide lane on Dodge. Such lovely choices to start the day.

[djc311]

I live out west because Millard has good schools, but I've worked in a number of places around town over the past 20 years. Downtown was my least favorite driving into the sun each day. I still drive into the sun, but it's not nearly as long and I rarely have delays due to traffic.

I had a job downtown for a very brief time... grew up by Target on Saddle Creek, went to Central High, etc. I consider myself quite experienced with the area. I am very happy to have a job that's not downtown at 50 years of age. Parking was a straight up nightmare (employer had a lot but I couldn't use it, and they didn't reimburse or discount parking for staff). Traffic was awful... it's just not my cup of tea.

Do I deal with the stress of I80 and the chance it's backed up at some point or do I risk it taking the suicide lane on Dodge. Such lovely choices to start the day.

Depends on where the sun is in the sky

Downtown is a place I'll visit on occasion.... but I wouldn't want to live there. However, I'm not opposed to improving the area and seeing more residential space for those that want to. I think it's great there's so much development going on. And I do hope for the sake of those that choose to live downtown they actually get a "normal" grocery store. I'm sure that will offend someone, but IMO, getting a Whole (paycheck) Foods isn't the best solution. Although perhaps the demographics would state otherwise and say that's exactly what fits!

[Big E]

Everything in Omaha sprawls west/southwest because that's where the school districts that are 95% white have NIMBY-zoned themsleves into existence.

If you think there's any major driving force other than that you're delusional.

[nebport5]

I live out west because Millard has good schools, but I've worked in a number of places around town over the past 20 years. Downtown was my least favorite driving into the sun each day. I still drive into the sun, but it's not nearly as long and I rarely have delays due to traffic.

I had a job downtown for a very brief time... grew up by Target on Saddle Creek, went to Central High, etc. I consider myself quite experienced with the area. I am very happy to have a job that's not downtown at 50 years of age. Parking was a straight up nightmare (employer had a lot but I couldn't use it, and they didn't reimburse or discount parking for staff). Traffic was awful... it's just not my cup of tea.

Do I deal with the stress of I80 and the chance it's backed up at some point or do I risk it taking the suicide lane on Dodge. Such lovely choices to start the day.

Depends on where the sun is in the sky

Downtown is a place I'll visit on occasion.... but I wouldn't want to live there. However, I'm not opposed to improving the area and seeing more residential space for those that want to. I think it's great there's so much development going on. And I do hope for the sake of those that choose to live downtown they actually get a "normal" grocery store. I'm sure that will offend someone, but IMO, getting a Whole (paycheck) Foods isn't the best solution. Although perhaps the demographics would state otherwise and say that's exactly what fits!

Lol. There’s no such thing.