108th & Blondo

[Coyote]

Business park coming to 108th and Blondo


A mostly undeveloped island at the northwest corner of 108th and Blondo Streets is slated to become a 25-acre business park.

The new development will have an entrance at 111th Street and a new private drive that gives Joslyn Elementary School traffic access to the traffic signal at 111th.

Plans call for a strip shopping center to fill in along the Blondo frontage and possibly along 108th Street and other lots to be used for one- or two-story commercial buildings, said Sheldon Harris, president of Business Park Development Co., the property's owner.

"We think those buildings will be mostly offices," Harris said. "It's hard to tell. We'll have to sit back and see who wants to come there."

Harris said a couple of purchase contracts are in hand, but he couldn't disclose the types of business interested in locating in the new Blondo 108 Business Park. Grubb & Ellis/Pacific Realty is marketing the project, which has 16 lots, Harris said.

The Omaha City Council last week approved changes to allow the project to go forward. The changes included rezoning the property from a mix of residential and commercial to a mixed-use district.

The new zoning requires a certain amount of publicly accessible open space. The developer has agreed that a storm-water detention cell will be surrounded by a 5-foot walkway so it can be used as an educational center for the school next door.

Grading of the site is almost finished, Harris said, and he expects sewer and street work to begin in the spring. Construction on buildings could start as soon as mid-summer, he said.

The property, an unincorporated area surrounded by the city, was a hilly, treed area that sat largely vacant for a number of years because, Harris said, "it just wasn't ready for development." The plan approved by the city calls for more than 200 trees to be planted.

[projectman]

Blondo is slowly becoming quite the fashionable thorough-fare with new restaurants and businesses poping up everywhere. Not much coverage from the news media.

[Brad]

Before the city decided to redo Maple and Dodge and Fort all at the same time Blondo was one of the best east/west streets to take. However it dosn't have interstate access, which would make it less travled.

This development would be good for Blondo. Except for 120 and now 108, Blondo is mostly residential west of 90th St. Hopefully in the near future the city will widen the small DANGEROUS strip of 108th st between Blondo and Dodge

[Brad]

Business park bucks trend with location

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=1 ... d=10421513

Like new homes, new business parks tend to pop up in the suburbs, where chunks of land are available to accommodate multiple office buildings.

Blondo 108 Business Park is an example of the rare, new business park built in a developed area.

Four years after developers first envisioned the mostly densely forested property at the northwest corner of 108th and Blondo Streets as a business park, two businesses operate there, another is building a headquarters and developers have snatched up lots for future development.

On the 28-acre parcel, only three office lots and one retail lot remain available for sale, said Scott Heider, president of Grubb & Ellis/Pacific Realty.

"In hindsight, it really validated our thoughts in 2004 — it's a good example of infill office market that was well-received," said Heider, who represents the park's original developers.

The first project was American Title, which moved its headquarters into a 50,000-square-foot building in 2006 at about 109th Street on the park's north side. Next was Goodwill, which opened a retail store on 108th Street that same year.

Classic Auto, a sports car retailer, had an existing facility prior to the business park's development and still operates there.

Now Lindsay Corp., an Omaha-based maker of irrigation and road safety equipment, will consolidate three Omaha offices into a new 36,000-square-foot building under construction at the park's northwest corner.

Construction on the three-story building started in April and is expected to finish in January or February, said Chip James, president of Lockwood Development, which bought 3.5 acres in Blondo 108 this spring.

Lockwood will build and lease the building to Lindsay Corp. and also could build a matching building for possible future expansion by Lindsay or for another company, James said.