16th St Exodus

[Coyote]

16th Street faces exodus of businesses

There will be two more empty storefronts along 16th Street in downtown Omaha when a fast-food sandwich shop and a copy center close this month.

Blimpie in the Parkfair Mall, at 201 S. 16th St., is scheduled to close Friday.

Across the street, FedEx Kinko Office and Print Center in the Brandeis Building, 210 S. 16th St., closes Wednesday as its commercial sector is consolidated with operations near the 72nd and Dodge Streets location, said Maggie Thill, a company spokeswoman in Dallas.

The closings come two months after Walgreens, the original anchor for Parkfair, left downtown after 19 years.

The loss of Blimpie and FedEx Kinko further underscores the continued exodus of retail from 16th Street.

Steve Freeman, the manger and one of the owners of Blimpie, said competition from the public dining room at the new Union Pacific Center and the loss of Walgreens contributed to the decision to close.

"We had no business," Freeman said. "It just went downhill."

The Union Pacific Center, the railroad's $260 million headquarters, features a 20,000-square- foot dining room that is open to the public.

Freeman said before the U.P. dining room opened in June, the sandwich shop generated about $650 a day in sales.

"We're lucky now to make $350," he said.

Freeman said that besides himself, he had one full-time and one part-time employee. He laid off the part-time worker several weeks ago.

Freeman, who plans to open a pizza shop in late January at 156th and Q Streets, said "a lot of steady customers are disappointed that we will shut down."

The 1,200-square-foot Blimpie opened in January 2002 in the Parkfair Mall. It was the last remaining retail tenant in the building.

Plans for Parkfair are unknown. A call to Security National Properties of Eureka, Calif., owner of the mall, was not returned.

FedEx acquired Kinko's in February 2004. Two months later, Kinko's was rebranded as FedEx Kinko's Office and Print Center.

Thill, the spokeswoman for FedEx Kinko's, said the 16th Street location employed seven workers who will be offered jobs at the company's four other Omaha-metro office and copy centers.

The copy center originally opened as a Kinko's in the Brandeis building 10 years ago. Thill said the 16th Street center, at 11,947 square feet, was one of the larger locations. The average size of a FedEx Kinko is about 6,000 square feet.

Zaim Zeljkovic said he will miss the convenience of FedEx Kinko.

Zeljkovic's restaurant, New York Chicken and Gyros, is around the corner from the copy center at 1611 Farnam St.

A sandwich board menu sitting in front of his business was done at the copy center, he said. Inside the restaurant, reviews on New York Chicken and Gyros enlarged to poster size by the copy center hang on the walls.

Zeljkovic, who lives out in west Omaha, said he will now take his copy jobs to one of the FedEx Kinkos in La Vista, at 72nd and Dodge Streets or near the Oak View Mall.

"I don't like to see businesses closing," he said. "As much as possible I like to see more coming. It's good for the economy and good for me."

More than 50 years ago, most of Omaha's retailing was concentrated downtown. The 10-story Brandeis building was the company's flagship store and the centerpiece of a thriving downtown shopping district. Other retailers located downtown were Goldstein Chapman, Herzberg's, Natelson's, Landon's, Woolworth's and Walgreens.

When Crossroads Mall, which was developed by J.L. Brandeis and Sons, opened in 1960, most of the mall's tenants were branches of the downtown stores.

In 1984, as part of the city's plan to revitalize shopping on 16th Street, Parkfair opened. But hopes that downtown retail would make a comeback never materialized, and businesses continued to close during the 1990s.

Zeljkovic, the restaurant owner, said 16th Street is an attractive street, but lacks public parking for the other small businesses on the block.

A lot of people don't know about some of the small businesses in the area because of the parking situation, he said.

Zeljkovic also said that buses coming down 16th Street create congestion and that the bus shelter at 16th and Douglas Streets attracts the homeless.

"I'd like to see 16th Street prosper," he said. "With public parking and appropriate advertising more people will come into the area."

[StreetsOfOmaha]

Wow, is the OWH capable of writing a positive story about downtown? Anymore I don't think so.

Couldn't they have waited to get the whole story and reported on Kinko's closing to make way for even more downtown residential?

[Minneapolis Boy]

Yeah, I'm really getting fed up with th WH's negative slant in getting people's attention for stories! Geez, believe in your city!!

[almighty_tuna]

controversy = $$

[projectman]

Must have been written by one of those west Omaha downtown-hater types.

They have to report the stories and not sugar coat everything. I wouldn't want to hear everything from Pollyanna's point of view either.

[movedaway]

I'm a longtime lurker who finally sees the need to join in. If the OWH didn't care about downtown, it wouldn't cover the closings. If a Blimpies closed down in some other part of the city, would it be news? If a Kinko's closed elsewhere, would it draw that long of an article?

If there is any place that the paper would care about, it's certainly downtown. It's where the paper is at. And the company dropped a ton of money in building the plant and garages.

[Finn]

Good points movedaway. The reality is that the 16th Street mall continues to lose business and has not transformed into the mall the city had hoped. With the proposed Lerner building and now the Brandeis conversion, residential trends will help to attract business and services in the future. I'm sure that once this begins to happen the World Herald will report it favorably as they did the riverfront.

[eomaha]

I tend to agree. Having talked to John Gottschalk in person... I truly believe he cares about downtown Omaha... and I have to believe he has SOME influence on how the paper reports on it. And no... the paper isn't acting as the chamber of commerce here. The paper has just as many positive spin stories... we just tend to focus on the negative it would seem.

[StreetsOfOmaha]

Movedaway, that's a good point, and I hadn't thought of that. In fact, it kind of helps support my argument .

You're exactly right. A Blimpie's or a Kinko's closing is hardly news, so why report it like it's downtown's exclusive plague?

Gottschalk may very well support downtown, and he certainly has influence. I guess it must just be a bunch of kaniving, anti-urban growth editors or something who write these horrible headlines, and approve these horrible stories. I really doubt that Gottschalk personally reads every article before it makes it to print.

Yes, they did build downtown...but I think somehow it goes beyond "advocating downtown growth". I think the OWH must want all the downtown glory for itself or something. Why else would they constantly denegrade their home? It's like when you're having dinner with your family, and something tastes really good. You might jokingly tell people that it's really not that good, so you can have more for yourself. Well, it's kind of like that, only not a joke.

At least that's my conspiracy theory.

[movedaway]

Anti-urban growth? I have my own problems with the OWH. but I know of no other newspaper of its size that would expend that much ink on the Omaha By Design coverage. Or the north downtown redevelopment around Creighton. Or street construction and commuting. The paper's editors also shifted its beats to cover more of the goings-on out west.

Besides, coverage of growth isn't exactly always coverage of what's great and new. Or New Urbanist. It's also the mall at 156th and Dodge. And subdivisions. A lot of it is the changing patterns of the city.

The downtown glory for itself? I don't even know what that means. I don't think there are people patting the OWH on the back for doing any of that. And I don't think they would want it. Also, I would say it has spread plenty of favorable coverage for First National Bank in the past two years.

[enigmo]

Gottschalk may very well support downtown, and he certainly has influence. I guess it must just be a bunch of kaniving, anti-urban growth editors or something who write these horrible headlines, and approve these horrible stories.

Oh, I had to have a good laugh at that one. Yeah, there's a meeting every day in the newsroom where the reporters and editors get their marching orders: GET 'EM! DESTROY DOWNTOWN! SIC 'EM!

Almost on a daily basis on here, people link to/quote 2-5 stories, usually of a pro-development or benign nature, from the World-Herald. They are rarely from another source, and those are usually behind the W-H in reporting it or reporting it the same day in a less detailed report. (Like today's WOWT story on how the Paxton is being remodeled. Uh, DUH)

My point: One or two stories in three or four weeks (the "anti" condo story a few weeks back, which wasn't really "anti" anything) and the ailing 16th Street Mall stories do NOT make the W-H an anti-development newspaper. Even OmahaCowboy, who hates the W-H, praised the condo article on the Chamber site. That amazed me.

You don't think there aren't a lot of people asking, gee, can downtown support 5,000 condos at 350k-1m apiece? I sure wonder.

This is how you want to read the news (if it's reported at all):

The Kinko's, Blimpie, Stage Right and several other businesses along the 16th Street corridor have closed, opening up huge opportunities for more development, downtown proponents said.

Talk about that spin. That's a PR release, not the news.

There is something wrong with 16th Street. You can't gloss over it. I don't know what it is. Wasn't the First National Tower going to be its savior? It's been open two years now. Maybe the new condos will help. Maybe apartments will. But failing to report the news isn't going revitalize the street... or tear it down, for that matter. It's doing that itself. Sorry, Streets, not everything can be rosy.

Hey, like Movedaway, I've got issues with the W-H, too. But I don't think an occasional story on problems downtown means anything but... IT'S DOING ITS JOB.

Ahhhh. Now I feel like I'm back on the Chamber site again! Weeeeee! It's almost as if I never moved away from it.

[almighty_tuna]

Oh, I had to have a good laugh at that one. Yeah, there's a meeting every day in the newsroom where the reporters and editors get their marching orders: GET 'EM! DESTROY DOWNTOWN! SIC 'EM!

Before you break out the soapbox and caps lock, realize he may not actually be serious. Chill out bud.

This isn't the chamber forum, so act like it.

[projectman]

16th Street won't come back to what it used to be until there are 10-15,000 people minimum living in the area. DT will not be a 24/7 until there are at least 15,000-20,000 people living downtown. I don't know if that's possible in the near future. I sure hope so but we are running out of old warehouses to renovate. At 30-60 condos at a time it won't be in my lifetime. There will have to be new construction, like we have all discussed over and over again, but at a much larger scale.

I know the OWH will be the first to report any new big projects. I remember back in 97 when they reported that someone was going to build a major skyscraper downtown. They inserted a huge square rendering in the middle of downtown and it was a good article. I remember how excited I was about the new development.

Like it or not it's the only major paper we have so buck up and take it like it a man.

[eomaha]

Relax enigmo... most of the people here realize the WH puts up every bit as much, if not more, positive spin on goings on downtown... than it raises questions (as it should by the way).

[almighty_tuna]