Commercial area on ~88th and Center

[Louie]

Does anyone know the history of the small neighborhood of residential houses all turned commercial buildings to the east of the hyvee on 90th and Center? Curious as to how that all shook out.

[Brad]

I've always wondered that myself. However there is an apartment building in there on 87th. I think it might be low income or something along those lines. Only thing I could think why it switched over is because that whole area is in the flood plain.

[Busguy2010]

I've wondered about that area too. I knew someone who had access to one of those houses and it had a basement, so I'd assume they all do. Also plenty of houses in other flood plains with basements, so I doubt it had to do with flooding.

[nativeomahan]

I think it does have to do with being in a floodplain. Since the giant floods that inundated that neighborhood repeatedly in the 1960s it was my understanding that no more housing was allowed within the floodplain. Commercial businesses were not prohibited, however. There has essentially been no newly constructed buildings in that neighborhood since 1970 that weren’t built upon raised ground. The vet clinic along Frederick St. and the small office buildings just east of Hy-Vee are really the only examples in all those many years.

[Brad]

I've wondered about that area too. I knew someone who had access to one of those houses and it had a basement, so I'd assume they all do. Also plenty of houses in other flood plains with basements, so I doubt it had to do with flooding.

Not all of them. We live just a few block away from here so we briefly looked at the daycare down there since its so close to our house. The daycare "houses" don't have basements. When we asked the staff what they do during tornadoes she said "We load the kids up and take them to the office next door".

Its not that you can't live there, but if you have a mortgage, which most people do, the bank would require you to have flood insurance which isn't cheap. Most homeowners don't want to spend that kind of money on flood insurance.

Most of those old houses site around elevation 1020 to 1022. Base Flood Elevation there is 1023.1 which means any new construction would need to be at 1024.1. With the current flood plain rules, you probably won't see a ton of new development in there now. There is one new building back in there. As you can see from this screen shot, bringing it up to 1024.1 put it up quite a bit higher than the other structures.

88-OAK.JPG