Mayor Mike Fahey and business and philanthropy leaders announced Thursday what they described as "aggressive goals" to improve Omaha's public spaces this year.
The goals ranged from the fairly specific and imminent, such as renovating Gene Leahy Mall downtown, to the conceptual, such as creating a nonprofit conservancy for park lands and a catalog of projects to inspire and encourage philanthropists.
Fahey announced a work program building on the yearlong Omaha By Design effort and the city's new design guidelines.
"We now have a vision of what we want for the future of our city," said Rex Fisher, Nebraska president of Qwest and chairman of the Omaha By Design advisory committee.
Omaha By Design is a combined effort by the city and Lively Omaha, which was established by corporate leaders. The effort's leaders said Thursday they're dropping the Lively Omaha name and will go by Omaha By Design.
In a press conference at the Hilton Omaha, they announced three pilot projects: work with Benson to create a model for neighborhood planning; a demonstration project along the Papio Creek to create improved green, recreational space; and improving the Gene Leahy Mall and the 11th Street corridor.
Plans under way for the Gene Leahy Mall - including linking it in some fashion to the Omaha Performing Arts Center now under construction - could be ready in March for the public to see.
The leaders didn't have cost estimates or specifics on how the projects would be funded. They said they would be public-private partnerships.
Fahey, to whom Lively Omaha gave its Laurels Award for making public spaces a focus, laid out steps for city government to take this year, including:
• The city will complete the Keystone Trail's north extension to link it with the Sorensen Parkway trail and prepare a design study and cost estimates on linking the Keystone and Field Club Trails.
• A nonprofit "Omaha Landscape Conservancy" would be created to accept donations and perform services for the city's park system and "other natural landscape areas."
• The city, neighbors and businesses will develop the "Benson Alliance" plan for preserving and enhancing Benson and as a model for other neighborhoods.
Fahey has done a great job with the parks.
I am really excited about this as it looks like leaders plan to actually make this a "working" document rather than another plan to sit on the shelf until we need another $15,000 update!
Plans under way for the Gene Leahy Mall - including linking it in some fashion to the Omaha Performing Arts Center now under construction - could be ready in March for the public to see.
Wow, All the way across the street!!! That's amazing.
How about adopting some of the more radical ideas in the Omaha by Design proposal. I continue to hope that some amazing proposals will come out for Aksarben and North Downtown.
If the north DTO study is going to be out in a couple of weeks, I'd like to to know whats in there. From somebody that went to Fahey's speech recently, apparently Fahey seemed really enthused about some prospects for the Pinnacle building. Wish I knew his info.
Well, of course I'm glad to hear this...but I'm holding my breath to see if Omaha By Design can show us all what "agressive goals" are.
I'm happy to see that they want to renovate the GL Mall...thank you!!!! And that they want to focus on 11th Street in the Old Market and Benson.
I have to say I'm with Raraavis on this, in that I hope that they don't take the position of "oh, well, we need to start slow". No. Why? Start fast and get stuff done!!! And lets see some of the big elaborate projects completed in the next few years!!! This doesn't have to be something that we never see come to fruition. It doesn't have to be yet ANOTHER disapointment.
"The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle is actually the right to destroy the city."
Lewis Mumford, The Highway and the City, 1963
I'm glad Omaha has developed this by-design program. Finally, the city is thinking in the high-quality terms that architects have always thought in, that "Good design increases the quality of life." For years and years and years, the city seemed to allow plain-jane businesses and storefronts to go up, and most everything looked so amateur. I always vented "What is Omaha's architecture designed by UNL graduates?!" Nowadays, I smile seeing Village Point and FNB Business Park. What a difference well-put-together places like that make in Omaha! Good design goes a long way.
