What's next for Lincoln, Omaha?
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How will Lincoln and Omaha look in the future? We asked the experts to look into their crystal balls to create a possible picture of the fates of the two cities, and the ever-smaller space between them.
BY JoANNE YOUNG | Lincoln Journal Star
Ribbons of highway tie Lincoln to Omaha, Omaha to Lincoln, and hint at the promise — whispered for decades — that one day a knot will be cinched and the two cities will bond.
For now, miles of rolling hills and fields, big white barns, a river and state parks keep the cities at arms length. But Lincoln is creeping east and north. Omaha is swelling west and spilling over the Sarpy County line south in unofficial expansion. And the whispers about a geographic merging of the two cities are becoming out-loud conversations.
The Lincoln-Omaha metropolitan area would join to blend diverse cultures, races, ethnicities, ideas and economies. “In the course of our history, we have very different backgrounds,” said W. Cecil Steward, president of the Joslyn Castle Institute for Sustainable Communities.
Omaha was the river town with an inviting free-market economy that said, “If you’re big enough to try it, anything goes,” he said.
Lincoln was more faith-based, with more public participation in growth and policy.
Omaha’s philosophy: Growth is good. Lincoln’s philosophy: Growth is good — if it’s good growth.
The influence of the University of Nebraska and state government is the cultural divide between the two cities, said Steward, retired dean of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Architecture and former Lincoln/Lancaster County planning commissioner.
Lincoln is all about controlled concentric growth, even steven, all the way around the city.
Omaha, some charge, is a land of urban sprawl. From 1960 to 2000, its population grew by 29 percent, but its land area grew from 51 square miles to 119 square miles, according to the Sierra Club Missouri Valley Group.
Omaha city planner Karen Klein said further growth there will be determined by the lay of the land, watersheds, county lines and sewer treatment facilities.
If state law continues to stop annexation at county lines, Lincoln someday could eclipse Omaha in size.
Omaha is trying to annex Elkhorn to the west. But most of the metro area’s growth is in Sarpy County, the fastest growing county in the state. Since 1960, its population has grown nearly 300 percent, compared with Lancaster County’s increase of just more than 60 percent.
Sarpy County is spending a lot of money laying groundwork for a new interstate bridge and interchange north of the old NebraSKI complex, Sarpy County Administrator Mark Wayne said.
The new interchange would open up development to the east and west along and near I-80.
“That area has potential,” Wayne said. “Assuming the environmental impact study goes well, it’s a couple of years away before we can even start.”
In fact, Sarpy County recently altered its comprehensive plan to allow acreage development in an 11,000-acre area along the Platte River around Schramm Park State Recreation Area.
The I-80 corridor also runs through northwestern Cass County away from the county’s population areas. Still, the county wants to be involved in how the region develops, “in coordination with the 500-pound gorillas on both sides of us,” said John Plucknett, chairman of the Cass County Economic Development Council.
“We want to see how we can fit in, not lose jurisdiction, not be left out,” said Plucknett, who represents the county on a corridor planning commission.
While there is no doubt that thick link of development between Lincoln and Omaha will occur, how it will happen is a matter of controversy.
In the past 10 years, development — both completed and proposed — has proceeded without benefit of an overall plan for the area. It includes:
* Quarry Oaks Golf Course near Ashland.
* Henry Doorly Zoo Wildlife Safari near Mahoney State Park.
* Strategic Air and Space Museum near Ashland.
* Holy Family Shrine near the Gretna exit.
* World War II Library and Museum, just off exit 420 near Greenwood.
* Tractor Supply Co. being built in Waverly on U.S. 6 and I-80.
* MBA Poultry, to be built on U.S. 6 and I-80.
* Theme park and amphitheater proposed near Ashland.
* Two new malls — Village Pointe at 168th Street and West Dodge Road and Papillion Promenade set to open in fall 2006 at 72nd Street and Nebraska 370.
About 38,000 vehicles a day pour down the interstate between Lincoln and Omaha. By 2012, the stretch could be widened to six lanes.
Clyde Anderson, Sierra Club volunteer from Omaha, hasn’t seen much interest in urban planning in the metropolitan area.
Instead, he said, the unplanned sprawl of mixed development makes public transportation difficult.
Anderson, a retired Union Pacific railroad worker, has pushed for a commuter rail system between Omaha and Lincoln with stops in Ralston, Millard, Gretna, Ashland and Waverly.
He fears instead 50 miles of urban sprawl could spread down I-80.
To guide the future of the I-80 corridor, state Sen. Pam Brown of Omaha sponsored a bill to create the Nebraska Innovation Zone Commission, which began meeting this fall.
It’s clear, she said, that the two communities are going to grow together. Less clear is how that can be accomplished aesthetically, environmentally and in a way that builds on the areas’ strengths.
Brown said Nebraska has relatively cheap land and good transportation. Because of that, there has been a lot of warehouse development in Sarpy County.
“We don’t want it to be the only development,” Brown said. “We’re trying to get a mix of things.”
Getting elected officials together to plan I-80 corridor development could help promote the right things, she said. It will help Lincoln and Omaha market themselves as a regional area.
The institution that holds the two cities together is the University of Nebraska, she said. The area could capitalize, for example, on that research and development focused around jobs of the future.
To officially market the area as a combined metropolitan statistical area, the two cities must show they each have 25 percent of residents who commute.
“It’s pretty clear there are a lot who commute back and forth,” Brown said. “Whether or not we can be officially designated a (metropolitan statistical area) is less significant than if we begin to think of ourselves as a region of 1 million.”
For those who worry about the loss of land between the two cities, Brown said, there always will be some farmland. And the state parks will provide green space.
But eventually, she said, other uses will be seen as more profitable than agriculture.
Joslyn Castle Institute’s Steward says there’s more to think about in the next few years than profit and building.
“If it’s only economics that’s driving development, and the rest are left to fend for themselves, it’s usually the environment that suffers the most,” he said.
Planners have an opportunity to ensure, through public policy, that the environment is protected and remains attractive, Steward said.
“The environment is fragile,” he said. “If you don’t take care of it, (the economy developers create) won’t be supported by people wanting a high quality of life. … People will begin to stay away, to make other choices.”
His fear is that the I-80 corridor will be an environmental and aesthetic disaster — a place with high-density traffic and no green space that is inconvenient and not kid-friendly.
“Urban areas don’t have to be that way,” he said.
These issues, he said, put a heavy burden on the public.
“We haven’t been challenged up to now to be that attentive as citizens,” he said. “We need to be more engaged.”
Reach JoAnne Young at 473-7228 or jyoung@journalstar.com.
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