Grow Omaha 12-13-2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Grow Omaha, the only radio show that talks
about economic development, construction, business expansion, and all of those
things that make Omaha a great place to live or visit.
Grow Omaha on News Radio eleven ten kfab.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Well, good morning, and welcome to the show. Jeff Veals
here at your service. We are brought to you by
Dingman's Collision Center, the Best of Omaha award winner over
and over again for autobody and even auto mechanical care.
And we're also brought to you by Cheer Athletics, Nation's
number one all star Cheer Jim. The Omaha location located

(00:36):
near Highways fifty and three seventy in Papillion. Ladies and gentlemen,
this is the only show in the entire metro area
that talks about the growth and development of your favorite
metro area.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
We talk a lot about.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Business expansion, construction, real estate development, really anything related to
Omaha becoming more vibrant, more prosperous, and perhaps a little
bit bigger. Without any further ado, it's time to bring
on my co host, legendary real estate deal maker from
nai NP Dodge Commercial Real Estate, Trenton Maggot.

Speaker 4 (01:06):
You're the most honest guy, I know, so I take
that as a compliment.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
Really, I've never lied.

Speaker 4 (01:13):
Sadys and gentlemen, it's great to be here. We appreciate
you listening for the last twenty two years, which will
happen twenty two years January.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Tenth January tenth, which means we have a few weeks
between now and then, and maybe we should promote our
twenty second year anniversary like KFAB promoted Gary's last day yesterday.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
That was crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Gary Sandelemeyer forty nine years on this radio station, about
fifty two years or so as a professional broadcaster and
good freend. He brought us over here. Yeah, we wouldn't
be here if it weren't for Gary. I'll never forget
a meeting with him. We met at one Pacific place
and we sat down and we were on a different
radio station, good station, but way smaller than KFAB and

(01:57):
Gary's like, you guys should should come over And I
don't think he had to really work very hard to
talk us into it. It was like going from a
single A ball to Major League baseball.

Speaker 4 (02:06):
It did have a little bit of so this is
kind of behind the scenes, ladies and gentlemen. He wanted
it so bad. We think so anyway, that it was
kind of like the Bloods and the Crips going into
like Atlantic, Iowa or something where he gave us like
a really really really good deal, like a fourth of
what our budget was on the other station.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
And after a few years it climbed.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
And Gary's probably sitting there at home right now listening
to shows and these guys are full of it.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
None of this is true. But I tell you.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Gary's retirement show yesterday was awesome. And in case you
missed it, it is available on kfab dot com if
you want to hear it again. And don't worry, it's
not like he's permanently gone. He just retired from full
time work. Gary plans on being the morning show substitute.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
So it'll probably be.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Here, you know, a few days here, a few days there,
perhaps when Scott or Jim take vacation. But all of
us at gro Omaha salute the great Gary Stelmayer and
we thank him for everything he's done for Grow and
they've done a pretty good job.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
We're in the same now.

Speaker 4 (03:07):
It's called the Gary Settlemayer Studio, and yeah, it's all
sign right there and outside.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
You miss it.

Speaker 4 (03:13):
Oh, I missed it, okay, And so I think that
the night crew did a really good job of getting
a smell out of here for you know, for forty
nine years. You know that thing, you know, dand er
whatever it is, it cank, it can linger. I'm sure
Gary appreciated that.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Now, onto some business, We have a grow Omaha transportation
article that you do not want to miss. In case
you're not aware of this, we have a deal with
Eric Miller. He is the operations manager for the street
car for the city of Omaha and a career long
expert in transit. Worked in the RTD in Denver for

(03:49):
another year the number of years, worked for a transportation
engineering company for a long time, and now he is
the Omaha street car manager. He writes a column for
us about every week or two, and there's one that
just dropped a few days ago, and it focuses on
how streetcars operate and went to weather when it's snowing,

(04:09):
when it's icy, if it's a blizzard, and it's a
fascinating read. So if you want to give it a read,
just go to Gromaha dot com and you can click
on news on the navigation bar and then just go
to transportation on the dropdown menu, but give it a read.
It's really kind of fascinating how they handle these things.
And he uses examples from Kansas City and Denver and

(04:31):
places that also get a lot of snow and ice.
All right, well, let's go into our News of the week,
which is brought to you by Eagle Mortgage. Eagle Mortgage
Company dot com. They are physically located at one hundred
and fourteenth and Davenport, just south of one hundred and
fourteenth and Dodge. But Eagle Mortgage is a mortgage broker,
an outstanding mortgage broker. They've been at it for about

(04:55):
thirty five years, a great team led by our good
friend Holly Schneidewind, and they they have the run of
a lot of banks, and as a mortgage broker, they're
not beholding the one. So what happens is you go
in there, you're ready to get a loan to buy
a new house. They sit down with you at Eagle Mortgage,
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(05:16):
all these banks with whom they have relationships and they
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get a hold of them online at Eagle Mortgage Company
dot com. All right, Trenton, Well let's get into our

(05:36):
news of the week. And the first one is a
little piece of news. The first two actually are some
news coming out of city government, and the first one
is kind of exciting because it hints that we could
be getting another big time hotel in downtown Omaha. The
City of Omaha is creating a new program that will

(05:57):
incentivize the construction and development of an upscale hotel, maybe
more than one in the city. Is going through city
council stuff right now, and basically it involves the Hotel
Occupation Tax Reinvestment Program. That's what they're calling this thing,
and it essentially works like this. It would allow developers
of a hotel to use all or a portion of

(06:20):
the transient rental guest tax revenue to reimburse eligible development costs,
whether it's acquisition, construction, rehabilitation, utility extensions, parking, things like that.
And this transient rental guest tax totals five point five
percent of the gross charge of in the hotel occupancy

(06:40):
here in Omaha. And so under this ordinance, a qualifying
hotel must meet several parameters. Now one of those would
be it must be new to market. In other words,
we don't have that brand here already. It must be
considered an upper scale hotel, and an upper scale hotel
is defined, and this would be ordinance the hotel that

(07:00):
is four diamonds or higher according to the Triple A
Hotel rating system. And then this is interesting. It must
be located within half a mile of a city owned
cultural or entertainment facility, including museums, sports facilities, convention centers,
or other publicly owned assets. And if you want a

(07:21):
little reference, what does it mean to be for diamond.
We only have two of them in the entire state
of Nebraska, both in Omaha. One of them is the
Kempton Cottonwood Hotel in the Blackstone District and the other
one is the Farnham Autograph Collection at fourteenth and Farnham Street.
So I think what this tells us Trenton is Okay,

(07:41):
it's got to be four diamond or better. It's got
to be within a half mile of a city owned thing.
I'm thinking probably Lot B. Yeah, everything you were saying
makes sense. Yeah, So my guess is, but you know
the number one priority would be to get a great
convention hotel to complement the Hilton and the Marriott, which

(08:04):
are already outstanding hotel properties. Put it might would presume
on the southeast corner of Lot B, would they do
another skywalk? Would you stick another skywalk across Tenth Street
into the Chi Yeah, and if.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
It's feasible given the location.

Speaker 4 (08:20):
I like how Drury not only one lot, but now
they're getting another lot downtown, spending a fortune on land,
and there's obviously demand. They're not building these things for
their health.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
We mentioned that Drury last week, and now that would
not qualify in any way as a four diamond. But
it's another example, I think is what you're saying Trenton,
that that there's a lot Yeah, yeah, a lot of
desirability for hotels in that downtown area. But here's the
thing that could also be interesting. All right, would this

(08:52):
apply possibly to more than one hotel? So, so say
the city was chasing something like an Omni or a
Hyatt or a maybe even nicer for Lot B, Could
it also mean that you could have something closer to
Qwitt Luminarium or one of the performing arts facilities or
something like that. Yeah, we shall see. It could be

(09:13):
interesting to find out, all right. Our next story is
also related to city government and it involves the Union
Pacific Railroad and the Omaha soccer team. So we've reported
in the past that Union Omaha wants to build one
hundred and fourteen million dollar professional soccer stadium in north

(09:34):
downtown on about twenty acres of Union Pacific land that
has pretty much been deserted except for the one little
track that the railroad uses to display historic train specialty
trains often during.

Speaker 3 (09:48):
The College World Series.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
The rest of that land has pretty much been vacant
for years and years and years. So the plan is
to put the soccer stadium on that and then as
part of the plan, the City of Omaha would sell
the land bordered by Capitol Avenue, Dodge Street, Fourteenth Street,

(10:10):
and fifteenth Street to Union Pacific. Interestingly, that land used
to be the site of their headquarters building before they
built the current headquarters just to the south, and then
right after that it was going to be a thirty
two story condo building a developer out of Kansas City.
It fell through Ry Street Tower yep, right when the
Great Recession hit and it's been vacant ever since. There

(10:33):
have been some proposals, but nothing ever went there. So
now the railroad is interested in it, and we had
been hearing rumors that they just wanted to use it
as green space.

Speaker 4 (10:41):
Well, Lantaha had it with big plans to do something
and then they traded with the city Olmos so they
could put Mutual of Omaha Tower where it is now.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Right because Atlantaha is the developer of the mutual building. Well, well,
so now there's talk that hey, maybe Union Pacific wants
to do something more than there's green space there and
nothing has been confirmed, but there's all this talk of, hey,
maybe they would want a different building after their merger
hopefully goes through with Norfolk Southern. And if that's truly

(11:12):
the case, which we do not know, it's mostly just
speculation at this point. What would they do with the
existing building? But it's exciting.

Speaker 4 (11:20):
I into it with open up some floors and I
mean they can design anything right next to sure, yeah,
and talking about you don't need a big crosswalk when
you're ten feet away.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
Yeah, maybe it would be multi use, you know, maybe
they would have some other Union Pacific functions there. But
maybe a developer could talk them into also putting a
hotel as part of the building theme park also part
of all of that city council action. It came out
this week that that display track in north Downtown we
were just talking about that's actually going to be moved

(11:51):
a little bit to the east because a lot of
people don't realize this, but Tenth Street, you know, Tenth
Street right now at dead ends at Coming on the
northeast corner of Charles schwab Field. The plan is to
extend it across Coming and connect it with Eleventh Street
north of Coming. That would necessitate that that display track

(12:14):
moves about a block or so to the east so
that the street can go through there. So you're going
to see a lot of changes coming in that area,
hopefully for the better, all right, hopefully.

Speaker 3 (12:23):
For the better. All right.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
With that, we are going to conclude our News of
the week, brought to you by Eagle Mortgage Egle Mortgage
Company dot com, and take our first break of the hour,
and when we come back, we're going to bring on
Chad Meyers. He is the president and CEO of the
work Lab. We're going to talk about workforce development, which
is a critically important part of Omaha's competitiveness and its

(12:47):
economic growth and development. So you're listening to Jeff and
Trenton on Grow Omaha brought to you by Dingman's Collision
Center and Cheer Athletics on News Radio eleven ten kfab
And welcome back to the show.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
Jeff.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
You'll sitting next to Trenton Maggot. This is Grow Omaha
brought to you by Dingman's Collision Center along with Cheer Athletics.
Dingman's has four soon to be five locations. The fifth
location is getting really close to opening in Gretna.

Speaker 4 (13:15):
I toured it yesterday with Andy Dingman. You got to
see the inside of it. Yeah, it's the biggest one yet.
It's it's a beautiful ground up and it's where the
former Spikers was.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
Yeah, and Greton just a little bit north of three
seventy Yeah, and it's impressive.

Speaker 4 (13:30):
You know, everything's new, state of the art obviously, equipment
and everything, and it's they look forward to expanding into
the Gratton market so their customers don't have to come
in so far.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
All right, opening soon in Greton.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Also, we're brought to you by Cheer Athletics Nations number
one all Star Cheer Jim Well. We have with us
today Chad Mayors. He is the founder, president and CEO
of the Work Lab. We're going to talk to Chad
about workforce development. But Chad, first of all, welcome to
the show.

Speaker 5 (13:56):
Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
Yeah, good to have you here. And I guess the
best way to start would be to have you give
us maybe the thirty thousand foot overview of what the
work Lab is.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
Yep.

Speaker 6 (14:06):
So the work Lab is a five to one C three,
But we are an employer collaborative, so positioned a little
bit differently than other nonprofits in the community. The long
and short of what we do is we partner directly
with employers in the community and we offer them a
workplace benefit called work life Coach and resource Navigation where
we actually place individuals we call work life coaches on
site and we're there to help their employees do what

(14:29):
we say is build a life that they want to
have supported by their work. So with the work life
coach available on site, employees have someone that they can
talk to about anything that is keeping them from being
fully physically, mentally, or emotionally president work. So if you
think about all the things you got roud around your
head all day long while you're trying to get your
work done, and vice versa work life coach is someone
you can go talk to about those things. And then

(14:50):
our job is to help the employees come up with
the plan of action to address the issues or the
things that they want to do. But we do it
in the environment that they spend mostly time, which is
where they work.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
So does do the companies pay for it? Yes? Yep, okay,
so you're not for profits. The prices are good.

Speaker 4 (15:09):
The companies have a vested interest, obviously, the employees have
a vested interest.

Speaker 6 (15:15):
What's the catch, Well, we like to think that there
there is no catch. What what positions us differently than
most workforce development organizations in town and really across the
country is a lot of those are pre higher or
maybe they offer training on the side. What we're doing
is really integrating ourselves inside of the workplace and making

(15:37):
ourselves available to employees for what they want, maybe not
necessarily what the organization wants for them. So our belief
is that the fundamental reason why people go to work
is to build the kind of life that they want
to have for themselves or their family. So if you
break it down to brass tacks of it, you know,
it's not about the pay necessarily, though I would like
to get paid, well, I'd like to have good benefits,

(15:59):
I like to do that I enjoy. All those things
are important, of course, but fundamentally it's I'm trying to
move towards some sort of life today, in the future,
thirty years from now, whatever that looks like. And so
the work life coaches are there to help employees design
what that looks like for them. And the goal is
that by doing that, that employee is going to get

(16:20):
the most that they can out of the opportunity that
they have with that organization, and in turn, the company
is going to get the most value out of the employee.
But we're addressing what the employee wants first.

Speaker 3 (16:31):
And doing that.

Speaker 4 (16:32):
What happens when you sit down with that employee and
a specific business and the employee says, I don't like
it here, Let's go train, you know, help me, give
me the tools so I can leave this place in
three years.

Speaker 5 (16:47):
Well that's an interesting question because that never happens.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
You should see in this steer. That's why we have
the video.

Speaker 6 (16:57):
But it's it's really what the employee wants. So whatever
it is, we're going to talk about it. So if
someone says I don't like it here for whatever reason,
we're going to ask them what's going on.

Speaker 3 (17:08):
It may to make it so they like it there.

Speaker 6 (17:10):
Yeah, So it's about exploring the reasons behind what's happening,
asking them, asking them questions, and it's a coaching conversation,
so we're not trying to lead them anywhere. We're trying
to help them do whatever it is that they want
to do.

Speaker 4 (17:22):
So it's not a re education camp or something like that. No,
I've heard of those.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
So where did the idea for this come from?

Speaker 6 (17:29):
So it was originally developed actually up in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
There were some There was first a company called Cascade Engineering,
and then some other organizations that came together and found
out a nonprofit up there called the Source Uh and
they really started on this this resource navigation. So if
I'm using Omaha as an example, Omaha is a plethora
of nonprofit resources that are available. But the thought process

(17:50):
was it's it's not resources necessarily or services that were lacking,
it's the connection to them and specifically the connection in
the workplace to where those resources are. You can help
people continue to move forward and not let something in
some sort of barrier that they may have keep them
from maintaining employment. So, if you think about it, you

(18:10):
may have a resource out there that's available in the community,
but you may not necessarily trust the people on the
other side of that, either because you don't know them
or for whatever reason. And on the other side of that,
you may have people in your life that you trust,
but they may not be as knowledgeable about what's going on.
So that resource navigation piece that we're doing in the
work Life Coach piece that we're doing that will start

(18:31):
up and grand the rapids Michigan.

Speaker 5 (18:32):
It's really trying to tie those two together.

Speaker 6 (18:34):
Can we place someone inside of the workplace that people
can build a relationship with and through that relationship come
to trust them that also have knowledge about what's going
on and marry the two.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
We're talking with Chad Mayor's president and CEO of the
work Lab and Chad we have been talking a lot
lately on Gromha over many, many weeks about the area's
competitiveness and Nebraska's coegitiveness, and a big part of economic
competitiveness and growth is a workforce. So maybe you could

(19:07):
kind of give us an idea of where you think
we stand as a market here in Greater Omaha when
it comes to workforce development. What are our strengths, what
are our weaknesses, what do you see?

Speaker 6 (19:19):
I think what's interesting about Omaha is the connective tissue
of this community compared.

Speaker 5 (19:27):
To other communities, as far as I know, is very strong.

Speaker 6 (19:30):
We have a very high participation rate of people that
are in the workforce. Omaha is one of the higher
participation rates in all of the country. Very low unemployment
as a result. So really with those two, Omaha's really
well positioned compared to other markets on how many people
that we have are in the workforce and are engaged
and are trying to move forward. So that puts us

(19:53):
ahead of other people. The problem with that is that
you still feel like you got a lot of headwinds
that you're going into even though you're very strongly situated competitively.
So I think you know, from our standpoint, it's about
the ecosystem that's around people that allows them to be
able to do what it is that they want to
do that enables work to happen. Those are the things

(20:15):
that we're trying to address. How can we build that
supportive framework around people so that they're able to move
forward and do it in a way where employers are
really at the table and helping people achieve what they want.
We think that's the key to competitive competitiveness in this space.

Speaker 4 (20:30):
So when it comes to work Lab, how did you
decide to make it a not for profit organization instead
of a for profit?

Speaker 6 (20:39):
So the work Lab originally started as a program in
the Omaha Chamber back in twenty nineteen.

Speaker 5 (20:44):
I have an HR background.

Speaker 6 (20:45):
I used to work in HR at Coca Cola before
I came to this work So in doing what we're doing,
I'm really trying to solve the problems that I had
when I was in that role. How do I best
support employees in a space that's really not my purview
right So when we started underneath the alm Hall Chambers,
one of their programs we were called Grow at the time.
It was a long process of engaging with the employers

(21:06):
that we've been working with right now, there's ten different
employers in the community that we're working with of what
do we want to be, where do we want to go,
how do we want to do it? And I was
always focused on how do we want to do this together.
I've always seen this as an US thing, as a
group of employers working together to solve a common problem
that they all have, which is how do we support

(21:26):
people that are working for us, but do it in
a way where we can get a one plus one
equals three going on by working together on these on
these things. So the nonprofit part of that really came
from it felt like it was the right thing for
the mission of what we're doing, and it allows us
to do some different things. It allows us to go

(21:48):
for grants. As an example of that, right now, we're
working on a project. We got a grant from the
Kellogg Foundation and we've been working on a childcare project
for a few years. So it allows us to kind
of pilot some things, think about some things, and do
some stuff a little bit differently that maybe a for
profit wouldn't allow us to do.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
Chad, before we let you go, I want to talk
a little bit about another macro issue, and that is
brain drain. We've been hearing a lot about that. A
couple of reports have come out within the last few
months indicating that maybe Omaha's not doing quite as good
of a job as it had been with attracting, creating,

(22:27):
and keeping higher paying jobs, and it's led to some
brain drain issues.

Speaker 3 (22:32):
What are some of your.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
Thoughts about the status of brain drain in Omaha and
whatever that means.

Speaker 6 (22:39):
Yeah, I think the best way that I could probably
speak to that is just from my personal experience. I
graduated from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, and many
of my friends when we graduated, they either moved to
Omaha for the most part, or they moved somewhere around
the country, but a number of them have come back
later on. So from my personal perspective, oma Hall is

(23:02):
uniquely situated in that we have a competitive advantage when
it comes time to raise a family and move into
that next phase of life that Oma Hall is uniquely
positioned in that way. I think that's where we should
be spending our time, and that's one of the things
that the work Lab is focused on, is how do
we enable people to build the kind of life that

(23:24):
they want to have, And for many people, having a
family is a big part of that, but it's about
building that supportive framework around people that enables that work
to happen.

Speaker 3 (23:33):
All right, one last question.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
If a person listening has a company and they're thinking
I might want to get involved with work Lab, how
do they do that and what would be required of
them to make it happen.

Speaker 6 (23:45):
The best way to find us is to go to
our website. It's the work Lab dot us. From there
you can get to me directly. We do contract directly
with these organizations and we become a part of the
benefits package that they're offering. That allows us to be
completely responsive to the people that work for them and
what their goals are and not what outside funders may
want us to do. But it's a direct relationship that

(24:07):
we have with these organizations.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Well, chat, we appreciate the work you're doing to make
Omaha a stronger and more competitive place and thanks for
joining us today.

Speaker 5 (24:15):
Appreciate it. Thank you guys for having me.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
All Right, that's Chad Mayer's founder, president and CEO of
the work Lab. We're going to take our middle of
the show break for the news, and when we come back,
we'll have our Nodel Companies commercial real estate development Spotlight
and a few other things for you.

Speaker 3 (24:28):
So stay with us.

Speaker 2 (24:29):
You're listening to Grow Omaha, brought to you by Cheer
Athletics and Dingman's Collision Center on news Radio eleven ten
KFAB and welcome back to the show, Jeff Bils and
Trent Maggott sitting here in the KFAB studio, the Gary
Sadelemeyer KFAB Studio here in downtown Dundee. I want to
thank our sponsors. They are Dingman's Collision Center and also

(24:50):
Cheer Athletics. Cheer Athletics is the nation's number one All
Star cheer Jim, and let me tell you, all Star
cheer is becoming internationally very popular be an Olympics sport
in twenty twenty eight. And basically, of all the all
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(25:13):
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But one of them, the most important one is right
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(25:37):
leadership experience, go to Cheer Athletics. You can find out
more at Caomaha dot com. All right, it's time for
our commercial real estate development Spotlight of the Week, which
is brought to you by Nodel Companies, one of the
premier real estate developers in the whole country. Not All
Companies based right here in Omaha, under the leadership of j. Nodel,
who is an amazing businessman and community servant here in Omaha.

(26:01):
Not All Companies has developed so many properties. You know,
they were known for a long time for developing retail properties.
In recent years they've been known more for developing places
like the Builders District and Xarbon Village and so many others.
Not All Companies really does an outstanding job. And each
week during this segment we talk about things happening in

(26:22):
or around a Not All Companies Development and Trent And
what we got for this week.

Speaker 4 (26:27):
Well, if you haven't been down to the Builders District
now we talk a lot about their mass timber building
that Not All built fifteen oh one.

Speaker 3 (26:36):
Fifteen oh one Mike Fahee Street.

Speaker 4 (26:40):
The street this project. I got to tour Sam Notto.
We spent half an afternoon together going through it. Just
they put their offices there. They believe in it so much.
Downstairs is the Route, which is a co working space.
It's a national franchise if you will. And uh, it's

(27:00):
neat a lot of collaboration going on down there. Then
there's gonna be a lot of people don't realize that
there's gonna be a huge green space in the builders
district right behind this. That'll that'll be between the building
and then there'll be some seating out there for a
big restaurant, and then the parking garage. So you got
this right across from Qwitt University, the Quette headquarters. And

(27:23):
then the last part of our not all development spotlight
is there's gonna be another Sunnies if you like that
airstream trailer there. You have the new Air Airstream trailer
on its way, and they're gonna have food trucks. They're
they're making a deal to lease part of the Pocket
Park where you can watch Nebraska games and other events
on the outdoor big screen TV but there will be

(27:44):
a Sunnies there with a full cocktail menu and then
food trucks will go alongside it to complement it. So
there is your not a Development Spotlight of the week,
brought to you by.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
Not All Companies and you can find out more about
them at not All company dot com. Got a couple
other news items for you today as well.

Speaker 3 (28:06):
We have some.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
News coming out about the Duo, which is a very
cool project between fifteenth and sixteenth Street and between Douglas
and Farnham Street. It is the old Twin Towers and
the old park Fair Mall site that occupy that square block.
The Twin Towers are being renovated into apartments. The old

(28:31):
park Fair Mall was torn down earlier this year and
in its site will be a four hundred and six
er On its site, I should say, will be a
four hundred and sixty one stall parking garage. That parking
garage will have twelve thousand square feet of retail space
on Sixteenth Street and several floors of apartment units on

(28:52):
top of the parking garage. At any rate, the City
and New Style, which is developing that project, came to
an agreement handling you know how it's going to handle,
Like the city has the parking garage and New Style
has the apartments upstairs, and so that kind of was
settled this week. But I also wanted to tell you

(29:14):
that I toured the duo South Tower this week. And
so if you've noticed this, the two twin towers. So
the project will be the South Tower, the North Tower,
and this new thing built on the west side. All together,
it'll have more than seven hundred apartments. The South Tower
is ninety nine percent done, if not one hundred percent,

(29:36):
Oh gosh, yeah, not only are people living there, it's
one hundred percent least already.

Speaker 3 (29:41):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
They this place is so amazing. And this is not
a commercial for the do. I'm just telling you what
I saw with my own eyes on I was absolutely
blown away. I got a tour. Brandon Johnson had a
property management for a New Style, gave me a tour
earlier this week. And you go into the South tower.
So the South tower's done, the North towers under instruction
now or under renovation, i should say, and they're just

(30:03):
getting started with the west part. But on that in
that South tower, I can't remember the exact number, but
let's say approximately two hundred and seventy five apartment units
in there fully least already. It is so popular. It's
absolutely gorgeous inside. If you go to the very very
top floor and you have access to this if you're
a resident or you get a tour like I did.

(30:26):
They have this community room on the very top floor.
It's indoor outdoor. Part of it is indoors, and it's beautiful.
In the community room is actually like two levels. There's
a mezzanine above above it. Then there's this patio you
can go outside and look down on the city. You're
right across the street from the Mutual Tower. Is pretty sweet.
In fact, I found myself many times as I have

(30:46):
gone through a couple of the other really cool downtown projects,
saying why didn't they have these things when I got
out of college. I totally, as a single guy, would
have lived down downtown in one of these properties. So
that's really really cool and coming along nicely. And then
we also have a report of something else I got
to see this week Trenton.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
I got to go to the preview of the new.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
Scoreboards at Charles schwab Field. These things are amazing. So
for if you recall in the past, there was only
one scoreboard at Charles Schwab Field.

Speaker 3 (31:22):
Jeff was very upset about that. It drove me.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
Nuts because where our seats are for the College World Series,
it was always this hard look to the right in
order to see the scoreboard, and I would have a
sore neck by the end of the game. Trenton, No, no, Lie,
I really did, and so I always bugged me that
we didn't have another one. Well, they apparently I wasn't alone.
A lot of people had complained about only having one scoreboard,
so I added a second one in left field. They

(31:46):
are both brand new. The clarity the brightness are off
the charts. They're amazing. They are forty three and a
half feet tall by sixty feet wide. They also have
brand new ribbon panel videos. You know how those ribbon
videos around the edges. This thing is eight hundred and
twenty two feet long, all brand new, clear as can be,

(32:09):
absolutely beautiful. You got to go see a baseball game
there next spring because they are really really cool.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
A great addition.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
And then finally, for this segment, I want to let
everyone know that we have a very good Omaha history
article that you want to check out. A few weeks ago,
Patrick Wyman, who is the founder of Omaha Exploration, started
writing history articles for us and he does them every
week and they're amazing. You can read all of them
by going to the Gromha website, hit news on the

(32:38):
nav bar and go down to local history. The most
recent one is a history of a pedestrian subway that
goes under Dodge Street at around fifty first check it out.

Speaker 3 (32:48):
Very cool. All right.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
With that, we are going to take our final break
of the hour, and when we come back, it'll be
your Perkins Chritzer Construction Lightning Round. You're listening to Grow Omaha,
brought to you by Dingman's Collision Center and Cheer Out
Athletics on News Radio eleven ten kfab. It's the Perkins
Chritzer Construction Lightning Round and which we talk about a
lot of things really fast in a short period of time.

(33:09):
Thank you to Perkins Kreutzer for making this possible. We
love what they do amazing class a general contractor, and
so often during this segment we like to talk about
retail things that they build, restaurants that they build, because
that's kind of the theme of the Lightning Round, but
they also do built from the ground up. Structures big ones,
medium ones, small ones.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
They do it all.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
Perkins Chritzer Construction has deeply experienced team members that are
very committed and very loyal and they love serving their
clients and delivering projects that are beautiful, on time and
on budget. Perkins Chritzer Construction sponsor of the Lightning Round.
You can find out more by going to pH C
construction dot com.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
Here we go.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
Clio, the very popular Mediterranean restaurant in the Old Market,
opening a second location in West Almaha. They will actually
replace Blat Beer and Table in the Shops of Legacy.
Blat will close for good on that location only December thirty.
First renovations will start. Cleo is expected open in late spring.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
Now.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
Cleo is part and Blat are both part of Flagship
Restaurant Group. They have a lot of brands in town.
Another one is Plank Provisions seafood restaurant in the Old Market.
They're closing it unfortunately. I love the place, but they're
going to replace it with Anthem. Another one of their
concepts that's called a texas Asian Fusion pub really popular,

(34:35):
we understand in Austin, Texas, where they have the only
other location of Anthem, so Anthem replacing Plank and the
old Market Anthem should open around June. Whoa, we're just
getting started. We have Kawai Tea Time eighty nine hundred
Old West Center Road. They are replacing the former Cool
Greens restaurant space. Tea Time or Kwhi Teatime is based

(34:59):
in New York City, not Hawaii. It is an Asian
fusion concept. Also operates a location at one hundred and
forty fifth and West Maple Road. Another big change in
the restaurant world, bell Avida Restaurante in downtown Elkhorn closed
back in twenty twenty three. A lot of people very
disappointed by it. It was popular. The building is no longer

(35:22):
going to be vacant, though, because the owners of Main
Street Cellar are going to put a new concept in
that space on the ground floor called Lavida Nova. It
is expected to open in May now. Additionally, an unnamed
fine dining concept will open a few months later upstairs.
So the old Bellavida restaurant going from vacant to soon

(35:45):
to be two restaurants and.

Speaker 4 (35:48):
The huge addition of that building. You've seen them, yeah
on the west side, Yeah, yeah, really I mean, it
seems like it's darn near doubling a lot of patio
space I got rid of.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
You got Shiki Sushi going into the old Varsity Sports
Cafe space at forty nine hundred Dodge Street. We don't
know a lot about the place. We haven't been able
to find too many details. There's a rumor floating around
that it might be owned by another very popular and
respected purveyor of sushi and omaha, but we don't know

(36:17):
that for sure yet. We're trying to find out. A
Liby Room plans to open in the former VIP Lounge
building at ninetieth in Arbor. Could it's probably right, but
it's spelled yeah, it's probably Alabi, all right, Alibi Room
coming to the former vip Lounge building, the former vip

(36:39):
Lounge building at ninetieth in Arbor. And then we have
j Go Rats No Jay Garats Delian Market by the way. Ever,
I deal with people from out of town and they're like,
I want to go to that restaurant that Warren Buffett likes.

Speaker 3 (36:52):
It's called Go Rats. No, it's not Gorats, it's garage.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
Jay Garats has opened in a former a Burger detour
space near two hundred fourth in Pacific. Music is playing,
which means that we are finito. Hope everyone has a
great weekend. I'm Jeff Bils and I'm Trenton Maggott. You've
been listening to Grow Omaha, brought to you by Dingman's
Collision Center, Cheer Athletics, and Perkins Kretzer Construction. We'll chat

(37:16):
with you next week A nine right here on news
Radio eleven ten kfab