A new Bloomberg report tells the interesting and ironic story in downtown, Omaha, Nebraska:
The area between the artificial Conagra Lake and downtown Omaha, NE used to be so densely packed with hulking mid-rise brick warehouse buildings that it was known as Jobbers Canyon. Built in the early 1900s, 24 of the Jobbers Canyon warehouses survived intact, if underutilized, deep into the century, and were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.
Three years after that, in the biggest destruction of National Register-listed buildings ever, they were all razed to make way for a new headquarters for food giant Conagra Brands Inc.
In 2015, 25 years after Conagra moved into its low-slung, greenery-enveloped new headquarters, the company announced that it was relocating to Chicago’s Merchandise Mart.
Now, Houston developer Hines is promising to build a “vibrant community for those who want to live, work and play in downtown Omaha.” The first new structure is supposed to be a 680,000-square-foot, five-story building packed with apartments, restaurants, shops, offices and parking. After that, Hines says, it hopes to put up six more buildings that would transform the sleepy, suburban-style Conagra office park into a densely packed urban neighborhood with more than 1,000 residents and what the developer calls a “24/7” feel.