BELLEVUE, Neb. (AP) - Back in the good old days, Olde Towne Bellevue was a destination. A thriving downtown. A community core.
But those days are more than 30 years gone. And the business owners who’ve stuck around have watched as bigger tenants moved out, the vehicle traffic faded and the foot traffic slowed to a trickle. Smaller businesses come and go.
Now the city of Bellevue is gone, too - city employees finished a move to a new City Hall and police station on Wall Street at the end of February. To some, this means prime real estate has opened up for redevelopment on part of a street considered Olde Towne’s main drag. For others, the city’s departure is yet another sign of decline.
The Omaha World-Herald reports that Bellevue City Administrator Joe Mangiamelli is optimistic.
“We’re hoping the reuse of former city property will be a good catalyst to spur some new interest and new economic development opportunities,” he said.
Such sentiment from city administration and politicians - sometimes accompanied by plans that have gone nowhere - is a familiar song for the area’s longtime tenants.
“People keep trying,” said Randy Daniels, who owns Record Benders music shop.
Record Benders has been on this corner since 1994. Daniels can look out his windows and rattle off a list of nearby businesses that he watched move in and then leave. Record Benders is doing well, he said, because it’s entertainment. But it’s tough for the aging area to compete with more up-and-coming, newer spots - particularly to the west and north.
Bellevue is much bigger than it was in Olde Towne’s glory days, Daniels said, and the city “doesn’t know what do with us down here.”
Mangiamelli said the city’s effort this time will be different from the city’s previous attempts, particularly in 2016 when the city hired a real estate firm to market city-owned property and the area in general. That contract with OMNE Partners has since lapsed.
It’ll be easier to market the properties now that the city is actually moved out, he said.
The city’s plan: to prepare a request for proposals for redevelopment of the old City Hall, Post Office and police station. Leaders are considering demolishing the antiquated city buildings to provide interested developers with “a clean slate,” Mangiamelli said.
The city may not be putting a price tag on the properties.
“We are going to be open and flexible,” he said. A deal with a developer could involve local incentives.
The city already has an Olde Towne Vision Plan outlining ideas for the area that include residential and retail developments. There’s been interest in a mixed-use development on the old city properties, Mangiamelli said.
Rusty Hike, who’s running for mayor, has long been involved with efforts to rejuvenate the area. Hike is a real estate agent with Hike Real Estate on Mission Avenue. In 2008, he co-founded the Olde Towne Development Corp., a group of business owners in the area. He brought a proposal to the city in 2014 that has only collected dust. Now, with the city offices vacant and some new leaders on board, he’s in the process of updating the plan and bringing it back to the city.
Olde Towne’s core area, as defined by the city, extends from roughly Wayne Street on the western edge to Hancock Street on the east, and from 22nd Avenue to 23rd Avenue. The area is home to about 25 businesses and has about a 70 percent occupancy rate.
There are some bright spots - the Bellevue Little Theater has successfully drawn crowds here for more than 40 years and Luigi’s, a new Italian restaurant, set up shop in Olde Towne in February. But there is also the mostly vacant strip mall on Mission Avenue and Franklin Street. And when the city moved, it left behind a block and a half of vacant buildings right on the main strip.
Rent here is relatively low compared with other parts of the Omaha area. Available retail or office space in Olde Towne is listed as low as $4.71 per square foot per year. In the Old Market, the low end of rents is about $10 per square foot per year, according to recent listings.
Hike declined to describe the new plan he will bring to the city, but he said the area needs a combination of constructing new buildings as well as rehabbing and filling vacancies in older buildings.
In addition to low rent, Olde Towne has other perks, he said. It’s walkable, bikeable, near the Missouri River and residential areas. “There’s no reason that area should fail.”
Longtime business owner Becky Wilfong doesn’t have such a rosy picture of the future.
“I’ve seen it decline consistently for 21 years,” said Wilfong, who owns Bellevue Printing Co. on Franklin Street with her husband. The couple used to own several properties in Olde Towne, she said, but they sold them all.
According to Wilfong, there are some problems with the area: It’s off the beaten path. And the buildings are mismatched, lacking uniformity.
“Anybody who thinks they’re going to bring (Olde Towne) back, let them put their money where their mouth is,” she said. “You can’t rebuild this.”
Former Omaha Planning Director Marty Shukert, now a principal at RDG Planning and Design, said Bellevue moving out of its offices is a sign of opportunity, not a sign of decline. The problem, in his opinion, is people are looking at Olde Towne as a downtown, “which it’s really not.”
The area should be viewed as an urban residential area with historic, recreation and business amenities, he said.
Shukert said developers don’t seem to have discovered the area.
“I think it has significant potential, but it needs to be looked at in different ways,” he said.
City Councilman Thomas Burns, who represents Olde Towne’s Ward 1, said he’s been trying to rejuvenate, and potentially expand, a business improvement district in the area. A business improvement district taxes businesses within its boundaries to fund improvement projects.
Business owners in the area have also organized events designed to draw people to Olde Towne, like a Halloween trick-or-treating event for kids, a Christmas tree-lighting, a St. Patrick’s Day pub crawl, a parade and community festival.
“One person can’t make everything happen,” Burns said. “It really does take a village.”
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Information from: Omaha World-Herald, http://www.omaha.com
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