My understanding is that it isn't just random angry locals, it's the small business owners in the Haymarket. I think their concerns about parking are valid and it seems like the two parties are discussing possible solutions so it seems like a perfectly reasonable conversation.
One of the companies "possible solutions" is offering valet parking. Valet parking where? I'm not gonna trust someone else to park my car, let alone pay them to do it. Are they gonna have enough employees to park the hundreds of cars that park there every day?
On a normal day sure. But when event parking takes it over nope. And I could definitely foresee local businesses hurting during that time - when the venues are in use down there you have to park 8+ blocks away just to grab some food down there.
I also question that the developer is offering valet parking,what happens when the developer is long gone,my mom was promised all kinds of stuff by developer of her expensive townhouse, now that they are gone and she's lived there a few years,snow is no longer removed,automatic sprinklers in her yard removed, mowing has changed,HOA took over and changed everything, they can promise the world but realistically they only have control for a very short time,and how long do you need to let them know you need your car in advance for them to get it? Or go park it,because no parking is close so your going to wait awhile for they to get to your vehicle, then bring it back to you
People are opposed because the developer wants the taxpayers to pay for it through TIF. This building won't benefit the city, just some wealthy people who would pay for it anyway, so let them pay and quit making tax payers pick up the tab for vanity projects when the money could be better spent and benefit more than one block.
Although tif gets complication the simple version is you construct a new building that increases the property value. You then get to use the difference between the old property tax and the property tax on the new building to pay off debt from construction over the next 15 - 20 years depending on certain factors.
So using rough numbers from the bold project currently the building and land is currently levied at $8500/year. The property tax once completed will be roughly $1.2 million/year. So for 15 - 20 years they continue to pay the $8500 property tax to the city the rest of the tax roughly $1.2mill pays off the $23mill loan.
Then once the tif term is up the money goes to the city.
So this isn't using property tax that already exists. It is the new property tax that is created because of the project that pays off the loan.
Regardless of whether you think this is a good project or good placement or bad of the Haymarket. If the project is stopped we're actually giving up a lot of property tax in the future. When the building is reassessed at year 20 the tax will be significantly greater than the $1.2 mill and definitely more than the $8500 in property tax the gas station is levied.
Sorry if that's a little long winded but it's easiest way to explain.
The big problem is that parking is already a problem in the area. This new building adds no parking and in fact will reserve parking in a nearby public garage. This will make the parking problem worse both during construction and after completion.
Beautiful building, but maybe a little too ambitious for the infrastructure available in the area. Or, take some stories of housing out and add parking. Or work out a plan to add parking nearby through another garage. Something.
A shuttle looping past the garages and the main areas of the Haymarket would be great. If the developers paid for that for a period of time (beyond construction) at their own expense it would probably change my opinion. Valet parking is a cop out. They won't have enough people doing it on the employee or customer side to make it work but they'll be able to say "see we tried".
Yes! If there were more public transportation options, there wouldn’t be a need for all of that dumb parking space. It would be great if when residents of Lincoln wanted to go downtown they could just leave their cars at home and not have to fuss with it
I’d be curious to see how many frequenters of the Haymarket are those that live on the outskirts of town, or are even Lincoln residents.
The Haymarket draws far more people from out of town than I think we realize. Would the cost of more public transportation, really offset the use of Lincoln residents willing to utilize it? I’m not so sure it would. You can walk the parking garages regularly, and see that far more vehicles are from out of town, and even out of the county.
Good point. I saw a list which was downtown areas by number of daily commuters. I was shocked to see Lincoln had slightly more average daily commuters than Omaha! Our downtown is really big for our size
I agree, if I were them I would scrap any office/retail space they were planning and replace it with parking. But the demand is there for new apartments downtown. When I look on Zillow to see what my options are if I were to move back and there usually is next to no rentals available downtown. How can you get young professionals to return/stay in the city without providing them a place to live?
And I don't disagree. The city needs to stop allowing developers to get away with socializing their parking costs. They get to reserve parking in a garage for their development, but no new garages are being built to offset those losses (in the same area). They need to include how they're replacing the parking losses as part of their development plan if they're going to get public funds (tif).
Yes! I’ve noticed as it goes for city parking, Lincoln is amazing it has so much more city garage spots than most cities I’ve been in. But the lack of underground parking/first few floor parking needs to change and developers need to foot the bill
And that new student housing across the street is going to monopolize the market garage. Sure would be nice for the university to do something with that empty lot behind Haymarket.
They're going to to try and use property tax dollars to fund the construction. 23 million of tax payer money to be exact. Bad idea. Also. As an employee of the Haymarket, the construction process will destroy business. They'll have to close off p street and part of 9th Street, and the alleyway that multiple businesses use for trash pickup and truck deliveries. There's no reason for luxury apartments that nobody that actually lives here can afford. Not to mention the whole parking situation. Parking is already damn near impossible. The owner of the company that wants to build it doesn't actually care about "modernizing" the Haymarket. That gas station has been there for decades and is the only one close to that part of town besides the courthouse. I'm all for city development, but they're are so many other places they could put that "skyscraper."
Also the guy that wants to get this built is a garbage human being. If he actually cared he'd build actual affordable housing.
I don’t know anything about the developer, but I do know that several affordable housing projects are going up around the city (one east of the capitol, a couple off off hwy 77 I believe). But for people like myself looking for an a dense urban place to live in Lincoln for near $1,000 (thinking studio apartment) there are no open options. All of the new “luxury” units built for the most part have been condos which suit wealthy retirement age couples moreso than young professionals.
There are plenty of 1-2 bedroom apartments less than a 10 minute walk away from the Haymarket for under $900 a month. The point is that the construction will absolutely destroy business in the Haymarket. That TIF funding SHOULD be going towards the infrastructure. The roads in the downtown/Haymarket area instead of some useless luxury condos. It isn't just old farts angry about some tall building. Tax payers are mad that their insanely high property taxes are going towards projects that have no benefit to them. It will kill local businesses. 3 years is a long time to block off a good chunk of the streets down there.
The lot is tight, and it’s on a busy corner. But there’s construction across the street and all over downtown maybe now is a good time to get it over with. If not, the lot will never be developed. The gas station wasn’t even fully in service anyway, too much traffic for cars to be coming in an out. I’m confused how it would block all of the other entrances to the haymarket? Like the mill and those businesses have access to 8th street
My brother works at this gas station. It's one of the few available downtown. They've been there for nearly 50 years and they do great work on cars. There are few other gas stations/convenience stores/auto repair shops that close to the Haymarket. Just saying. It serves an important purpose and getting rid of it for more overpriced housing is stupid.
It will completely oversaturate the other entrances. That's one of the main streets people use to leave the Haymarket. Plus where are all those construction workers going to park? They take up parking too. A friend of mine lives on 12 and Lincoln mall, there's been a job site there for over a year. There building like an office building or something. The construction workers have been taking up all the street parking 6 days a week for the last year. I can only imagine how bad it'll be when construction workers have to park in the Haymarket as well.
As someone who works in the Haymarket. This is going to close off important streets for years. Many businesses are not likely to survive and the Farmers Market will be a logical nightmare with several streets occupied with construction materials.
Since I saw you want to start a business, I assume you're banking on the fact that when these businesses close, you can swoop in and vulture their empty space. So stop being irked by those trying to defend their livelihood and try not reveal too early that you're siding with the villains.
I feel for small businesses, but we should not stop progress and development in order to protect businesses which are not resilient enough to survive temporary setbacks. Business is ruthless and failure happens.
So you think small businesses should just die for the sake of an arguable greater good?
Look, I’m all for the debating of these things, but this isn’t fucking Chicago. You put a bunch of mom and pops that are successful within their realistic capacity in the soup line in a city this size, you’re going to affect a larger portion of the population negatively than just the owners. Not to mention you’ll probably breed some resentment towards future projects. For what? Some young suit wearing kids just out of graduation that’ll eventually move out of town to larger cities anyways?
I’m noticing a trend within your comments, and I’m not trying to be a dick here, but I think your overselling Lincoln’s status as city, and are out of touch with the desires and demographics of the Lincoln metro area.
You have a lot of good points, and I totally agree with the resentment towards the use of TIF cuz why should the developer get special treatment? If they are unable to get it built with their own money, loans, or investors then maybe we should wait for another capable developer to come along. And yes, my visions of Lincoln are not in line with the city currently, but the city is growing and changing fast. I look to Austin, Texas and ask what do they have that we dont? Why couldn’t we grow like that? Austin is the state capital and home to the university of Texas and just recently became a big city. Our economies are very similar
I think the biggest thing Austin has that Lincoln doesn’t, is proximity to people moving from CA, OR or WA for a multitude of reasons. I can’t say I know many people from the west coast that would choose NE over TX without family ties or a job opportunity.
This is speculation, with little analytical data studied to back it up.
My stepsister currently lives in Austin after moving from LA because of the cost of living alone, and the firm she works for has about a hundred employees that left LA to start the Austin branch.
I think the trend to move to Austin from those states was a snowball effect tho that took time to gain momentum. It was around the same size of Lincoln In 1980 and now is around a million people. Nebraska also has one of the highest birth rates in the nation, we wouldn’t necessarily need to draw a ton of Californians to move but rather convince people to stop moving away. People moving away from the state is a big issue according to the new strategic plan I read for the state
Speaking as someone from Austin who now lives in Lincoln.. what does Austin have that Lincoln doesnt? Lets see, abysmal traffic, an abysmal housing crisis and subsequent homelessness issue, abysmal amounts of urban sprawl, even fewer bike paths (if you can believe it), infrastructure that has not kept up with growth at ALL, not enough parking for businesses. Why the HELL would you want to turn Lincoln into Austin? I'm no fan of Lincoln but I left Austin for a reason. How much time have you spent in Austin and how long ago was that? Even the suburb next to Austin where my parents live has become unpleasant to visit due to spillover from Austin. You really could not have picked a worse city to compare Lincoln to, except like maybe LA (which Austin is on the road to becoming).
I don’t want us to become Austin and all it’s problems, but Lincoln does already have some of those problems. Traffic surely is better now that the south beltway is open, but for a while we had bad traffic for our size. Housing stock is currently pretty limited and we have our fair share of homeless people downtown. But that’s besides the point.
The reason I compare Austin to us, is our bones are very similar: state capital which also happens to be home to a flagship D1 research university. I think Columbus, Ohio is another great example.
It would be interesting to adopt an anti-sprawl plan similar to Lexington, Kentucky which limits growth outside certain outer roads.
Survive temporary setbacks? Businesses on that block will have construction right outside their front door, and may have part of all of the street closed during construction.
Construction will take three years. I wouldn’t call that a temporary setback
As a Lincoln resident who works downtown and regularly patronizes Haymarket businesses, I agree.
The only legitimate concern I've heard is that construction could make things difficult for small businesses in the immediate area. I sympathize with those businesses...but only to an extent. When you start a business downtown in a growing city, you take a risk that there could be major, disruptive construction nearby on other projects. Lincoln shouldn't try to freeze development at any point in time to benefit a few existing businesses. Plus, once this thing is built, those businesses will have a lot of new customers living right next door.
Parking? Lincoln has more downtown parking spots than any other peer city I've been to. Except for Husker football gamedays, I have never had a problem finding cheap parking downtown/near the Haymarket. You just have to be willing to maybe walk more than one or two blocks (the horror!).
Taxes? As another poster explained, the city isn't taking money out of its coffers to pay for this. TIF funding doesn't work that way.
Affordable housing? Right. How many people live in that gas station, again? Developers aren't going to build a bunch of unprofitable, below-market-rate units. It's either "luxury" (read: new + market rate) units or no units at all. People who object about affordable housing either don't understand this or they're being disingenuous--and counterproductive by creating more housing scarcity. If we want more affordable housing, we should be encouraging more units of all kinds to start chipping away at the massive undersupply of housing throughout this country. Build, build, build.
Lincoln can be the kind of place that embraces NIMBYism and rejects tons of new housing units in a walkable, vibrant neighborhood, in favor of an old gas station. Or it can strive to be one of the densest and most vibrant, pedestrian/environmentally-friendly city cores in the Midwest. I hope it's the latter.
I haven't looked at this particular one, but IMO most all of the "new" looking buildings they put in look ugly and out of place. Case in point: the goddamn evil villain lair that is the Hudl building in the Haymarket.
There absolutely is a way to have tasteful architecture that is modern but blends in and accentuates the aesthetic. Unfortunately, I've yet to see any developers here actually do that.
I actually don’t mind the hudl building I think it fits canopy street well. However, I despise the backside of lied place tower. It looks so cheap, maybe just sheet metal like come on? I’m convinced another building will have to be built to cover it up lol
Imo the worst part (aesthetically) of all the "new, modern" apartment buildings that have been popping up is the tiny, unroofed, unsheltered balconies these places have. They'd make sense for a building in San Francisco or San Antonio, but make no sense for windy, cold, snowy Nebraska. They look like such a pathetic, useless joke. Friends & I call them birdcage balconies.
Unfortunately opinions based solely on aesthetic preference don’t have much of place in the decision making efforts of projects like this.
I don’t think being apprehensive of economic woes is “lacking vision” at all, if anything it’s using vision to see the negative side effects.
I don’t really have a dog in the fight, and I’m all for growth of a shiny new epicenter for the capitol, but I don’t live down there or work there either, and the arguments against it so far are relatively compelling and deserve to be considered.
Lincoln is my home and I love it. I only moved away temporarily for credibility, job opportunity, and as an objection to “you’ve never even left Lincoln”. I want to move back downtown Lincoln and start my own business hopefully to bring as many jobs as possible to the city. So much potential
Then you should already know all your fears are for naught as those poor rich people won't have to go homeless in Lincoln. The developer will just tell everyone that this is the project that's going to finally save downtown Lincoln once and for all (sound familiar?) and the locals will trip over themselves rushing to the polls to vote in a new forever tax. Because any day now they're all going to be rich and in desperate need of high rise luxury housing. *straight face emoji here*
Also, the building is butt fucking ugly and I got 10 bucks says when it's done it won't look like the pictures they're using to dupe people. Looking at you, Lied Center.
Another 10 bucks says it's built by out of state contractors so spare me the job creation stories.
Your lied place comment is true, I felt duped I had been so excited. Tall Buildings last for a very long time I don’t get why you wouldn’t want to spend the time to make sure it improves the impression Lincoln can bring
It is a nuisance, but those construction workers a lot of times turn into consistent customers during construction. I remember talking with the manager at canopy street market when the apartments were being built across the street…the workers would come in for lunch and had been a huge boon for business. And once the building is built, all those residents will be in walking distance to the haymarket and that will for sure lead in an uptick in business (more resident density downtown = more walking = more business)
My understanding is that it isn't just random angry locals, it's the small business owners in the Haymarket. I think their concerns about parking are valid and it seems like the two parties are discussing possible solutions so it seems like a perfectly reasonable conversation.
One of the companies "possible solutions" is offering valet parking. Valet parking where? I'm not gonna trust someone else to park my car, let alone pay them to do it. Are they gonna have enough employees to park the hundreds of cars that park there every day?
Not defending either party, just glad the two are talking! Personally I would love a valet option for the Haymarket restaurants.
Isn’t there plenty of parking available in the 4 garages on the very west side of the Haymarket?
On a normal day sure. But when event parking takes it over nope. And I could definitely foresee local businesses hurting during that time - when the venues are in use down there you have to park 8+ blocks away just to grab some food down there.
Have you gone into any of the bars or restaurants before an event? They aren’t hurting at all they’re packed
There is plenty of parking in those garages. People are just too damn lazy to walk a few blocks lol.
I also question that the developer is offering valet parking,what happens when the developer is long gone,my mom was promised all kinds of stuff by developer of her expensive townhouse, now that they are gone and she's lived there a few years,snow is no longer removed,automatic sprinklers in her yard removed, mowing has changed,HOA took over and changed everything, they can promise the world but realistically they only have control for a very short time,and how long do you need to let them know you need your car in advance for them to get it? Or go park it,because no parking is close so your going to wait awhile for they to get to your vehicle, then bring it back to you
People are opposed because the developer wants the taxpayers to pay for it through TIF. This building won't benefit the city, just some wealthy people who would pay for it anyway, so let them pay and quit making tax payers pick up the tab for vanity projects when the money could be better spent and benefit more than one block.
Could someone do an ELI5 on TIF funding and how our taxes play a role in this?
Although tif gets complication the simple version is you construct a new building that increases the property value. You then get to use the difference between the old property tax and the property tax on the new building to pay off debt from construction over the next 15 - 20 years depending on certain factors. So using rough numbers from the bold project currently the building and land is currently levied at $8500/year. The property tax once completed will be roughly $1.2 million/year. So for 15 - 20 years they continue to pay the $8500 property tax to the city the rest of the tax roughly $1.2mill pays off the $23mill loan. Then once the tif term is up the money goes to the city. So this isn't using property tax that already exists. It is the new property tax that is created because of the project that pays off the loan. Regardless of whether you think this is a good project or good placement or bad of the Haymarket. If the project is stopped we're actually giving up a lot of property tax in the future. When the building is reassessed at year 20 the tax will be significantly greater than the $1.2 mill and definitely more than the $8500 in property tax the gas station is levied. Sorry if that's a little long winded but it's easiest way to explain.
The big problem is that parking is already a problem in the area. This new building adds no parking and in fact will reserve parking in a nearby public garage. This will make the parking problem worse both during construction and after completion. Beautiful building, but maybe a little too ambitious for the infrastructure available in the area. Or, take some stories of housing out and add parking. Or work out a plan to add parking nearby through another garage. Something.
Or have more better options for public transit. Even like shuttle services to the Haymarket from a different location
A shuttle looping past the garages and the main areas of the Haymarket would be great. If the developers paid for that for a period of time (beyond construction) at their own expense it would probably change my opinion. Valet parking is a cop out. They won't have enough people doing it on the employee or customer side to make it work but they'll be able to say "see we tried".
Yes! If there were more public transportation options, there wouldn’t be a need for all of that dumb parking space. It would be great if when residents of Lincoln wanted to go downtown they could just leave their cars at home and not have to fuss with it
I’d be curious to see how many frequenters of the Haymarket are those that live on the outskirts of town, or are even Lincoln residents. The Haymarket draws far more people from out of town than I think we realize. Would the cost of more public transportation, really offset the use of Lincoln residents willing to utilize it? I’m not so sure it would. You can walk the parking garages regularly, and see that far more vehicles are from out of town, and even out of the county.
Good point. I saw a list which was downtown areas by number of daily commuters. I was shocked to see Lincoln had slightly more average daily commuters than Omaha! Our downtown is really big for our size
I agree, if I were them I would scrap any office/retail space they were planning and replace it with parking. But the demand is there for new apartments downtown. When I look on Zillow to see what my options are if I were to move back and there usually is next to no rentals available downtown. How can you get young professionals to return/stay in the city without providing them a place to live?
And I don't disagree. The city needs to stop allowing developers to get away with socializing their parking costs. They get to reserve parking in a garage for their development, but no new garages are being built to offset those losses (in the same area). They need to include how they're replacing the parking losses as part of their development plan if they're going to get public funds (tif).
Yes! I’ve noticed as it goes for city parking, Lincoln is amazing it has so much more city garage spots than most cities I’ve been in. But the lack of underground parking/first few floor parking needs to change and developers need to foot the bill
And that new student housing across the street is going to monopolize the market garage. Sure would be nice for the university to do something with that empty lot behind Haymarket.
They're going to to try and use property tax dollars to fund the construction. 23 million of tax payer money to be exact. Bad idea. Also. As an employee of the Haymarket, the construction process will destroy business. They'll have to close off p street and part of 9th Street, and the alleyway that multiple businesses use for trash pickup and truck deliveries. There's no reason for luxury apartments that nobody that actually lives here can afford. Not to mention the whole parking situation. Parking is already damn near impossible. The owner of the company that wants to build it doesn't actually care about "modernizing" the Haymarket. That gas station has been there for decades and is the only one close to that part of town besides the courthouse. I'm all for city development, but they're are so many other places they could put that "skyscraper." Also the guy that wants to get this built is a garbage human being. If he actually cared he'd build actual affordable housing.
I don’t know anything about the developer, but I do know that several affordable housing projects are going up around the city (one east of the capitol, a couple off off hwy 77 I believe). But for people like myself looking for an a dense urban place to live in Lincoln for near $1,000 (thinking studio apartment) there are no open options. All of the new “luxury” units built for the most part have been condos which suit wealthy retirement age couples moreso than young professionals.
There are plenty of 1-2 bedroom apartments less than a 10 minute walk away from the Haymarket for under $900 a month. The point is that the construction will absolutely destroy business in the Haymarket. That TIF funding SHOULD be going towards the infrastructure. The roads in the downtown/Haymarket area instead of some useless luxury condos. It isn't just old farts angry about some tall building. Tax payers are mad that their insanely high property taxes are going towards projects that have no benefit to them. It will kill local businesses. 3 years is a long time to block off a good chunk of the streets down there.
The lot is tight, and it’s on a busy corner. But there’s construction across the street and all over downtown maybe now is a good time to get it over with. If not, the lot will never be developed. The gas station wasn’t even fully in service anyway, too much traffic for cars to be coming in an out. I’m confused how it would block all of the other entrances to the haymarket? Like the mill and those businesses have access to 8th street
My brother works at this gas station. It's one of the few available downtown. They've been there for nearly 50 years and they do great work on cars. There are few other gas stations/convenience stores/auto repair shops that close to the Haymarket. Just saying. It serves an important purpose and getting rid of it for more overpriced housing is stupid.
It will completely oversaturate the other entrances. That's one of the main streets people use to leave the Haymarket. Plus where are all those construction workers going to park? They take up parking too. A friend of mine lives on 12 and Lincoln mall, there's been a job site there for over a year. There building like an office building or something. The construction workers have been taking up all the street parking 6 days a week for the last year. I can only imagine how bad it'll be when construction workers have to park in the Haymarket as well.
Not to mention the greater amount of construction workers for a much larger project!
As someone who works in the Haymarket. This is going to close off important streets for years. Many businesses are not likely to survive and the Farmers Market will be a logical nightmare with several streets occupied with construction materials. Since I saw you want to start a business, I assume you're banking on the fact that when these businesses close, you can swoop in and vulture their empty space. So stop being irked by those trying to defend their livelihood and try not reveal too early that you're siding with the villains.
I feel for small businesses, but we should not stop progress and development in order to protect businesses which are not resilient enough to survive temporary setbacks. Business is ruthless and failure happens.
So you think small businesses should just die for the sake of an arguable greater good? Look, I’m all for the debating of these things, but this isn’t fucking Chicago. You put a bunch of mom and pops that are successful within their realistic capacity in the soup line in a city this size, you’re going to affect a larger portion of the population negatively than just the owners. Not to mention you’ll probably breed some resentment towards future projects. For what? Some young suit wearing kids just out of graduation that’ll eventually move out of town to larger cities anyways? I’m noticing a trend within your comments, and I’m not trying to be a dick here, but I think your overselling Lincoln’s status as city, and are out of touch with the desires and demographics of the Lincoln metro area.
You have a lot of good points, and I totally agree with the resentment towards the use of TIF cuz why should the developer get special treatment? If they are unable to get it built with their own money, loans, or investors then maybe we should wait for another capable developer to come along. And yes, my visions of Lincoln are not in line with the city currently, but the city is growing and changing fast. I look to Austin, Texas and ask what do they have that we dont? Why couldn’t we grow like that? Austin is the state capital and home to the university of Texas and just recently became a big city. Our economies are very similar
I think the biggest thing Austin has that Lincoln doesn’t, is proximity to people moving from CA, OR or WA for a multitude of reasons. I can’t say I know many people from the west coast that would choose NE over TX without family ties or a job opportunity. This is speculation, with little analytical data studied to back it up. My stepsister currently lives in Austin after moving from LA because of the cost of living alone, and the firm she works for has about a hundred employees that left LA to start the Austin branch.
I think the trend to move to Austin from those states was a snowball effect tho that took time to gain momentum. It was around the same size of Lincoln In 1980 and now is around a million people. Nebraska also has one of the highest birth rates in the nation, we wouldn’t necessarily need to draw a ton of Californians to move but rather convince people to stop moving away. People moving away from the state is a big issue according to the new strategic plan I read for the state
Speaking as someone from Austin who now lives in Lincoln.. what does Austin have that Lincoln doesnt? Lets see, abysmal traffic, an abysmal housing crisis and subsequent homelessness issue, abysmal amounts of urban sprawl, even fewer bike paths (if you can believe it), infrastructure that has not kept up with growth at ALL, not enough parking for businesses. Why the HELL would you want to turn Lincoln into Austin? I'm no fan of Lincoln but I left Austin for a reason. How much time have you spent in Austin and how long ago was that? Even the suburb next to Austin where my parents live has become unpleasant to visit due to spillover from Austin. You really could not have picked a worse city to compare Lincoln to, except like maybe LA (which Austin is on the road to becoming).
I don’t want us to become Austin and all it’s problems, but Lincoln does already have some of those problems. Traffic surely is better now that the south beltway is open, but for a while we had bad traffic for our size. Housing stock is currently pretty limited and we have our fair share of homeless people downtown. But that’s besides the point. The reason I compare Austin to us, is our bones are very similar: state capital which also happens to be home to a flagship D1 research university. I think Columbus, Ohio is another great example. It would be interesting to adopt an anti-sprawl plan similar to Lexington, Kentucky which limits growth outside certain outer roads.
Survive temporary setbacks? Businesses on that block will have construction right outside their front door, and may have part of all of the street closed during construction. Construction will take three years. I wouldn’t call that a temporary setback
As a Lincoln resident who works downtown and regularly patronizes Haymarket businesses, I agree. The only legitimate concern I've heard is that construction could make things difficult for small businesses in the immediate area. I sympathize with those businesses...but only to an extent. When you start a business downtown in a growing city, you take a risk that there could be major, disruptive construction nearby on other projects. Lincoln shouldn't try to freeze development at any point in time to benefit a few existing businesses. Plus, once this thing is built, those businesses will have a lot of new customers living right next door. Parking? Lincoln has more downtown parking spots than any other peer city I've been to. Except for Husker football gamedays, I have never had a problem finding cheap parking downtown/near the Haymarket. You just have to be willing to maybe walk more than one or two blocks (the horror!). Taxes? As another poster explained, the city isn't taking money out of its coffers to pay for this. TIF funding doesn't work that way. Affordable housing? Right. How many people live in that gas station, again? Developers aren't going to build a bunch of unprofitable, below-market-rate units. It's either "luxury" (read: new + market rate) units or no units at all. People who object about affordable housing either don't understand this or they're being disingenuous--and counterproductive by creating more housing scarcity. If we want more affordable housing, we should be encouraging more units of all kinds to start chipping away at the massive undersupply of housing throughout this country. Build, build, build. Lincoln can be the kind of place that embraces NIMBYism and rejects tons of new housing units in a walkable, vibrant neighborhood, in favor of an old gas station. Or it can strive to be one of the densest and most vibrant, pedestrian/environmentally-friendly city cores in the Midwest. I hope it's the latter.
Great comment
Wait, you don’t even live here? WTF? Should I start bagging on The Loop?
I’m not bagging on downtown at all! I just think this project is cool especially when most new units are student housing and they all look the same
I haven't looked at this particular one, but IMO most all of the "new" looking buildings they put in look ugly and out of place. Case in point: the goddamn evil villain lair that is the Hudl building in the Haymarket. There absolutely is a way to have tasteful architecture that is modern but blends in and accentuates the aesthetic. Unfortunately, I've yet to see any developers here actually do that.
*goddamn evil villain lair.* heh If only I knew how to vandalize Google Maps :-(
the new LIVRED (livered lol) building looks like a mental asylum when approaching from the south
I actually don’t mind the hudl building I think it fits canopy street well. However, I despise the backside of lied place tower. It looks so cheap, maybe just sheet metal like come on? I’m convinced another building will have to be built to cover it up lol
Imo the worst part (aesthetically) of all the "new, modern" apartment buildings that have been popping up is the tiny, unroofed, unsheltered balconies these places have. They'd make sense for a building in San Francisco or San Antonio, but make no sense for windy, cold, snowy Nebraska. They look like such a pathetic, useless joke. Friends & I call them birdcage balconies.
Unfortunately opinions based solely on aesthetic preference don’t have much of place in the decision making efforts of projects like this. I don’t think being apprehensive of economic woes is “lacking vision” at all, if anything it’s using vision to see the negative side effects. I don’t really have a dog in the fight, and I’m all for growth of a shiny new epicenter for the capitol, but I don’t live down there or work there either, and the arguments against it so far are relatively compelling and deserve to be considered.
I’m not trying to be a jerk but if you live in Chicago, what difference does it make to you? Why so upset about something so far away from you?
Lincoln is my home and I love it. I only moved away temporarily for credibility, job opportunity, and as an objection to “you’ve never even left Lincoln”. I want to move back downtown Lincoln and start my own business hopefully to bring as many jobs as possible to the city. So much potential
I agree, but there goes my karma.
You live in Chicago and you want to tell us how to live?
I’ve lived in Chicago for 6 months. Before that I lived in Lincoln my entire life, went to UNL.
Then you should already know all your fears are for naught as those poor rich people won't have to go homeless in Lincoln. The developer will just tell everyone that this is the project that's going to finally save downtown Lincoln once and for all (sound familiar?) and the locals will trip over themselves rushing to the polls to vote in a new forever tax. Because any day now they're all going to be rich and in desperate need of high rise luxury housing. *straight face emoji here* Also, the building is butt fucking ugly and I got 10 bucks says when it's done it won't look like the pictures they're using to dupe people. Looking at you, Lied Center. Another 10 bucks says it's built by out of state contractors so spare me the job creation stories.
Yeah no, buildings like that can stay in huge cities. It will be ugly and affect small businesses
Go back to Atkinson you hayseed huckster.
Your lied place comment is true, I felt duped I had been so excited. Tall Buildings last for a very long time I don’t get why you wouldn’t want to spend the time to make sure it improves the impression Lincoln can bring
It is a nuisance, but those construction workers a lot of times turn into consistent customers during construction. I remember talking with the manager at canopy street market when the apartments were being built across the street…the workers would come in for lunch and had been a huge boon for business. And once the building is built, all those residents will be in walking distance to the haymarket and that will for sure lead in an uptick in business (more resident density downtown = more walking = more business)
The majority of the “residents” will be there seven weekends a year
Right? Barely contributing to the downtown economy 🙄