Belt Line
The Omaha Belt Line was built in 1885 to connect the industries of the city to main rail lines. Outpaced by the growth in long-distance trucking from the 1960’s, the Belt Line was abandoned in the 1980’s, leaving a wide swath of underutilized space cutting through the city. The corridor now perfectly aligns many of the region’s most important new centers of education, transit, health, and employment with the city’s core, where jobs and services are concentrated along east-west corridors.
A month-long exploration of the possibilities inherent in this corridor was conducted by a team of designers and planners in June 2013, called Realigning a Region. The design process, open to the public through weekly studios was, more importantly than any particular proposal, intended to initiate an act of regional planning generating direction from a place’s existing geography and social conditions. Many communities spend decades and millions of dollars looking for orientation, and often, the direction is heavily influenced by those with the most investment at the table.
Although our exercise culminated in a specific proposal to recast the corridor as a multi-mobility spine combining light rail and commuter trail to catalyze regional connectivity and redevelopment, a far more important outcome is recognizing the corridor as a compass for future regional planning efforts.
Enhancing Access and Mobility: One of the most compelling aspects of the Belt Line is its potential to catalyze an integrated regional mobility system that is accessible to residents who desire and require better mobility. The corridor intersects all the critical east-west corridors defining the contemporary axes of employment and wealth creation in the Omaha metro region, connecting several at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. By integrating the Belt Line with a regional bus rapid transit system and enhanced local bus service, several modes of transportation can operate to connect neighborhoods to jobs while catalyzing distinct redevelopment areas throughout the region.
Reassembling the Corridor: Recasting the Belt Line as a mobility corridor will require a phased strategy for acquiring property and mitigating impacts for the right-of-way as well as maximizing development opportunities adjacent to new infrastructure. We have categorized and tiered parcels along the corridor according to these imperatives. To start, we propose re-stitching the corridor in North Omaha as a continuous public space. Should light rail or rapid bus be introduced to the corridor, we have identified parcels that would be positively impacted by development of infrastructure, including stations. We have also identified parcels offering prime opportunity for transit-oriented development with particular attention paid to vacant, abandoned, or underutilized and obsolete uses within a half-mile (10 minute walk) of proposed stations.
Read coverage of the project in the Omaha World Herald.
Download full project proposal.
Project Next Steps: The team of young professional planners and designers who conducted Realigning a Region will build upon that work for the following calendar year. By continuing to employ the methods we have sought to include in all of our project work – community engagement, site installations, and regional planning studies and proposals – the 12 months of work on the Belt Line will include:
1) Focused engagement of each of the 6 communities we documented along the Belt Line. Through an open and transparent process similar to Realigning a Region, we would conduct a month of planning and design events involving the neighborhood and community groups and organizations in each segment. Focusing on smaller sections of the corridor would enable us to more effectively address history, spatial and demographic conditions, and specific development potentials unique to each. Each month would have concluded with a celebratory Emerging Terrain-style event on-site in the respective section, and we had initiated conversation with the Omaha World Herald on possibly covering each month’s activities;
2) Pursuit of formation of a Corridor Improvement District (CID). Through the process of Realigning a Region, we determined that a Corridor Improvement District (CID) would be an effective mechanism for urban and landscape regeneration along the Belt Line corridor. Establishing a CID is a relatively straightforward proposition utilizing existing laws and practices that are actually quite common in the City of Omaha, and interfacing directly with the City’s governance structure (specifically planning board and council involvement and approval). Our team documented the following as next steps for the CID:
• Best practices review of successful peer urban regeneration projects in other cities, with particular focus on legal, organizational, and financial models that directly contributed to the success of these projects;
• Legal and fiscal analysis of applicable municipal ordinances, state statutes, and available funding mechanisms
• Development of an organizational framework for the CID, including identification of key stakeholders
• Delineation of the CID area, including an analysis of existing ownership, land use, and land value, which would result in a map of the coverage area and parcels that would be included within the “jurisdiction” of the CID
• Economic analysis of potential redevelopment strategies, including a market study and appraisal of the costs and benefits of various levels of infrastructure investment in the corridor
This work would culminate in a document laying out a clear path for the incorporation of the CID, as well as strategies for redeveloping the corridor that result from the community engagement described in above.
3) Planning and delivery of an Omaha Belt Line Lantern Festival to conclude this year of additional work, taking precedent from a similar event surrounding Atlanta’s Belt Line. The Festival would essentially encourage the communities living and working along the entire length of the Belt Line to construct lanterns and release them in a large parade illuminating the corridor for an evening. This event would be a first step in uniting the community around the corridor and the idea of its regeneration into a multi-mobility corridor.