Omaha-Lincoln

EXIT 426 - This hyphen between Omaha and Lincoln drew leaders from both communities Tuesday convinced they can turn the link into reality.

During the session sponsored by the chambers of commerce from both cities, a unified effort emerged to convince the federal government to join the separate areas into one Omaha-Lincoln metro area of nearly 1.2 million people.

No mention was made of whether Council Bluffs would continue to get partial billing as it does now in Omaha's eight-county metro area.

The new push is more than the decades of talk about getting Nebraska's two largest cities and past rivals to cooperate. When more than 50 Omaha business leaders travel to Washington this September, they will lobby the U.S. Commerce Department to classify Omaha and Lincoln as one "Metropolitan Statistical Area" before the 2010 Census.

The gathering at the Strategic Air and Space Museum halfway between the two towns was billed as a meeting on development on the 30-mile, Interstate 80 corridor from Gretna at the western edge of the Omaha metro area to Waverly on the eastern entrance to Lincoln.
The four communities along the route - Gretna, Ashland, Greenwood and Waverly - have experienced a combined 50 percent population increase from 1990 to 2004, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The recent development along that stretch of the Interstate has been counterproductive, said State Sen. Pam Brown of Omaha.

"We've gotten the worst of all worlds," Brown said, "a four-state salvage yard."

The Cass County Board recently approved the placement of a Copart Inc. auto salvage yard on the north side of I-80 at the Greenwood exit.

The new Tractor Supply distribution center, which now dominates the eastern approach to the Waverly exchange, and the failure to provide incentives for a tourist-stopping Cabela's in Sarpy County also drew complaints.

But the focus quickly turned to combining Omaha and Lincoln, skipping over the towns and land in between.

"We need to sell ourselves as one community," said Wendy Birdsall, interim president of the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce.

Lincoln - not Omaha - would benefit most from the combination, said David Brown, president of the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce.

Both cities are frequently scratched off the list for major corporate location decisions and high-end retail development because neither is in a metro area of more than a million, Brown said. Omaha can advertise that it has 1.2 million people within a 50-mile radius but it does not show up on the official lists of metro areas with 1 million or more population, he said.
Kevin Keller of Lincoln said resistance is waning to tying together the very different and distinctive communities.

Many businesses now have locations in both metro areas, said Keller, an executive with the Lincoln-based Union Bank, which opened it first full-service branch in Omaha this March.

"We have a vested interest in a strong Lincoln-Omaha," Keller said.

That drew a quick correction from those who bill it "Omaha-Lincoln."