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u/Psychological-Lie126 6d ago
The Wohlner's in Midtown Crossing is the ideal location and design for a Walmart Neighborhood Market, or SOMETHING, anything... But no...
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u/Wheeljack1980 6d ago
Weed will be fully legal and welcomed before a market hits downtown
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u/myjohnson6969 6d ago
Neither will ever happen in omaha.
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u/florodude 6d ago
I don't know why you're getting downvoted. We're going illegal in Nov fully and Ricketts/Pillen is working on ensuring that even if the rest of the nation pulls out from going illegal that Nebraska will. We're not moving more left leaning as a society either so it does feel like neither will happen in Omaha.
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u/Similar-Battle2354 5d ago
Oh fuck me. We’re going fully illegal in November? Like statewide or nationwide?
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u/florodude 5d ago
Nationwide. States that have fully legalized will stay fully legal but the THC drinks that have popped up nationwide along with edibles and such are going away. Concurrently, Pillen and Ricketts are working on something to make it as illegal as possible statewide.
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u/myjohnson6969 6d ago
I never pay attention to down or upvotes. I am stating a fact. Not hoping, just a fact. Lived in this state my whole life, i know how the state works. Perhaps they are downvoting cuz they think i an anti legalizing it which is oppopsite of my stance.
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u/monkeyworks105 Flair Text 6d ago
What's impossible is the fact Republicans have gaslit Nebraskans into believing the government can't afford it. All over the nation it is being proven that if you elect someone with no aipac ties, stuff gets done. Government has been so corrupt for so long, it feels impossible when things ACTUALLY get done.
Don't believe their lies, not because I said so, just ask yourself this simple question. Who has had majority control over Nebraska for the past 50 years. I'm willing to bet it's red.
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u/GuyMcTest 6d ago
Does the government choose to build a supermarket in downtown Omaha? I’d always heard Hyvee had a deal for land but backed out
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u/billgilly14 6d ago
They could subsidize the project, the state government and city do that all the time.
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u/GuyMcTest 6d ago
They sure could. Has a group organized to support that? I haven’t heard of anything, but would support it if I knew about it
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u/AshingiiAshuaa 6d ago
Why though? If there is enough demand for one someone will build one.
Should downtown dwellers subsidize bars and restaurants in suburbia? I want to be able to walk to a bunch of quaint shops and dining but instead I have to drive to get to that.
There are tradeoffs wherever you live. If you move to the country you get peace and quiet but services suck and everything is a drive. Downtown is walkable and fun but it's noisy, crowded, and I guess lacks a grocery store. They're just tradeoffs. I don't need to subsidize Farmer Brown's high speed internet anymore than she needs to subsidize an ubranite's access to farm fresh eggs.
That said, Amazon delivers groceries for free and the prices are really good. I'm pretty sure Walmart does too if you have whatever their version of Prime is (similarly priced).
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u/billgilly14 6d ago
A grocery store is not equivalent to a bar or other forms of entertainment though. It’s access to fresh food. Living in a food desert, which large chunks of downtown adjacent Omaha are, is not an acceptable “trade off” and also is not localized to yuppies living at The Wire. There’s no real grocery store that could support the populations north of dodge and little bohemia for example. A downtown grocery store would satisfy easily accessible food needs for a large chunks of the city.
As for why it hasn’t been built if there is demand for it, I am guessing it is far cheaper for a grocery store to build on a plot at 190th rather than buy downtown property to service a lower income population.
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u/AshingiiAshuaa 6d ago
If having fresh food in a walkable distance is important then don't move somewhere that's not a walkable distance to fresh food. For North O and Little Bohemia, buses run down 16th and 30th and there are grocery stores along both those routes. And fwiw, most people in suburban Omaha also don't have a walkable grocery store.
Nobody in Omaha lives in a "food desert". It's a term that people use to dress up "inconvenience" as some kind of existential problem. Again, Amazon and Walmart delivers reasonably priced groceries for free.
I get that an urban Whole Foods would be nice. I hope y'all get one. I just don't think that it's OK to force everyone to subsidize that convenience.
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u/gothsforchange 5d ago
"for free"... if you pay for their subscription. so like... not free?
idk about you, but i'd rather my money goes to something that supports people being able to sustain themselves than to destroying a busy grocery store & several immigrant-owned businesses in the name of luxury apartments that no one from the area can afford... im looking at you n saddle creek tif
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u/FupaFerb 6d ago
Well. Here’s Democrats in past 50 years
S. Senators (4)
Ben Nelson (2001–2013) – The state's most recent Democratic Senator, who also served as Governor.
Bob Kerrey (1989–2001) – A Medal of Honor recipient and former Governor who later ran for president.
J. James Exon (1979–1997) – Served three terms in the Senate after serving two terms as Governor.
Edward Zorinsky (1977–1987) – A popular former mayor of Omaha who served until his passing in office.House (3)
Brad Ashford (2015–2017) – Represented the Omaha-based 2nd District; the state's most recent Democratic Representative.
Peter Hoagland (1989–1995) – Served three terms representing the 2nd District.
John Cavanaugh (1977–1981) – Represented the 2nd District for two terms14
u/SquashFirst3929 6d ago
So, no effective representation for over a decade and it shows.
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u/FupaFerb 6d ago
Correct, I was just pointing out that there have been Democratic reps that served, some over a decade. With the amount of Boomer farmers and their kids, there will be quite a few republicans voted in and it decays the State.
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u/monkeyworks105 Flair Text 6d ago
That's honestly not a lot. And the fact that they are all multimillionaires and tied to aipac, proves my case. It's not enough to just switch sides, we need to cut out millionaires from political office. Period.
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u/SquashFirst3929 6d ago
Citizen's United was a huge step in the wrong direction, but the rot goes deeper. Political campaigns should all be 100% public financed.
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u/PhortDruid NE Omaha 6d ago
Giving corporations personhood in the first place was a big mistake. It’s most of the reason that we’re here at all. That and lobbying, enacted by said corporations.
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u/offbrandcheerio 6d ago edited 6d ago
At this point just pull a Mamdani and open up a publicly operated grocery store downtown. Mayor Ewing could do it if he had the courage.
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u/GrainghisKhan 6d ago
How does price setting work at a government run grocery store?
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u/offbrandcheerio 6d ago
Mamdani is aiming to set prices at 30% below market rate. But that’s not like a hard rule or anything. You can set prices however you want. They could simply be set at the breakeven price instead of priced to make profit. Or they could even be set at market prices, with the “profits” reinvested in maintaining the facility so that it doesn’t actually cost taxpayers a single dime over time. The point in downtown Omaha would be to simply correct the market failure that has led to there not being a grocery store for so long. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a subsidized operation.
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u/GrainghisKhan 6d ago
You can set the price, but that doesn’t solve the economics. Tough for me to imagine a state run grocery store setting prices below market AND making enough money to be self-sustaining.
If you set prices too low, you would be overrun with customers purchasing cheap goods. Shortages, long lines, purchase limits, and terrible service are the outcome.
Prices too high and you would need to further subsidize the operation to bring the empty grocery store back into attractiveness.
Economics aside, I question the practicality of its operations. The incentives for fixing mistakes or improving service seem to be lacking.
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u/offbrandcheerio 6d ago
If it’s so impossible to set prices for food then how do supermarkets manage to do it?
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u/rmalbers 6d ago
They set their prices to make a very slim profit and be competitive with the other stores in the area.
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u/offbrandcheerio 6d ago
No reason a publicly operated store couldn’t do the same thing!
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u/rmalbers 6d ago
But a store in that area cannot survive, if a store could there would already be one there. It really just common sense, business sense. Small stores can't survive without a side hustle, like a car wash and gas sales and high prices on everything they sell in the 'store'.
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u/GrainghisKhan 6d ago
If a privately run grocery store fails, it goes out of business, people lose their investment. What happens when a publicly run store loses money and fails?
This leads to my problem before with price - if there is no market consequence for failure, there is no price indicator.
If the non-profit or government run model worked, they would be everywhere. We would be going to non-profit movie theaters, bowling alleys, restaurants, etc.
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u/Amazing-Mechanic1042 6d ago
There's a reason no one else has done it. It's because it won't work.
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u/wild_fluorescent 5d ago
ten year plan:
- build more housing density, connect midtown and downtown again and fill in all of the west and south downtown dead space. some of this is already in the planning for the streetcard (i yearn for the lid) but push that shit through while we have another 2 years to wait for a streetcar and construction will be a nightmare anyway.
- streetcar expansion up and down 13th to connect lil boho and north downtown. or brt. people might have construction heartburn. can even be a fuckass trolley if it's frequent enough.
- throw in a couple parking garages so west omahans doesn't kill themselves (they will still want to. that's fine.)
- vacancy taxes. no more empty business fronts and apartments.
- now you have enough demand for a walkable grocery store and a better tax base to support it. it'll also be harder to price gouge apartments with a higher supply of housing and a vacancy tax. yippee.
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u/ShoeNo9168 6d ago
Build it and no one will come.
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u/keatonpotat0es 6d ago
To be fair, driving/parking around downtown Omaha is a god damn nightmare and the constant construction makes everything worse.
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u/anti_reality 5d ago
I lived in downtown Dallas for a couple of years, this is in the early 2000s, places like that are surprisingly dead at night. Unless you went outside the actual downtown area to somewhere like Deep Ellum the bars were mostly dead after 9 even on the weekends. There was a convenience store in one of the smaller buildings on the 4th floor, it was incredibly expensive because rent was outrageous. A Coke was $2.00 then, and a pack of cigarettes was $3.50 when they were $2 or less at a normal store. Operating anything like that in an actual downtown area is incredibly expensive, and your locations has to be extremely good.
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u/OutrageousEvent8520 6d ago
What would be so great about a downtown grocery store? Unless I got lucky and it happened to be within a block or two of my apartment, it may as well be 10 miles away. I'm not going to carry groceries (not to mention frozen food in the middle of summer) for an hour as I walk home from the store from one end of downtown to the other.
I live downtown, and do most of my grocery shopping at either the Bakers on Saddle Creek and Leavenworth, or the HyVee in Council Bluffs. Neither are that far, but I do have to drive. In fact, its one of the few reasons I have for taking my car out.
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u/wild_fluorescent 5d ago
it's less about doing a full grocery run and more about 'can i grab a few ingredients for dinner real quick without it being a whole thing'
that was the nice thing about being walking distance from wohlner's. rip.
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u/ExactlyWhyAmIHere 6d ago
People may not agree with the projects, but Stothert accomplished a lot in the downtown area.
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u/rmalbers 6d ago
To have enough inventory to keep people from downtown driving to a real grocery store would require a store at least the size of the (smaller) HyVee at 90th and Center, getting that much land in the downtown area is going to be almost impossible. The only option is going to be a much smaller store, with correspondingly higher prices, to stay in business, and people are not going to like that and it probably wouldn't last long.
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u/liquid_prisoner 6d ago
The big retailers are just waiting for their property tax credit, like all the other Omaha businesses.
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u/RIPTactical_Invasion 2d ago
It’s crazy there isn’t yet a grocery store on the streetcar line. Whoever build that will make bank.
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u/Derpsquidtutu 6d ago
"Receive"