Omaha Forums :: View topic - New Downtown HQ (http://eomahaforums.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=14860)

I guess we are not the only city trying to figure out a Mystery Tower...

It looks like they have theirs figured out.

Well, they think Pacific Life is going to move 3,000 workers downtown and build a new tower, but they are not sure. Kinda sounds like us when we first started our discussions for a Mystery Tower. Seems interesting though viewing another city's perspective on prospects of a new tower. Possibly UrbanNebraska can help shed some light on this?

The Pacific Life headquarters rumor has been around since '06. They have 285 employed downtown now and back in the day prerecession they were going to move everything here and build a 700 footer. This new one crept up again and I think all the tower talk is wishful thinking without much substance. If Pac Life did move a substantial number of jobs here they would have trouble in keeping them consolidated in one building though.

We are also right at 10% vacancy rate downtown with 3 local(two Omaha and one Lincoln) moving into space downtown and a ton of office to residential happening. It is the collection of those things that is driving the rumors or probably better put hope for a new tower.

Your mayor says it's happening? Doesn't he have credibility?

Thats awesome! Good for them. I really like Omaha.

Your mayor says it's happening? Doesn't he have credibility?

She has been in office since May and is our first Republican mayor in 12 years so there has been quite a bit of ruffling feathers. The entire planing department is getting replaced, she has put a gag order on all city employees when it comes to the media and fire department union is suing the city because she is firing a number of firefighters and sidelining a truck to cut their budget by 7 million, she has also basically said there will be a new fire chief soon. Just some context.

So her comment about 99% chance happened at a function in North Omaha. North O is the poorest most crime ridden area of the city, a resident got up and asked her what she was doing to fix the area it was only after that that she dropped that comment. Mayor Stothert then went on to compare her experience growing up in a blue collar suburb of STL to North Omaha, the entire exchange came off as defensive and not very "Mayoral."

There might be something in the works as there have been a couple rumblings, but the PAC Life rumor is just a rumor at this point and a local real estate developer has said someone is looking for 100K sq ft in new build office space downtown. 100K wouldn't be a tower on it's own, but there is hope they could anchor some spec space maybe.

Anyways, after the Wallstreet Tower debacle a lot of us Omahans are really jaded when it comes to skyscrapers. It would be really cool to see something pop up as we only have 3 buildings over 300 ft downtown, but we are still a metro of 900K and all of our major companies have really stable office situations.

Basically we need this Pac Life rumor to come through or a developer needs to take a chance at a spec office tower downtown, which hasn't happened since 1990. Fingers crossed, but not holding my breath.