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Omaha Land: Making Neighborhoods Stronger
Omaha Land: Making Neighborhoods Stronger
Story by Leo Adam Biga
Photography by Midland Pictures & Omaha Land bank
Published in the January-February 2019 issue of Omaha Magazine)(http://omahamagazine.com/
Cities around the United States experience problems with blighted neighborhoods, in which certain houses and lots go from assets to deficits. Such sites often become magnets for vandals and vagrants.
Locally, some of these problems found an answer with the creation of the Omaha Municipal Land Bank in 2014. The nonprofit is funded in part by donations.
“The Land Bank was created for the City of Omaha by the Nebraska Legislature to be a catalyst for community development,” says OMLB Executive Director Marty Barnhart. “Our role is to address these distressed properties. Folks can donate properties to the Land Bank they no longer want to care for, or are no longer able to take care of.”
OMLB matches properties with buyers who demonstrate the vision and means to redevelop sites. Buyers get nine months to renovate a home, or two years to build on a vacant lot. The hope is that revitalization encourages neighbors to improve their own places.
The first step is to acquire the properties, and that project takes time and money, especially when it comes to clearing a title on properties whose owners can’t be reached. As a subdivision of local government, OMLB has the power to cancel taxes and municipal liens levied against properties. It can bypass red tape to make purchasing and redevelopment go much quicker. It can also sell properties at lower prices, thus reducing the burden on purchasers to establish equity, borrow money, or make improvements.
“If you think about the city and the county, they could do the kind of things we do, but it would take ordinances, public meetings, and a lot of things to put through their boards,” Barnhart says. “It would take a whole lot longer than the Land Bank with our statuary authority.”
OMLB began selling property in early 2017. The available inventory is listed on its website. The 50-plus properties sold through last October went to “a variety of different individuals and partners,” Barnhart says. “We’ve seen single-family houses transformed and reoccupied.”
He acknowledges the sample size is too small yet to show ripple effects in neighborhoods. But there’s no doubt a long-abandoned house at 2002 Country Club Ave. that was an unsafe eyesore got saved from the rubble heap, redone, and reoccupied.
Country Club property-Before
“It was one of the first big success stories of the Land Bank,” says Omaha City Councilman Pete Festersen, who serves District 1 where the house is located. “That had been a problem for that street for 20 years. We couldn’t find the owner. It was condemned. There were holes in the roof. Animals were in there. It never quite made the list, though, to be demolished. Eventually we did get it onto the list, not wanting to demolish it if we didn’t have to because it was otherwise a very nice property. But it was headed towards demolition until the Land Bank stepped in and finally got a response from the property owner, who was very grateful to sell.
“The Land Bank listed it for a fair, reasonable price and a young couple was able to buy it and rehab it. It’s in great shape today.”
Other transformations are in progress.
An OMLB presentation at their church convinced Carol Windrum and Tim Fickenscher to take on a single-family house redevelopment at 3155 Meredith Ave. Motivated to reverse blight, they used the Land Bank as a social entrepreneurship tool. They purchased the century-old property in January 2018 for $12,500. OMLB shepherded them through the makeover process—the couple’s first time renovating. That included helping find a contractor, who, at the couple’s behest, used as many recycled and reclaimed materials as possible.
The house listed for $77,500 last fall, and Family Housing Advisory Services and mortgage lender Omaha 100 are helping identify prospective low-income candidates to get it sold.
In the Park Avenue area, Brenda and Kurt Robinson seized a chance to prevent another “hole” in the neighborhood when, courtesy of OMLB, they rescued a two-story, 130-year-old house at 2911 Woolworth Ave. for $25,000.
If not for their action, this house might have faced the same fate as others torn down in the area.
“It’s a great structure—super sound. There’s very little we had to do except extra bracing here and there. It’s got a lot of cool exterior features—corbels and fascia we’re working hard to keep. Previous owners maintained all the original woodwork, including cased openings. They were pretty sensitive to the original architecture—thank goodness,” says Brenda, who likes having OMLB as a partner.
“The Land Bank has a mission I can get behind, keeping sturdy old houses alive as really cool places of history as well as homes for the future,” she says.
For greater impact, OMLB targets areas by assembling multiple properties and lots for development. That’s what the organization is doing in the area around 40th and Hamilton streets.
This once-picturesque neighborhood struggled with crime, litter, debris, high turnover, and ill-kept rentals. Since a slumlord relinquished problem properties there and new businesses went in, things have stabilized, says Walnut Hill Neighborhood Association President Murray Hayes. But vacant lots are still an issue.
Walnut Hill is also a focal point due to the Walnut Hill Reservoir, a 16-acre parcel owned by Metropolitan Utilities District. The Land Bank is asking MUD to donate the inactive site for redevelopment. MUD’s weighing what to do.
Omaha City Councilman Ben Gray (District 2), who serves on the Land Bank’s board, says OMLB is ideally suited to be a player in the reservoir’s remaking because the nonprofit’s rules prevent a developer from letting it sit idle.
Barnhart feels OMLB could give a developer a deal that doesn’t require tax increment financing. By assembling and holding properties for developers with the right plans, he says, OMLB protects against speculators.
Gray adds that OMLB is well-poised to address Omaha’s affordable housing shortage in areas of need like this.
“We know we can get nonprofits to do affordable housing, but we’re trying to assemble enough property to entice private developers,” he says. “We’re working on creating solutions to help meet the financing burden developers might face trying to do affordable housing. If we leave it with nonprofits, we’re only going to get so many houses. If we can include the private development community, it increases our ability to get that done at scale.”
Festersen says a proposed city ordinance would create a new relationship whereby the city law department will foreclose on those liens. That will allow the Land Bank to get it back into productive reuse, and on the tax rolls, by purchasing the property. That, and the measures the Land Bank have already taken, are the reasons Gray says, “I think you’re going to see some major developments through the Land Bank in the next two to three years.”
Visit omahalandbank.org for more information.
This article was printed in the January/February 2019 edition of Omaha Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe._
Woolworth Ave. property
Life Itself XVI: Social justice, civil rights, human services, human rights, community development stories
Life Itself XVI:
Social justice, civil rights, human services, human rights, community development stories
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![[© Ellen Lake]](https://i0.wp.com/www.crmvet.org/crmpics/64fs_gulfport1.jpg)
Photo caption:
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Abe Sass: A mensch for all seasons
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/05/02/abe-sass-a-mensch-for-all-seasons
Shirley Goldstein: Cream of the Crop – one woman’s remarkable journey in the Free Soviet Jewry movement
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/09/05/shirley-goldstei…t-jewry-movement/
Flanagan-Monsky example of social justice and interfaith harmony still shows the way seven decades later
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/05/31/flanagan-monsky-…y-60-years-later/
A Contrary Path to Social Justice: The De Porres Club and the fight for equality in Omaha
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/05/01/a-contrary-path-…quality-in-omaha/
Hey, you, get off of my cloud! Doug Paterson is acolyte of Theatre of the Oppressed founder Augusto Boal and advocate of art as social action
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/06/03/hey-you-get-off-…as-social-action/
Doing time on death row: Creighton University theater gives life to “Dead Man Walking”
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/01/10/doing-time-on-de…dead-man-walking/
“Walking Behind to Freedom” – A musical theater examination of race
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/06/21/walking-behind-t…mination-of-race/
Bertha’s Battle: Bertha Calloway, the Grand Lady of Lake Street, struggles to keep the Great Plains Black History Museum afloat
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/05/11/berthas-battle
Leonard Thiessen social justice triptych deserves wider audience
https://leoadambiga.com/2017/01/21/leonard-thiessen…s-wider-audience/
North Omaha rupture at center of PlayFest drama
North Omaha rupture at center of PlayFest drama
©by Leo Adam Biga
Appearing in the May 2018 issue of The Reader (www.thereader.com)
In her original one-act More Than Neighbors, playwright Denise Chapman examines a four-decades old rupture to Omaha’s African-American community still felt today.
North Freeway construction gouged Omaha’s Near North Side in the 1970s-1980s. Residents got displaced,homes and businesses razed, tight-knit neighborhoods separated. The concrete swath further depopulated and drained the life of a district already reeling from riots and the loss of meatpacking-railroading jobs. The disruptive freeway has remained both a tangible and figurative barrier to community continuity ever since.
Chapman’s socially-tinged piece about the changed nature of community makes its world premiere Thursday, May 31 at 7:30 p.m. as part of the Great Plains Theatre Conference’s PlayFest.
The site of the performance, The Venue at The Highlander, 2112 North 30th Street, carries symbolic weight. The organization behind the purpose-built Highlander Village is 75 North. The nonprofit is named for U.S. Highway 75, whose North Freeway portion severed the area. The nonprofit’s mixed-use development overlooks it and is meant to restore the sense of community lost when the freeway went in.
The North Freeway and other Urban Renewal projects forced upon American inner cities only further isolated already marginalized communities.
“Historically, in city after city, you see the trend of civil unrest, red lining, white flight, ghettoizing of areas and freeway projects cutting right through the heart of these communities,” Chapman said.
Such transportation projects, she said, rammed through “disenfranchised neighborhoods lacking the political power and dollars” to halt or reroute roads in the face of federal-state power land grabs that effectively said, “We’re just going to move you out of the way.”
By designating the target areas “blighted” and promoting public good and economic development, eminent domain was used to clear the way.
“You had to get out,” said Chapman, adding, “I talked to some people who weren’t given adequate time to pack all their belongings. They had to leave behind a lot of things.” In at least one case, she was told an excavation crew ripped out an interior staircase of a home still occupied to force removal-compliance.
With each succeeding hit taken by North O, things were never the same again
“There was a shift of how we understand community as each of those things happened,” she said. “With the North Freeway, there was a physical separation. What happens when someone literally tears down your house and puts a freeway in the middle of a neighborhood and people who once had a physical connection no longer do? What does that do to the definition of community? It feels like it tears it apart.
“That’s really what the play explores.”
Dramatizing this where it all went down only adds to the intense feelings around it.
“As I learned about what 75 North was doing at the Highlander it just made perfect sense to do the play there. To share a story in a place working to revitalize and redefine community is really special. It’s the only way this work really works.”
Neighbors features an Omaha cast of veterans and newcomers directed by Chicagoan Carla Stillwell.
The African-American diaspora drama resonates with Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and August Wilson’s Jitney with its themes of family and community assailed by outside forces but resiliently holding on.
Three generations of family are at the heart of Chapman’s play, whose characters’ experiences are informed by stories she heard from individuals personally impacted by the freeway’s violent imposition.
Faithful Miss Essie keeps family and community together with love and food. Her bitter middle-class daughter Thelma, who left The Hood, now opposes her own daughter Alexandra, who’s eager to assert her blackness, moving there. David, raised by Essie as “claimed family,” and his buddy Teddy are conflicted about toiling on the freeway. David’s aspirational wife, Mae, is expecting.
Through it all – love, loss, hope, opportunity, despair, dislocation and reunion – family and home endure.
“I think it really goes back to black people in America coming out of slavery, which should have destroyed them, but it didn’t,” Chapman said. “Through our taking care of each other and understanding of community and coming together we continue to survive. We just keep on living. There are ups and downs in our community but at the end of the day we keep redefining communityhopefully in positive ways.”
“What makes Denise’s story so warm and beautiful is that it does end with hope,” director Carla Stillwell said.
Past and present commingle in the nonlinear narrative.
“One of the brilliant things about her piece is that memory works in the play in the way it works in life by triggering emotions. To get the audience to experience those feelings with the characters is my goal.”
Feelings run deep at PlayFest’s Neighborhood Tapestries series, which alternates productions about North and South Omaha.
“The response from the audience is unlike any response you see at just kind of a standard theater production,” GPTC producing artistic director Kevin Lawler said, “because people are seeing their lives or their community’s lives up on stage. It’s very powerful and I don’t expect anything different this time.”
Neighbors is Chapman’s latest North O work after 2016’s Northside Carnation about the late community matriarch, Omaha Star publisher Mildred Brown. That earlier play is set in the hours before the 1969 riot that undid North 24th Street. Just as Northside found a home close to Brown and her community at the Elk’s Lodge, Neighbors unfolds where bittersweet events are still fresh in people’s minds.
“The placement of the performance at the Highlander becomes so important,” said Chapman, “because it helps to strengthen that message that we as a community are more and greater than the sum of the travesties and the tragedies.
“Within the middle of all the chaos there are still flowers growing and a whole new community blossoming right there on 30th street in a place that used to not be a great place – partly because they put a freeway in the middle of it.”
Chapman sees clear resonance between what the characters in her play do and what 75 North is doing “to develop the concept of community holistically.”
“It’s housing, food, education and work opportunities and community spaces for people to come together block by block. It’s really exciting to be a part of that.”
ChapMan is sure that Neighbors will evoke memories the same way Northside did.
“For some folks it was like coming home and sharing their stories.”
Additional PlayFest shows feature a full-stage production of previous GPTC Playlab favorite In the City in the City in the City by guest playwright Matthew Capodicasa and a “homage collage” to the work of this year’s honored playwright, Sarah Ruhl, a MacArthur Fellowship recipient. Two of Ruhl’s plays have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.
Capodicasa uses a couple’s visit to the mythical city-state of Mastavia as the prism for exploring what we take from a place.
“It’s about how when you’re traveling, you inevitably experience the place through the lens of the people you’re with and how that place is actually this other version of itself – one altered by your presence or curated for your tourist experience,” he said.
In the City gets its world premiere at the Blue Barn Theatre on Tuesday, May 29 at 7:30 p.m. Producing artistic director Susan Clement-Toberer said the piece is “a perfect engine” for the theater’s season-long theme of “connect” because of its own exploration of human connections.” She also appreciates theopen-ended nature of the script. “It’s evocative and compelling without being overly prescriptive. The play can be done in as many ways as there are cities and we are thrilled to bring it to life for the first time.”
You Want to Love Strangers: An Evening in Letters, Lullabies, Essays and Clear Soup celebrates what its director Amy Lane calls Ruhl’s “poetic, magical, lush” playwriting. “Her plays are often like stepping into a fairytale where the unexpected can and does happen. Her work is filled with theatre magic, a childlike sense of wonder, playfulness, mystery. We’ve put together a short collage that includes monologues, scenes and songs from some of her best known works.”
The Ruhl tribute will be staged at the 40th Street Theatre on Friday, June 1 at 7:30 p.m.
All PlayFest performances are free. For details and other festival info, visit http://www.gptcplays.com.
Park Avenue Revitalization and Gentrification: InCommon Focuses on Urban Neighborhood
Park Avenue Revitalization & Gentrification: InCommon Focuses on Urban Neighborhood
Appears in March-April 2018 issue of Omaha Magazine (http://omahamagazine.com)
©Story by Leo Adam Biga
©Photos by Bill Sitzmann
As revitalization has come to diverse, densely-packed, Park Avenue, a tale of two neighborhoods has emerged. The north end, near 30th and Leavenworth and Midtown, finds a millennial haven of developer-renovated historic properties and shiny new projects on once vacant lots.. The south end, bordering Hanscom Park, is plagued by remnants of drug activity and prostitution. In place of chic urban digs are public housing towers. Amid this transience, reinvestment lags.
Meanwhile, nonprofit InCommon Community Development bridges unchecked development and vulnerable immigrant and refugee populations. Its proactive, grassroots approach to alleviate poverty invests in residents. As a gentrification buffer, InCommon’s purchased two apartment buildings with below market rents to maintain affordable housing options to preserve a mixed-income neighborhood.
“It’s crucial to really involve people in their own work of transformation,” executive director Christian Gray says. “We have a very specific assets-based community development process for doing that. It’s a methodology or mindset that says, we’re not going to do for others, and residents themselves are the experts.
“It’s slower, patient but sustainable work because then you have people with buy-in and trust collaborating together for that change. The iron rule is never do for others what they can do for themselves. We made a commitment when we moved in the neighborhood to set the right first impression. We said, ‘We’re not here to save you or to give away stuff for free. We’re here to listen – to get to know you. We want to hear your ideas about change and be the facilitators of that.’ I think that’s made the difference.”
The faith-based organization “starts with the idea people want to be able to provide for themselves and their families,” he says. “We help them build their own capacity and then start building relationships. Then comes leadership development. As we get to know people, we identify their talents-gifts. We talk about how they can apply those into developing and strengthening the neighborhood. The ultimate goal is neighborhood transformation. We want them to see themselves as the neighborhood change agents.”
A hub for InCommon’s work is the Park Avenue Commons community center opened in 2013. It hosts GED, ESL, literacy, citizenship, job readiness and financial education classes, first-time home-buying workshops, community health programs and zumba.
“If someone walks out of there with their GED, better English proficiency or better able to provide for their family, we’re pleased,” Gray says.
The center’s also where InCommon hosts neighborhood meetings and an after-school drop-in space, conducts listening sessions, identifies neighborhood concerns and interests and activates residents’ civic engagement.
“One of our shining examples is Arturo Mejia. He’s super passionate about the neighborhood. He started getting involved with the organization and eventually became a staff member. He leads our ESL and GED programming. He also does community organizing.”
Mejia, a Mexican immigrant, says what he’s found with InCommon mirrors other residents’ experiences.
“InCommon’s invested in me in many ways,” he says. “It’s helped me to use my full potential in my work for the Latino community of this neighborhood. InCommon has found the goodness this neighborhood has. When shown the assets, instead of the negatives, residents find encouragement and empowerment enough to keep reaching their goals.”
The community center resulted from feedback gathered from residents like Mejla. The zumba class was initiated by a woman living there.
“Adults come through the workforce channel. Kids come through the after-school channel,” Gray says.
At an InCommon community visioning process last fall, a group of young men shared the need for a new neighborhood soccer field and with InCommon’s guidance they’re working with the city on getting one. InCommon’s gala last fall recognized area superheroes like them and Mejia.
Besides the center, InCommon’s imprints include a pocket park, a community garden and artist Watie White’s mural of neighborhood leaders.
The first wave of redevelopment there, Gray says, “saw “empty buildings activated and populated and it actually brought an infusion of new people, energy and resources – the positive elements of gentrification.”
“It’s certainly cleaned up – but a lot of the problems remain here – they’re just beneath the surface now.”
As more development occurs, the concern is the people InCommon serves “will be displaced.” That’s where the low income housing come in. The Bristol, fully occupied and awaiting renovation, features 64 studio apartments. The Georgia Row, currently closed and undergoing repairs, will feature 10 or 11 multi-family units.
InCommon is investing $10 million in refurbishmentd. Local and state historic tax credits and tax increment financing monies, plus expected low income housing tax credits, are making it possible.
“As a landlord we’re not only able to preserve affordable housing. but we can integrate individual capacity building services directly on-site with residents,” Gray says.
He looks to solidify InCommon’s work in this and other “opportunity neighborhoods” poised for redevelopment.
“Right now, redevelopment is like a tidal wave people get drowned in. We are interested in getting people to withstand and actually surf that wave and leverage it. People have to have some wherewithal to be able to make their own decisions and not be co-opted into other people’s plans. We’ve started looking at how do we get residents more involved in directing how they want their neighborhoods to grow, so none of this happens in ad hoc form. In this more thoughtful approach to creating neighborhoods, there’d be a vision for what residents want Park Avenue or Walnut Hill to look like.
“The goal isn’t to come up with a plan for them, it’s to facilitate the process so neighbors and stakeholders come up with the plan together.”
Visit incommoncd.org.
A series commemorating Black History Month – North Omaha stories Part II
https://leoadambiga.com/2016/11/16/interfaith-journ…rfaith-walk-work/
Good Shepherds of North Omaha: Ministers and Churches Making a …
https://leoadambiga.com/…/the-shepherds-of-north–omaha–ministers-and- churches-making-a-difference-in-area-of-great-need/
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/08/30/two-blended-hous…houses-unidvided
https://leoadambiga.com/2016/11/14/small-but-mighty…idst-differences
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/09/16/everyones-welcom…g-bread-together/
https://leoadambiga.com/2014/02/02/upon-this-rock-h…trinity-lutheran/
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/05/31/gimme-shelter-sa…en-for-searchers
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/01/09/an-open-invitati…-catholic-church
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/07/15/everything-old-i…-church-in-omaha/
https://leoadambiga.com/2015/03/10/the-sweet-sounds…ts-freedom-choir/
Sacred Heart Freedom Choir | Leo Adam Biga’s My Inside Stories
https://leoadambiga.com/tag/sacred-heart-freedom-choir/
Salem’s Voices of Victory Gospel Choir Gets Justified with the Lord …
https://leoadambiga.com/…/salems-voices-of-victory-gospel-choir-gets- justified-with-the-lord/
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/07/11/the-myers-legacy…ng-and-community/
A Homecoming Like No Other – The Reader
http://thereader.com/news/a-homecoming-like-no-other/
Native Omaha Days: A Black is Beautiful Celebration, Now, and All …
https://leoadambiga.com/…/native–omaha–days-a-black-is-beautiful- celebration-now-and-all-the-days-gone-by/
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/06/11/back-in-the-day-…party-all-in-one
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/06/05/how-one-family-d…-during-the-days/
Bryant-Fisher | Omaha Magazine
http://omahamagazine.com/articles/tag/bryant-fisher/.
A Family Thing – The Reader | Omaha, Nebraska
http://thereader.com/news/a_family_thing/.
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/06/11/big-mama’s-keeps…ve-ins-and-dives/
Big Mama, Bigger Heart | Omaha Magazine
http://omahamagazine.com/articles/big-mama-bigger-heart/
Entrepreneur and craftsman John Hargiss invests in North Omaha …
http://thereader.com/visual-art/entrepreneur_and_craftsman_john_hargiss_invests_in_north_omaha/
https://leoadambiga.com/2016/06/30/creative-to-the-…s-handmade-world/
https://leoadambiga.com/2013/09/27/minne-lusa-house…on-and-community/
https://leoadambiga.com/2013/10/22/a-culinary-horti…ommunity-college/
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/08/28/revival-of-benso…estination-place
A Mentoring We Will Go | Leo Adam Biga’s My Inside Stories
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/06/18/a-mentoring-we-will-go
https://leoadambiga.com/2018/01/08/tech-maven-lasho…past-stereotypes/
https://leoadambiga.com/2017/08/22/omaha-small-busi…rs-entrepreneurs
Omaha Northwest Radial Hwy | Leo Adam Biga’s My Inside Stories
https://leoadambiga.com/tag/omaha-northwest-radial-hwy/
Isabel Wilkerson | Leo Adam Biga’s My Inside Stories
https://leoadambiga.com/tag/isabel-wilkerson/
The Great Migration comes home – The Reader
http://thereader.com/visual-art/the_great_migration_comes_home/.
Goodwin’s Spencer Street Barber Shop – Leo Adam Biga’s My Inside …
Free Radical Ernie Chambers – The Reader
http://www.thereader.com/post/free_radical_ernie_chambers
https://leoadambiga.com/2016/03/15/deadeye-marcus-m…t-shooter-at-100/
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/01/15/north-omaha-cham…s-the-good-fight
North’s Star: Gene Haynes builds legacy as education leader with …
https://leoadambiga.com/…/norths-star-gene-haynes-builds-legacy-as- education-leader-with-omaha-public-schools-and-north-high-school…
Brenda Council: A public servant’s life | Leo Adam Biga’s My Inside …
https://leoadambiga.com/…/brenda-council-a-public-servants-life/
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/04/17/carole-woods-har…ess-and-politics/
Radio One Queen Cathy Hughes Rules By Keeping It Real …
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/04/29/radio-one-queen-cathy-hughes…
Miss Leola Says Goodbye | Leo Adam Biga’s My Inside Stories
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/09/01/miss-leola-says-goodbye/.
https://leoadambiga.com/2011/09/02/leola-keeps-the-…-side-music-shop/
Aisha Okudi’s story of inspiration and transformation …
http://thereader.com/news/aisha_okudis_story_of_inspiration_and_transformation/
Alesia Lester: A Conversation in the Gossip Salon | Leo …
https://leoadambiga.com/2016/03/09/alesia-lester-a-conversation-in…
http://omahamagazine.com/articles/tag/viv-ewing/
https://leoadambiga.com/2015/02/11/sex-talk-comes-w…rri-nared-brooks/
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/08/29/strong-smart-and…-girls-inc-story/
https://leoadambiga.com/2015/10/13/omaha-couple-exp…ica-in-many-ways
Parenting the Second Time Around Holds Challenges and …
https://leoadambiga.com/2012/11/25/parenting-the-second-time…
Pamela Jo Berry brings art fest to North Omaha – The Reader
http://thereader.com/visual-art/pamela_jo_berry_brings_art_fest_to_north_omaha/
https://leoadambiga.com/2010/06/06/its-a-hoops-cult…asketball-league/
Tunette Powell | Omaha Magazine
http://omahamagazine.com/articles/tag/tunette-powell/
Finding Her Voice: Tunette Powell Comes Out of the Dark …
https://leoadambiga.com/2013/01/24/finding-her-voice-tunette..
Shonna Dorsey | Omaha Magazine
http://omahamagazine.com/articles/tag/shonna-dorsey/
Finding Normal: Schalisha Walker’s journey finding normal …
https://leoadambiga.com/2014/07/18/finding-normal-schalisha-walker..
Finding home: David Catalan finds community service niche in adopted hometown of Omaha
Finding home: David Catalan finds community service niche in adopted hometown of Omaha
©by Leo Adam Biga
Soon appearing in El Perico
David Catalan long searched for a place to call home before finding it in Omaha four decades ago.
Born in San Diego, Calif. and raised in Arizona, the former business executive turned consultant has served on many nonprofit boards. It’s hard to imagine this sophisticate who is so adroit in corporate and art circles once labored in the migrant fields with his Mexican immigrant parents. It’s surprising, too, someone so involved in community affairs once lived a rootless life.
“My whole life had been like a gypsy. I was a vagabond because traveling from place to place and never really having a fixed home – until I came to Omaha with Union Pacific in 1980.. I chose to stay even after I left U.P. because I really felt at home here and still do after all those years wandering around.”
Vagabundo, a book of his own free-style verse, describes his coming-of-age.
Catalan, 76, grew up in a Tucson barrio immediately after World War II. His father worked in the copper mines. When Catalan was about 13, his family began making the migrant worker circuit, leaving each spring-summer for Calif, to pick tomatoes, figs, peaches and grapes and then returning home for the fall-winter.
“I didn’t really feel I wanted to get stuck in that kind of a destiny,” he said. “Maybe escape is too rough a word, but I had to get away from that environment if I was going to do anything differently, and so I left and went to live with a sister in the Merced (Calif.) area.”
He finished high school there and received a scholarship to UCLA,
“I was the only one in the family that actually completed high school, let alone college.”
He’d long before fallen in love with books.
“That led me to realize there was more I could accomplish.”
While at UCLA, a U.S. Army recruiter sensed his wanderlust and got him to enlist. He served in Germany and France. He stayed-on two years in Paris, where an American couple introduced him to the arts.
“It was a big awakening for me,” he said.
Back in the U.S., he settled in Salt Lake City, where he was briefly married. Then he joined U.P., which paid for his MBA studies at Pepperdine University. Then U.P. transferred him from Los Angeles to Omaha.
“I never had a sense of knowing my neighbors, having some continuity in terms of schools and experiences, so I felt like I had missed out by not having had that identity with place and community. When I came to Omaha, I loved it, and U.P. really promoted employees getting involved in community service.
“Doing community service, being on nonprofit boards became an identity for myself.”
Upon taking early retirement, he worked at Metropolitan Community College, in the cabinet of Mayor Hal Daub and as executive director of the Omaha Press Club and the Nonprofit Association of the Midlands.
“I threw myself into the nonprofit world.”
He’s served on the Opera Omaha, Omaha Symphony and Nebraska Arts Council boards.
He cofounded SNAP! Productions, a small but mighty theater company originally formed to support the Nebraska AIDS Project.
“Omaha was the first place I saw a couple friends die of AIDS and that was a real revelation for me. That got me working to do some fundraising.”
SNAP! emerged from that work.
“I was the producer for almost every production the first few seasons. The audience base for SNAP! is a very accepting part of the community. It was gratifying. It’s been very successful.”
His interests led him to South Omaha, where he helped found El Museo Latino. More recently, he helped get the South Omaha Museum started. He also served as president of the South Omaha Business Association.
“I got involved with a lot of economic development.”
He wrote and published Rule of Thumb: A Guide to Small Business Marketing.
He’s “very proud” both SNAP! and El Museo Latino, whose vision of Magdalena Garcia he caught, “are still going strong and still serving the community.”
Each time he gets involved, he said, “it isn’t planned – the need arises and I’m there willing to help work to make it happen.”
“Doing all this work helps me feel I am a part of a dynamic community. That’s what really drives me, motivates me and makes me feel very positive.”
He’s involved in a new project that dreams of building a 300-foot tall Nebraska landmark destination to be called “Tower of Courage” at the intersection of 13th and I-80 across from the Henry Doorly Zoo.
“We’re in the process of trying to acquire the land. It’ll be a place for culture-history exhibits all focused on the rich cultural and historical history of Neb. and the region.”
Meanwhile Catalan has his own consulting company helping nonprofit and small business clients with strategic planning and grant-writing.
He’s also active in the Optimist Club.
“I’ve lived a full life. I’ve met so many wonderful people. I can navigate around many communities because of the the work I’ve done and the people I’ve met.”
He’s doing research for what may be his third book: weaving the story of a pioneering Jesuit priest from the same Sonora. Mexico hometown Catalan’s mother was born in and near where his father was from, with the history of area Indian tribes and his own family.
He’s traveling this winter to Sonora – not to escape his roots but to discover more about them.
He’s written about his family in Vagabundo and in poems published in the literary journal, Fine Lines.
“I think I’m creating a David Catalan space of my own I never had growing up.”
A series commemorating Black History Month: North Omaha stories
Mini-Profile
