Omaha loses historic Butternut building

[staubio]

One of Omaha's promising downtown developments went up in smoke last night. The Butternut Coffee building was in the process of being converted into "The 9ines" lofts, which were supposed to be some of the most upscale downtown, were set to open in March. This building already had some street level retail and provided some activity to link the core of the Old Market with the Durham Western Heritage Mueseum, which is in Omaha's train station.

This is sad news for urban core advocates everywhere. Omaha has some promising things happening for their downtown. I hate to see something like this happen. On scale with Kansas City, this would be like losing one of our major housing developments downtown. I might jump from the charred remains of 909 Walnut if it burned down.

Sympathies to Omaha indeed.

The overnight fire that destroyed an upscale apartment project south of the Old Market has seriously set back Omaha's emerging downtown, city officials and developers said Thursday.

"This fire reverberates through everything we have created downtown," said City Planning Director Bob Peters.

"This was one of our last important historic properties to be developed."

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_np=0&u ... sid=968280

[KCPowercat]

yeah I saw that...sucks for those guys and especially the developer.

[QueSi2Opie]

Makes me ill to see things like this happen to our neighboring cities. Maybe the city can build a new high-rise apartment with street-level retail in it's place.