Resistance in Omaha
Early Interstate opposition in Omaha first formed against Interstate 480 and its southern interchange with Interstate 80 near 30th and Grover Streets. Those routes, cutting through older, working-class neighborhoods along the outskirts of downtown, ultimately displaced thousands of people and destroyed over one thousand housing units. Interstate 80's eastward route from the interchange to the Missouri River placed Omaha's Riverview Park in jeopardy and sparked opposition from city park advocates.
From 1958 to 1962, two oppositional efforts formed against the freeways. The first effort, rooted in a successful “taxpayer revolt” against previous urban renewal proposals, pitted working-class, small-government homeowners against business leaders and labor unions that saw urban expressways as essential to sustaining Omaha's meatpacking and livestock economy. The citizens (the "Taxpayers Plan" committee) who opposed the urban renewal and planning proposals in 1958, popularly known as the "Omaha Plan," later organized against the urban Interstate in 1959 and 1960. These predominantly working-class, white-ethnic individuals from Omaha's older inner-city neighborhoods typically held strong beliefs in limited government and maintained anti-elitist perspectives hostile toward city officials and downtown business interests. The fight over the Omaha Plan not only demonstrated a shift in the bases of political power between Omaha neighborhoods, but helps explain the conservative and sometimes reactionary nature surrounding Omaha's early Interstate opposition in 1959.
Around the same time opposition formed from working-class individuals, a simultaneous effort pushed by Omaha philanthropists and civic clubs attempted to prevent freeways from bulldozing through city parks. Protection of the parks, however, would come at the expense of destroying additional homes. The park fight revealed competing views of how people believed urban space should be used and government resources allocated. Homeowners in the Riverview Park neighborhood opposed park advocates in defense of their homes, while park defenders saw the loss of Riverview Park as a proxy fight to prevent future condemnation of parkland in Omaha for other proposed expressways. Business leaders and Omaha suburbanites, however, viewed Riverview Park and its surrounding neighborhood as "declining" and saw the superhighway as serving the greater good. Challenges to Omaha’s freeways during this period thus came down to a seemingly zero-sum game—homes versus jobs, and homes versus park space.
It was not until early 1959, a full year after I-480's first public hearing, that neighborhood opponents became alarmed at the encroaching interstate. The first interstate news reports in early 1959 tended to focus on citizens asking “When is the Interstate coming? When will my property be purchased? When will I have to move my family? How long can I rent my property?” (“Interstate Timetable Still Big Question: State Officials Have No Omaha Answers,” South Omaha Sun, 5 February 1959) Concern mounted early that winter as city officials began to receive dozens of calls a week regarding rumors circulating that right-of-way purchases would begin later that year.
Timetables detailing the state's takings of residential properties remained relatively elusive to affected homeowners until the spring of 1959. Eagerly awaiting the results of the studies were an estimated 500 to 600 families around I-480’s two proposed interchanges. Along the expressway’s two-mile, north-south route were 300 additional family residences, ninety-four duplexes, forty-nine multi-family conversion units, thirty-two commercial businesses, seven apartment buildings, and at least one church. “Many small property owners also have faced serious financial loss due to difficulty in renting property in the route of the highways,” explained Omaha city planner Alden Aust, “still others are handicapped in making needed repairs on their homes . . . and those who must sell their property for one reason or another generally sell at a sacrifice” (“Interstate Timetable Still Big Question: State Officials Have No Omaha Answers,” South Omaha Sun, 5 February 1959).
The first and only required public hearing on the Interstate routes was held at City Hall on 29 January 1958. This meeting largely escaped most Omahans' recognition and formal freeway opposition did not organize until April 1959. It can be inferred that the lack of organized opposition for more than a full year after plans were made public was due in large part to both the state's minimally-required outreach to residents in the Interstate’s path. State highway officials were not required to notify individuals of freeway right-of-ways until appraisers began door-to-door canvassing. The January hearing failed to create any uproar despite local newspapers’ growing coverage of interstate news. It is also likely that the then-pressing debates over urban renewal and the Omaha Plan in 1958 consumed greater attention than did the Interstate.
Early freeway opposition in Omaha, like similar opposition efforts in other cities during the late 1950s and early 1960s, ultimately failed to prevent or reroute the Interstate Highway through residential neigbhorhoods and parkland. Distracted by their opposition to a referendum on urban renewal, the Taxpayers Plan's resistance to I-480 organized late, faced homeowners reluctant yet resigned to displacement, and failed to forge cross-city, cross-class coalitions with a broader community. Moreover, local media remained noncommittal to the opposition’s cause, business and labor interests favored the freeways to preserve downtown, packing plant, and stockyard jobs, and state and local officials successfully argued that the interstate was an economic necessity for the broader community. Park advocates eventually lost their proxy-fight to protect all of Riverview Park. But nearby homeowners and city officials negotiated a compromise that resulted in the loss of Riverview's northern edge without necessitating the loss of additional homes.