Resistance in Omaha
The Omaha Plan
The first opposition efforts against Omaha's freeway system was rooted in earlier opposition against urban renewal and urban planning proposals. During the 1950s, a growing rift emerged between blue-collar citizens in eastern and southern “old Omaha” and those Omahans who had left the older ethnic neighborhoods for the expanding suburbs on the city’s growing west side. There emerged two competing political perspectives on how the city should develop and to what degree government should play a role. One view was comprised of affluent Omahans, Republican business leaders, pro-growth city boosters, and downtown business interests who supported federal urban renewal programs and the use of eminent domain to redevelop older parts of the city. The other was comprised of working-class individuals who possessed anti-elitist views, believed in limited government operating in the people's interests, vociferously decried the use of eminent domain, and supported property owners' rights (Larsen and others, 306, 319). These Omahans held competing views on urban renewal, annexation, and a new city charter that reformed and dispersed political power in the city.
The political split was first present on the new city charter vote. The charter separated the city's legislative and administrative bodies, professionalized civil servants, created full-time planning departments, and reestablished the city council and strong mayor form of government. Working-class Omahans in the older southside districts, which previously served as the base for former political bosses, disapproved of plans to reorganize city government. Although South Omahans rejected the charter by a sixty-three to thirty-seven vote while three western wards approved it by the same ratio but with double the number of votes in South Omaha. Omaha voters at large approved the new charter by fifty-six percent. (Larsen and others, 308) The new charter weakened South Omaha's influence in city government and shifted power toward businessmen and professionals who lived on Omaha's burgeoning west side. The 1956 charter vote demonstrated that not had Omaha's suburban communities grown in size, but it also shifted more power toward Omaha's western suburbs.
Soon after Omahans passed the new charter, the Omaha Housing Authority Area Redevelopment Committee authored a report calling for large-scale urban renewal programs in virtually all blighted areas east of Thirtieth Street. Recommending expansive urban renewal programs, the committee urged the enactment of a citywide master plan, the establishment of an urban renewal director, and enforcement of minimal-standard ordinances (Daly-Badnarek, 141). The same regions targeted for urban renewal also loudly opposed the city charter referendum in 1956 and became alarmed at the prospects of urban renewal programs powered by eminent domain sweeping through their communities.
In 1957, the Mayor’s 225-member Planning and Development Committee proposed an immense public improvement program. The $68 million “Omaha Plan,” as the bond package came to be known, proposed creating an airport authority, bolstering city services, creating parks, cultural spaces, and a main library, subsidizing urban renewal around the central business district, and expanding arterial highways to connect with Omaha's eventual Interstate highways.
It is important to note that the initial Omaha Plan did not include urban renewal. Early urban renewal advocates mistakenly believed that the Omaha City Council was the sole arbiter to approve and create an urban renewal authority. A state law introduced by rural state senators and passed in 1957 amended Nebraska’s 1951 slum clearance law to require a public referendum on the creation of an urban renewal authority. The Omaha Plan ultimately came to include an urban renewal proposal that authorized the use of eminent domain to acquire private property for private development in blighted areas in the central business district and older neighborhoods along the contemporary I-480 route. Fatefully, the Omaha Plan bond proposals and the urban renewal program were presented to voters simultaneously in June of 1958 (Stevens, Jr., 42, 49-50).
Opposition formed against the Omaha Plan throughout many older parts of Omaha, particularly in South Omaha, Sheelytown, North Omaha and other districts targeted for renewal. These largely working-class citizens' aversion to urban renewal and eminent domain coalesced to oppose the Omaha Plan bond issues in the spring of 1958. Some “Old Omaha” citizens formed the Taxpayers Plan Committee, a “taxpayers’ revolt” (A.V. Sorensen, qtd. in Larsen and others, 308) whose opposition to the $68 million price tag and use of eminent domain for private development resonated broadly throughout Omaha. When the urban renewal and bond proposals were presented to voters on 17 June 1958, Omahans resoundingly rejected it by a five-to-one margin. In South Omaha and Sheelytown, where the strongest opposition fomented, the urban renewal measure lost by an incredible thirteen-to-one margin (Stevens, Jr., 51).
Rejection of urban renewal and the Omaha Plan illustrated a few characteristics that framed later debates regarding Omaha’s interstate routes. Promoters of the Omaha Plan could not overcome two popular objections. Omahans’ broadly abhorred the government’s use of eminent domain against private property owners for private development. Moreover, urban renewal advocates articulated an overly-broad region slated for renewal, suggesting renewal in North and South Omaha as well as the Riverfront and central business district (Stevens, Jr., 150). City leaders sowed the seeds for a broad coalition of opposition to the Omaha Plan throughout these districts.
Secondly, the bond proposals’ high cost and voters’ anti-elitist perceptions that renewal would only benefit downtown business interests at the expense of working-class taxpayers created an uphill struggle for Omaha Plan proponents. It did not help Plan proponents that most of its advocates themselves were wealthy businessmen. Furthermore, the combined federal and state government share would have contributed only $12 million toward the $68 million bonds, leaving taxpayers to pay $56 million (Larsen and others, 308). Voters rejected similar planning proposals in 1965 and 1970.
After the Taxpayers Plan’s overwhelming victory, city and state officials carefully framed future debates over the interstate in 1959. Planners and engineers learned to counter critiques of eminent domain by claiming that the Interstate would be a public benefit all Omahans, that its construction would be paramount to sustain Omaha’s industrial and stockyard districts, and that it would alleviate increasing roadway congestion. On the financial side, Interstate advocates could show that ninety percent of the interstate’s expense was funded by the federal government unlike the Omaha Plan which relied predominantly on local taxes. And unlike the Omaha Plan proposals, a public vote would not determine whether planners built the proposed freeway system. Opposition to the freeway proposals ultimately faced a much more difficult task at fighting Omaha's Interstate.