In last week’s Council Bluff’s City Council Meeting, Pete Tulipana presented Phase V of the River’s Edge development project. Tulipana is the president and CEO of Southwest Iowa Nonprofit for Collective Impact (SINC), the organization that leads funding efforts for the River’s Edge project. SINC has raised more than $50 million in private donations to build the MidAmerican Adventure Tower just north of the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge, as well as an under-construction pier just south of Interstate 480 along the Missouri Riverfront. The tower – and an attached elevated walkway through the treetops – will open this summer. Phase V will consist of three major components: a playground north of Interstate 480 next to River Park by Broadmoor apartment complex; a dog park north of I-480 next to a parking lot; and a donor commemoration and wayfinding plaza. The city council felt that the $600,000 contribution that the city will make to help pay for the donor plaza was a surprise. However,...

The Omaha metro area crossed a major milestone in 2024: a population of more than 1 million people. According to Dr. Josie Schafer, director of the Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, that moment was both exciting and revealing. “We’re on a steady, upward trajectory,” Schafer said. From 2020 to 2024, the Omaha metro grew by 3.3 percent — faster than the state as a whole and roughly on par with similar metro areas like Kansas City. While smaller places such as Sioux Falls, S.D., and Des Moines, Iowa, are growing more quickly, Omaha sits solidly in the middle when compared to peer metros. What pushed Omaha over the one-million mark, however, was not people moving from other states. Instead, Schafer points to international migration as the key driver. Domestic migration — people moving state to state — remains negative for both the metro and Nebraska overall. “That’s still true,” she said. “People move here every year, but more people leave than...