Weekly Market Report – June 9, 2022

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Restaurant & Retail Updates

Blend Virtual Food Hall plans to open soon. The business will deliver food from multiple local restaurants to customers’ doorsteps in one single order. Customers can purchase food from multiple vendors and have it delivered free of charge or pick it up at a drive-thru window. Blend will operate out of a former Amigo’s building 10710 Q Street.

A new restaurant is coming to Aksarben Village. Reagan’s Lobster Roll Shop plans to open in the former Hola Mexican Eatery space at the Inner Rail Food Hall.

Nebraska’s first Tous Les Jours has opened next to Charleston’s at 75th & Dodge Street. Tous Les Jours, which means “every day” in French, offers 300 different items baked in-store. The South Korean company has 1,650 locations worldwide, with 70 of them in the United States.

Beginning June 26th, The Switch Beer & Food Hall at 3618 Farnam Street in the Blackstone District will temporarily close to the public. It will re-open this fall under new management with a lineup of all-new food and drink concepts. The food hall’s new name will be “Kamp.”

One of the tenants at Switch Beer & Food Hall is El Arepon Venezuelan Food, and it isn’t going away. The restaurant plans to open a location in Bellevue within the next two weeks.

After 85 years of serving fried carp, the legendary Joe Tess Place has closed at 5424 South 24th Street in South Omaha.

Allens Home has reopened near 132nd & L Street, seven months after the owners closed their longtime furniture store at 78th & L Street.

World of Wonder will celebrate a grand opening on June 24th for its new store in Papillion’s Shadow Lake Towne Center. The store, formerly known as “Apples & More,” is moving from 1013 Galvin Road in Bellevue. World of Wonder sells “educational supplies, learning games, toys and gifts for teachers, homeschool families, parents and grandparents.”

In case you missed it, Grow Omaha published its first-ever restaurant review last week. The series is called “Grow Omaha Eats with Sarah Baker Hansen” and will appear in this newsletter and on the Grow Omaha website every other week. For her inaugural column last week, Sarah reviewed Koji in Countryside Village. You can read the review HERE!

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Omaha Named as One of the Nation’s Best Places to Live

Omaha is ranked 29th on U.S. News & World Report’s list of “Best Places to Live in the U.S. in 2022-2023.”

U.S. News analyzed the 150 most populous metro areas in the nation to find the best places to live. To make the top of the list, a place had to have good value, be a desirable place to live, have a strong job market and a high quality of life.

Here’s what the report said about Omaha:

Omaha has long been a place of convergence. In the mid-1800s, it served as the easternmost point of the first transcontinental railroad. Today, its location at the heart of the country has earned Omaha a reputation as a flyover city. But those who live in Omaha know there’s more to this metro area than most outsiders realize.

It’s a region that celebrates and treasures the past while warmly embracing change and growth. The metro area that once brought you TV dinners and Reuben sandwiches now house fancy seafood restaurants and hip vegan options (though you’ll never have trouble finding a hearty steak). And while ranchers continue to raise cattle on the sprawling prairies surrounding the region, Omaha proper has begun to attract a number of budding new tech startups.

Affordability and a strong economy attract young professionals, while safety, a plethora of education options and family-friendly activities appeal to those with kids.

The top five cities were, in order, Huntsville, Ala.; Colorado Springs; Green Bay, Wisc.; Boulder, Colo.; and San Jose, Calif. The worst five were, starting with #150 and working backwards, San Juan, Puerto Rico; Stockton, Calif.; Visalia, Calif.; Bakersfield, Calif; and Modesto, Calif.

Here are rankings of some other cities in our region: #14 Des Moines, Iowa; #17, Minneapolis; #18 Lincoln; #51 Kansas City, Mo.; #55 Denver; #72 St. Louis; #73 Oklahoma City; #79 Chicago; #82 Tulsa, Okla.; and #103 Wichita, Kan.

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The Omaha Convention & Visitors Bureau plans to move its administrative offices to the north side of Midtown Crossing at Turner Park. East Campus Realty, LLC, which owns and operates the property, is turning former retail space – once occupied by Cantina Laredo and other restaurants – into office space.

Metro Transit and Heartland Bike Share will establish 14 bike share stations at or around stops on the ORBT bus route, according to the Omaha World-Herald. The new stations will house a total of 100 e-bikes in order to allow bus riders easier access to neighborhoods surrounding bus stations.

J Development is celebrating the grand opening of Swivel Apartments this week at 119 North 72nd Street, just east of The Crossroads. The 5-story building has 158 market-rate apartments and commercial space. A few blocks to the west, J. Development is building another 5-story apartment building at 7837 Dodge Street to be known as The Clove.

Workers have started drilling footings for a Hampton Inn planned for the southwest corner of 44th & Douglas Street near the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s future Project NExT. The 6-story hotel is expected to have 95 rooms and 7,300 sq. ft. of first-floor commercial space.

Speaking of the Med Center, demolition has now started on both the old Munroe-Meyer Institute and former J.P. Lord School buildings on the southeast corner Farnam Street & Saddle Creek Road. That is expected to be the site of the future $2.7 billion Project NExT building.

Last week, we reported that barricades and construction fencing have gone up around a surface parking lot immediately west of the Kimpton Cottonwood Hotel in the Blackstone District. The 3-story building that had been on that site is now mostly demolished, Once the building is fully removed, construction can start on a 9-story mixed building with 161 apartments, ground-floor retail and 4 stories of structured parking.

The total value of building permits issued by the City of Omaha Planning Department last year climbed to roughly $1.5 billion, according to Cindy Gonzalez of Nebraska Examiner. That’s the highest yearly tally on record for the city and the second highest when accounting for inflation. The city platted 1,349 acres in 2021, the most since 2005.

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Real Estate News from CoStar – The Census Bureau said retailer profits in the first quarter declined 36 percent from the prior quarter and dropped 22 percent from the year-earlier period despite rising sales, news that won’t surprise several big-box chains with their bottom lines getting hit by inflation in supply and labor costs.

The top executive at Minneapolis-based Target, which already reported slimmed-down profits for its first quarter, said Tuesday the retailer expects to take a short-term reduction in profits for the current quarter as it marks down unsold items and cancels some orders to cut inventories in product categories where sales have been slowing, such as clothing and nonessential home goods.

Fushion Medical Staffing has leased more than 115,000 sq. ft. of office space in the Waterford building. That’s the 4-story office building southeast of 192nd & West Dodge Road. The building is known for its landmark water fountain located right along Dodge. Other tenants in the class-A building include TEK Systems, C.H. Robinson, Elk River Wealth Management and R&R Realty, the Iowa-based company, which owns and operates the building.

Mortgage rates are back on the upswing, after a brief decline in May, and the housing market is still suffering from a lack of listings, according to CNBC. As a result, mortgage demand continues to drop. Total mortgage application volume fell 6.5 percent last week compared with the previous week. Demand hit the lowest level in 22 years. Refinance demand, which is most sensitive to weekly rate moves, fell another 6 percent for the week and was 75 percent lower than the same week one year ago.

Workers recently poured concrete for two full-sized pickleball courts at Regency Landing, the mixed-use development under construction at Interstate 680 & Pacific Street. The courts will be part of Big Sky Patio & Pickleball, which will offer a full bar, four-season covered patio, pickleball courts and food vendors.

Taco Bell has opened a new concept known as “Taco Bell Defy” this week in suburban Minneapolis, according to CNN. The restaurant has four drive-thru lanes and no dining room. The kitchen is on a second floor above the drive-thru lanes. Food is delivered to customers via a vertical lift. One lane is for customers who order on Taco Bell’s app. The second lane is for delivery drivers. The other two lanes are for traditional orders.

Lumber futures have dropped 52 percent since early March, according to The Hustle. That means lumber, which was recently extremely high priced and in extremely short supply, is now much easier to find.

Commercial real estate is showing the first signs of cooling in more than a year, disrupted by rising interest rates that are already causing some deals to collapse, according to the Wall Street Journal. Property sales were $39.4 billion in April, which was down 16 percent compared with the same month a year ago. The decline followed 13 consecutive months of increases.

Union Pacific Railroad has joined the RailPulse coalition and its effort to develop, broaden and accelerate the use of GPS and other telematics technologies in North America’s freight rail industry. Omaha-based Union Pacific is RailPulse’s seventh member. The other six include GATX Corporation, Genesee & Wyoming, Norfolk Southern, TrinityRail, Watco, and The Greenbrier Companies.

RailPulse was formed in 2020 as a coalition of forward-thinking railcar owners working together to increase safety, efficiency, and visibility in the rail industry by supporting the development and use of GPS and other telematics technologies. Its goal is to provide real-time information and sustained visibility of a railcar’s status, location and condition to shippers, railcar owners and railroads.

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Leadership & Management

A Wall Street Journal study found that 36 percent of workers believe they must respond to after-hours emails faster than the sender expects. In other words, you could send your colleagues an email at 9 p.m. assuming they’ll simply respond tomorrow, but they might feel an obligation to respond right away.

Time management is a myth according to Balance Small Business: “No matter how organized we are, there are always only 24 hours in a day. Time doesn’t change. All we can actually manage is ourselves and what we do with the time that we have. Appreciate this. Internalize it.”

Sales

Follow-up is the key! It takes five or more attempts before getting to a “yes.” Unfortunately, 44 percent of sales pros give up after a single follow-up call and 22 percent give up after two, according to Marketing Donut.

Productivity Improvement – Approximately 81 percent of companies say productivity would improve with better processes, skills or competency training, according to Spotio.

A concerning number of sales professionals actually lack negotiating skills. According to sales author Jeb Blount, there are five reasons why sales professionals often “get ripped up like cheap t-shirts by buyers” during sales negotiations:

1. Poor emotional discipline – inability to rise above the emotions of fear, insecurity, anger, attachment, eagerness and desperation.
2. Lack of training – most companies actually invest very little time or money in training sales reps how to negotiate.
3. Failure to self-invest – when you out-learn the competition, you out-earn the competition.
4. Buyers are better – buyers often have better negotiation training than sales reps.
5. Empty pipelines – When you have an empty prospecting pipeline, you get desperate and more likely to give away money in order to close deals.

Wisdom

“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you will help them become what they are capable of being.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“The role of leadership is to transform the complex situation into small pieces and prioritize them.” – Carlos Ghosn, former CEO of Nissan and Renault, famous for having himself smuggled out of Japan and into Lebanon

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The Greater Omaha Chamber has announced the 2022 inductees into its Business Hall of Fame: Don and Linda Eckles, co-founders of Scooter’s Coffee; Carmen Tapio, CEO of North End Teleservices; John Lund, chairman of the Lund Company; and Jay Noddle, CEO of Noddle Companies.

Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson, president of Creighton University, has been elected to a two-year term as chairman of the Big East Conference board of directors. He will begin his term June 30th. The board of directors is comprised of presidents of all the Big East’s 11 member institutions. Hendrickson succeeds Rev. Peter Donohue, president of Villanova University.

Gov. Pete Ricketts has appointed Kathleen Kauth to fill the vacancy in Legislative District 31 in southwest Omaha. Kauth is the founder of K.T. Beck Enterprises, LLC, a mediation and conflict coaching firm in Omaha. Kauth holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Criminology/Sociology and a Masters of Public Policy degree from the University of Northern Iowa. She also holds a graduate certificate in Gerontology from the University of Nebraska Omaha. The vacant seat was created upon the death of Sen. Rich Pahls on April 27th.

Scooter’s Coffee has hired Patrick Coelho as Chief Development Officer. For over seven years, Coelho served with Restaurant Brands International in leadership positions in development, supply chain, finance, field operations and real estate. He was Head of Development for Burger King Americas and, prior to that, was Head of Finance for Burger King U.S. & Canada. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Suffolk University and completed Harvard Business School’s Program for Leadership Development.

Dean Snyder Construction has hired Gary Bittner as project manager. He brings nearly 30 years of design and construction management experience to his new position. Dean Snyder Construction is a family-and-employee-owned firm with its Omaha-area office in La Vista.

Tasha Truskolaski has been promoted to assistant general counsel at Mutual of Omaha. She joined Mutual in 2016 as a senior privacy compliance advisor. She was promoted to privacy manager in 2019 and to director of ethics and business conduct in 2020. Truskolaski earned a bachelor’s degree from the College of St. Benedict and a law degree from William Mitchell College of Law.

The “People in the News” section is sponsored by Baird Holm LLP. Baird Holm’s dedicated team of real estate lawyers has extensive experience in all aspects of real estate law, including purchases, sales, zoning and land use, leasing, and dispute resolution. Click HERE for more information.

The Grow Omaha radio show broadcasts live every Saturday morning at 9:00, but now you can watch videos of each episode instead of just listening.

Grow Omaha’s brand-new website features video footage shot inside the radio studio during each week’s show!

Videos include News of the Week, Lightning Round, guest interviews, and “Grow Omaha Uncut,” a behind-the-scenes look at what happens during commercial breaks.

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