Gateway to The West: The Destruction of Jobbers’ Canyon
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Case study: Omaha
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2022-12-12T09:07:47-08:00
While some cities hold on to historic buildings too tightly, others throw them away for short-sighted gain.
In 1988, ConAgra Brands put pressure on the city of Omaha to assist the corporation with finding space for its headquarters – if ConAgra wouldn't be accommodated by Omaha, so the argument went, then it would just pack up and go to a bigger city, such as Minneapolis or Chicago. In 1989, Omaha responded by demolishing twenty-four buildings comprising the historic district of Jobbers’ Canyon to make space for ConAgra’s new headquarters – headquarters specifically designed to serve ConAgra's needs as a corporation.
The loss was significant – not just in terms of buildings that could have been repurposed – but an important part of the city’s history and American history. Jobbers’ Canyon, described by a ConAgra CEO as a bunch of “big, ugly buildings,” was once the home to outfitters and suppliers selling goods to people traveling westward. It remains the largest nationally registered historic place lost to demolition.
These headquarters have since been abandoned, and ConAgra ended up moving to Chicago anyway, twenty-six years later, leaving behind, ironically, more “old, ugly” buildings. A corporation is concerned with profits above all else, and perhaps from a corporation's logic, demolishing a historic district from the 1800s in exchange for twenty-six years of calling Omaha home is a fair trade. From another perspective, Jobbers Canyon is gone forever, sacrificed for short-term financial gain, and replaced by an abandoned corporate campus that was active for a fraction of time of the historic district it replaced. Beyond the loss of significant architecture and working class history, Omaha also lost out on buildings that could have been repurposed for housing and new businesses, left instead with a massive empty campus designed specifically for one corporation's convenience, and difficult to repurpose to a city's current needs.
Of course not every city makes Omaha’s mistakes. Some cities do repurpose old buildings – warehouses and old offices turned into apartments – but in such cases the cost associated with repurposing can translate into high-end housing which fails to address the need for affordable places to live. D.C. and surrounding towns are leading the charge when it comes to converting old commercial buildings into residential developments.
