Highlander Accelerator
North Omaha, Nebraska, like many other minority communities in America, has been subjected to generations of unjust urban planning policies. After years of rallying a wide array of stakeholders, Seventy Five North (named after the highway construction that destroyed over 2,000 homes, churches, schools, and local businesses within the community) was founded to facilitate the revitalization of a healthy, sustainable, mixed-income community within North Omaha’s Highlander neighborhood. Included in the first phase of a master planned community, the Highlander Accelerator is a neighborhood catalyst. The dynamic program was developed in direct collaboration with the community and includes places within the building dedicated to education (both youth and adult), health & wellness, entrepreneurship, urban aquaponics, business incubation, soul food, and celebrations. A shared, public green and network of public porches provides open space intended for the hosting of festivals and for community to program on their own over the coming decades. The result moves beyond being a social services campus, but rather an enrichment campus, where the community has access to everyday aspects of living, located in their own neighborhood, that had been previously destroyed. It is a new home in the emotional and physical center of the community with front doors on all sides, approachable in every aspect.
The Highlander Accelerator is in response to the Seventy Five North’s mandate to go beyond just the reintroduction of social and educational programming that was lost, but to also provide a community accustomed to unremarkable architectural effort with exceptional design.
Work completed while at El Dorado.
Client
Seventy Five North Revitalization Group / Brinshore Development
Location
Size
Omaha, Nebraska
73,300 SF
Date
Cost
2018
$20,580,000
Recognition
2019 AIA Kansas City Design Excellence Awards, Project of the Year
2019 The Chicago Athenaeum American Architecture Awards
2019 Azure Magazine AZ Awards, Social Good Project of the Year Finalist
2019 Metal Architecture Design Awards, Project of the Year
A new neighborhood catalyst responds to a history of unjust urban planning policies.
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