Mayor breaks tie, OKs new apartments – Omaha World-Herald

The developers of The Landings apartment complex on Monday night got the rezoning they needed to add 120 apartments to the complex.

But it did not come easily or cheaply.

Council members divided 3-3 on whether to allow the development on the southeast corner of the intersection of 36th Street and Cornhusker Road to expand.

Mayor Rita Sanders broke the tie in favor of the developers, siding with councilmen John Hansen, Paul Cook and Don Preister.

The three council members who voted against the construction project all said the intersection was too heavily traveled and too important to Bellevue to be handed over to residential development.

They favored waiting until commercial or retail developers showed an interest.

Those council members were Pat Shannon, Thomas Burns and Jim Moudry.

The developers NS Landings 2, LLC did not get all they wanted, however.

They had asked for a waiver of a city requirement they install a sidewalk along the edge of the development, from 36th Street east along the south side of Cornhusker Road to Linden Plaza.

But council members voted 6-0 to deny the waiver, thus requiring that the sidewalk be installed.

The developers had protested that the sidewalk would be a sidewalk to nowhere, since it would stand alone without connecting to an existing sidewalk either to the east or the west.

But council members sided with Bellevue resident Dwight Beaton, who spoke at the public hearing in favor of requiring the sidewalk.

Sidewalks would always be sidewalks to nowhere if none are ever installed, he said. But a consistent program of sidewalk installation would soon have sidewalks connecting to other sidewalks, he said.

The vote was a defeat for the Greater Bellevue Area Chamber of Commerce, which spoke in favor of reserving the corner for commercial development.

Rusty Hike, chairman of the chamber board of directors, said busy intersections are rarely good locations for residential developments and would be better used for commercial and retail development which would generate both property and sales taxes for the city.

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Mayor breaks tie, OKs new apartments - Omaha World-Herald