Drive west on Farnam past 16th Street most weekday afternoons this year and you will hit a version of downtown that does not look like the renderings. The bridge over Interstate 480 is gone, demolished back in January, and it will stay gone for most of 2026. A few blocks over, the intersection at Turner Boulevard has been closed for four months straight while crews dig for gas and water lines nobody can see. By July, the same cones and detours had crept into Midtown, past the shops that used to be an easy stop between downtown and the west side.
None of this is a surprise if you have lived here through it. What is less obvious, unless you have been paying attention to where people are actually going instead, is that Omaha's newest energy this year did not wait around for the construction to clear. It moved. Mostly to a half-mile stretch of Underwood Avenue in Dundee, and separately, to the far edges of West Omaha where the population has been building anyway. Two different parts of the city are having two very different years, and neither one is really about downtown at all.
The Closure Is Narrower Than It Looks
It is tempting to think of streetcar construction as a citywide inconvenience, but the actual pain is concentrated in a specific stretch, which is exactly how the Greater Omaha Chamber has treated it. The Chamber's Midtown Small Business Resiliency Fund, roughly $1 million distributed to affected tenants, was scoped specifically to businesses west of Turner Boulevard along Farnam Street, the corridor absorbing the heaviest utility work before mainline track construction even started. Property owners who take the grant have to match it with additional tenant support equal to 25 percent of the award over the next two years, and the Chamber estimates the fund will ultimately help somewhere between 50 and 60 small businesses.
That geographic precision tells you something the general "construction is bad for business" headline does not: the disruption is not uniform across downtown and Midtown. It has a shape, and that shape runs along Farnam west of Turner. If your favorite spot sits outside that line, its year has probably looked pretty normal.
Who's Actually Absorbing It
The businesses inside that line have specific names attached to specific frustrations. Addy's Sports Bar and Grill, whose owner Tim Addison has talked about a steep drop in sales since construction started, sits right in the thick of it. Kitchen Table, the downtown restaurant Colin and Jessica Duggan have run since 2013, has had to adjust around road closures that change week to week rather than following a predictable schedule. Tupelo Honey closed temporarily this month for renovations timed around the construction. Further down the line at 24th and Farnam, The Grove spent the months before construction reached that block adding signage and rethinking parking, watching what happened to other stretches and trying not to repeat it.
What connects all of them is not that business is universally bad in Omaha right now. It is that a very specific set of addresses is carrying almost all of the weight of a streetcar project estimated at $421 million as of mid-2025, the most recent public figure, while the rest of the city keeps moving.
Where the New Openings Actually Landed
Here is the part that would surprise anyone assuming a rough year downtown means a rough year for Omaha dining in general: 2026 has been an unusually good year for new openings, and almost none of them are downtown.
Underwood Avenue in Dundee absorbed a cluster of them on its own. Duck Duck Bottle Shop opened in May at 4917 Underwood, and it does not look or work like anything else in the city. You enter through the driveway rather than the front door of the historic house it occupies, and the entire operation runs outdoors in a backyard shaded by mature trees, with a bottle shop and a small bookstore tucked into the basement below. It sits directly across from Ooh De Lally, the restaurant and cocktail lounge that has anchored that block for years, and a few doors down, Elleon, a wine lounge built around European travel and taste, is listed as coming soon at 4915 Underwood. The Hollows, an upscale wine and cocktail bar at 5019 Underwood, rounds out a stretch that also still holds Dundee Dell, the sandwich and Scotch bar that has been a neighborhood institution for more than 80 years.
None of this required downtown's disruption to happen. Dundee has been quietly repurposing its old houses into bars, cafes, and bookstores for years. But the timing this year is hard to ignore. While Farnam Street was down to one lane and a bridge was missing, Underwood Avenue was adding three new places to drink wine and one very unusual backyard bar, all within a five-minute walk of each other.
| Downtown / West Farnam Corridor | Underwood Avenue, Dundee | |
|---|---|---|
| Major disruption in 2026 | Bridge demolition, four-month intersection closure, mainline track work | None |
| New openings this year | Few, several existing spots temporarily closed or reduced | Duck Duck Bottle Shop, The Hollows, Elleon (coming soon) |
| Business support in place | Chamber resiliency fund, targeted west of Turner Blvd | Not applicable |
West Omaha Is Building Its Own Thing, Unrelated to Any of This
The other place absorbing new energy this year has nothing to do with the streetcar at all. It is simply where growth in Omaha has been heading for a while, and 2026 kept that pattern going. Culinary Dropout opened August 12 at Village Pointe, taking over the former Local Beer Co. space, with Frost Gelato moving into the old Cold Stone Creamery spot next door as its first Nebraska location. Curry in a Hurry is preparing to open Omaha's first drive-through Indian restaurant near 168th and Harrison. K-Pot Korean BBQ & Hot Pot is hiring for its first Nebraska location in the former Johnny's Italian Steakhouse building. A 7 Brew Coffee drive-through is planned near 177th and Center in a former Burger King. And at the end of August, Roll-N-Sweetz, a baseball-themed rolled ice cream shop locally owned by A'Ron Burns, held its grand opening at 3005 Emmet Street in north Omaha.
That list has almost nothing in common with the Underwood Avenue cluster beyond the calendar year. It is car-oriented, spread across strip corridors rather than a walkable block, and driven by chains finding their first Nebraska foothold rather than independent operators repurposing old houses. But it is proof that Omaha's growth did not pause for construction. It just kept building somewhere else.
What Changes Once the Cones Come Down
None of this is permanent, and it is worth being honest about the timeline. The streetcar was originally penciled in to open by late 2026. It is now running roughly two years behind that mark, with city officials pointing toward 2028 for actual passenger service once testing and certification wrap up. Mainline construction is expected to continue through 2027, easing gradually rather than ending on a single date. City leaders have said construction intensity should ease by the middle of 2026, and midyear reporting suggests that relief has been uneven so far, showing up in some blocks before others.
For now, the practical reality for anyone who lives here is simple. If you are heading downtown or through Midtown this fall, build in extra time and expect the route to change without much notice. If you want to see where Omaha's newest energy actually is right now, Underwood Avenue and the far edges of West Omaha are the two places to look, and neither one required downtown to finish anything first.
If you are watching how a neighborhood like Dundee or the corridors near Village Pointe keep building through a disruptive year and wondering what that means for property values or timing a move of your own, that is exactly the kind of question the Staci Mueller Group spends its days answering. Reach out any time you want to talk through what a specific block or corridor is actually doing right now, not just what the headlines say about it.
