The Greater Omaha area is home to over 828,000 Nebraska residents, with an average population density of 188.1 persons per square mile. Founded in 1854, Omaha is now the largest city in Nebraska, and is comprised of a variety of small, distinctive historical neighborhoods.
Omaha’s racial and ethnic composition is predominately white (over 85%), and the city is largely geographically segregated; however there are several vibrant minority communities throughout the city, and the Latino population continues to grow on a yearly basis.
According to USA Today, among the fifty largest U.S. cities, Omaha is eighth in per capita billionaires and Fortune 500 companies.
Facts and statistics compiled from: Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, City of Omaha, and Omaha MSA Demographic Profile 2007.
The Park Avenue Community (PAC) is located in Omaha’s Ford Birthsite Neighborhood (FBN) along the historic Park Avenue corridor. Many houses and buildings in the neighborhood date back to the late 1800’s—as does Hanscom Park, a 58 acre public park located toward the southern end of the neighborhood.
The local Ford Birthsite Neighborhood Association describes the area as an “economically diverse group with a dynamic big city mix of family homes, traditional apartments and affordable housing.”
The FBN along with several surrounding neighborhoods have experienced a variety of changes throughout the last several decades. The Park Avenue Redevelopment Study initiated in 2008 by Destination Midtown, a local non-profit in Midtown Omaha, sheds light on some of the most current FBN and surrounding neighborhood trends.
“Income and employment can often say a lot about a neighborhood. Economic indicators for the Park Avenue area reveal that although median household income is 62% of the city wide median, the area’s unemployment rate is not excessively high (7.1%). While unemployment in the study area is roughly 1.5 times that of the city’s, the number of families below the poverty line is nearly 2.5 times greater. This would indicate that Park Avenue area residents are often the city’s working poor. Study area residents’ incomes are directly related to the type of occupations they hold. More residents are employed in blue collar and service occupations, often lower paying jobs than management and professional occupations…
[In addition], The study area’s population grew during the 1990s because of an increase in the Hispanic population, which was 11 times greater in 2000 than 1990. Hispanic populations traditionally have larger household sizes, therefore, while the number of households, and conversely housing units, experienced no change during the 1990s (1,982) the number of people per household increased.”
Facts and statistics compiled from: US Census Bureau, Destination Midtown, and the Ford Birthsite Neighborhood Association.
