Omaha Public Schools reveal plans for new athletic facility
OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) - An empty lot of grass sits right next to Nathan Hale Middle School. There are a couple of soccer goals, but nothing really new.
“It is an unbelievable large piece of land and it’s on major bus routes,” Tim Bennett with the East Omaha Athletic Association said. “This is an unbelievable access point for the community.”
Two years ago, OPS and the East Omaha Athletic Association started looking at areas in the district they felt needed more access to youth sports facilities.
“This was kind of how we ended up at Nathan Hale,” Bennett said. “What we wanted to do was provide a facility to OPS that they can use for their middle school and high school sports.”
OPS gave the green light on Monday and will now work with the athletic association. They’re planning to put in a 130,000 sq ft. sports building for the community to use. 100,000 sq ft. will occupy multi-sport indoor synthetic turf fields and the 30,000 sq ft. of the athletic space will be for meeting and classrooms.
“As we talk about spring sports as the weather changes, we’ll be able to get multiple teams, multiple programs in there, physical education, and general classroom studies, as well,” John Krogstrand, OPS director of activities and athletics said.
This isn’t the first time OPS has gotten involved in a project like this. Recently, they’ve partnered with the YMCA to increase access to sports at Buena Vista high school and Westview high school.
“It is truly an OPS facility when we build,” Krogstrand said. “We just have a different group that’s managing it and in the same breathe a lot of different access, but the nature of the facility and community for it to serve will be different.”
But, the overall goal of the project is to build equality.
“There’s been a really big gap between East Omaha and West Omaha and we wanted to provide facilities that rival those things out West because our community needs it,” Bennett said.
Officials hope to break ground on the project in the next six months with be complete in 18 months. It will cost a total of $38 million dollars.
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