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Lincoln, Omaha Nebraska Leaders: Let’s Keep Talking

Reagan and Gorbachev, Nixon and Mao have nothing now on the lord mayors of Lincoln and Omaha for summit diplomacy: They agreed to
keep talking.

By:
Dick Piersol
Lincoln Journal Star
Lincoln, NE
http://www.journalstar.com

Joined Wednesday at Mahoney State Park by invited leaders of business, labor, academia and local government, Mayors Don Wesely of
Lincoln and Mike Fahey of Omaha heard all kinds of advice at their first economic summit on how to combine the talents and resources of the
two cities to improve their economies and the state’s.

Suggestions included coordinating and reconciling the comprehensive land-use plans of the counties in the Interstate 80 corridor and
establishing a transshipment center for rail, air and truck what is expected to be growing billions of dollars of goods moving from Southeast
Asia through West Coast ports.

As the two sides appeared to bury old grudges from the Gallup affair – the much-resented relocation of Gallup’s headquarters from Lincoln to
Omaha – the summiteers focused on the next step in a long march from competition for jobs to regional economic peace in our time.

That step, said Harvey Perlman, chancellor of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, should be structure, some way to continue the dialogue and
cooperative action by the state’s two largest cities.

"Something," Perlman said, "to insulate yourself from changing mayors, city councils and chambers of commerce."

Kim Robak, vice president for external affairs in the University of Nebraska’s central administration, said she hoped that structure would
emerge informally, fearing the initiative otherwise would be lost in bureaucracy.

"The structure is simply a formalized process," she said. "Everybody’s waiting for the other person to do that."

Maybe the people at the university itself will take that lead, Robak said.

Fahey said it’s too early to say how a continuing structure for the new metropolitan cooperative will look.

Wesely said the next session between the two cities could be scheduled for April or May, and he is eager to extend an "ongoing relationship."

"It could be something between the two cities," Wesely said describing the possible structure. "Or it could be something with the university and
the (state) Department of Economic Development."

Some of the 2 1/2-hour meeting was spent discussing the regional economy, as participants described successes, failures and stalemates in
local business and employment.

Al Wenstrand, director of the state Department of Economic Development, said he saw reason for optimism in a variety of economic reports
lately. In fact, he said, the national recession hasn’t even reached Nebraska.

"Nebraska never got into negative growth," Wenstrand said. "I’m not nearly as concerned about the economy as I was 18 months ago.

"Businesses are talking to us about the need for labor. We didn’t see any of that six to nine months ago," Wenstrand said.

He could have fooled most of Lancaster County, where 2.9 percent unemployment in December rose to 3.6 percent a month later, according to
Wesely, as more than 1,000 jobs were lost or jeopardized by local industrial conditions.

"The trend line is not good," Wesely said.

But Wenstrand said forward-looking indicators show layoffs slowing down and orders picking up. And though employers may not be hiring, they
are adding overtime.

Another portion of the summit was devoted to development ideas for the future.

Charles Lamphear, director of UNL’s Bureau of Business Research, proposed a transshipment center in eastern Nebraska, based on
predicted growth in imports from Southeast Asia.

That hypothetical operation, which could employ 2,000 to 3,000 people, would take cargo from ship containers brought by trains from West
Coast ports, reload that cargo into rail cars, trucks and air freight, and redistribute the cargo throughout the Midwest and the Eastern
Seaboard. The ship containers then could be used to backhaul grain to the Far East, Lamphear suggested.

On an idea already in the works, Wenstrand drew attention to a $500,000 development study, stalled in the Legislature, of the I-80 corridor.

"I think it’s time for planned, coordinated growth along the corridor," he said, with technology parks of 2,000 to 3,000 acres at either terminal,
and not "screwed up" by a lot of noncontiguous residential growth in between.

That would test the cooperative spirit among the counties along the corridor, he acknowledged.

"All communities in those counties need to get together and get their comprehensive plans to match," he said

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