Indie-venue investment paying off

Omaha puts public money into music scene

Rock fans listen to the band Narcotic Self perform at Slowdown in Omaha, Nebraska, on August 30. Slowdown was built by Saddle Creek Records, a local label of indie rockers led by Conor Oberst, but the city of Omaha invested $1.3 million in tax increment financing for the venueís construction. Illustrates OMAHA-INDIEROCK (category a), by Danielle Paquette © 2014, The Washington Post. Moved Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2014. (MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Ryan Henriksen)
Rock fans listen to the band Narcotic Self perform at Slowdown in Omaha, Nebraska, on August 30. Slowdown was built by Saddle Creek Records, a local label of indie rockers led by Conor Oberst, but the city of Omaha invested $1.3 million in tax increment financing for the venueís construction. Illustrates OMAHA-INDIEROCK (category a), by Danielle Paquette © 2014, The Washington Post. Moved Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2014. (MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Ryan Henriksen)

OMAHA, Neb. -- One July evening, the Facebook message finally came:

"Wanna headline Slowdown?"

Nathaniel Jensen, 20, immediately group-chatted his band: Don't make plans. The University of Nebraska-Omaha junior, a third-generation city resident and guitarist of Lot Walks, understands the formula for success in this city's music scene. You play house parties, pass out bumper stickers, generate Web hype and, with any luck, hear from the booker at Slowdown.

As Omaha legend goes, Slowdown was built by Saddle Creek Records, a local label of independent rockers led by Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes. He started in music at 13, was called the new Bob Dylan and penned oft-tattooed lyrics like "I found a liquid cure/From my landlocked blues."

In 2006, Saddle Creek's owner Robb Nansel and his business partner Jason Kulbel poured millions into creating Slowdown, Omaha's first independent rock club. But what many local musicians perhaps didn't know: the city of Omaha invested in the scene, too -- to the tune of $1.3 million in tax increment financing for the venue's construction.

Slowdown isn't just a bigger stage for bands like Lot Walks, or the next generation of Nebraskan dreamers. It's an experiment in arts investment for other midsize cities to watch, a government-backed independent-rock weapon against urban decay.

Omaha, home of five Fortune 500 companies and two universities, is Nebraska's strongest local economy. But, like many smaller cities, it is struggling to revitalize areas left behind in a post-World War II suburban flight.

Nowadays, as people and resources surge back into cities, a drive through Omaha reveals bustling retail corridors, brand-new apartments and stretches of broken-down industrial buildings. Officials banked on the Slowdown project, in particular, to attract young people to the once blighted North Downtown neighborhood.

Today, the success of Omaha's bet --and the success of Jensen's band -- depends on pulling in the same youthful demographic. The kids must show up.

A place for 'creative class'

Art, however it is defined, has long helped transform cities. It's a moneymaker, too. In December, the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the National Endowment for the Arts tried for the first time to estimate arts and culture's economic impact. The report found that in 2011, 3.2 percent, or $502 billion, of current-dollar gross domestic product was attributable to arts and culture.

Some economists argue that artistic investment is a powerful tool for growth. Urban studies theorist Richard Florida claims that cities must attract creative thinkers, the painters and poets and singers, in order to thrive. "Finding ways to help support a local music scene can be just as important as investing in high-tech business," he writes in The Rise of the Creative Class, "and far more effective than building a downtown mall."

Evidence of that started emerging in the 1970s, said musician and music geographer Michael Seman, who studies economics and culture at the University of North Texas. Artists, seeking cheaper rent, moved into dilapidated areas and made them cool with gallery openings and intimate concerts.

The Slowdown project, Seman found, depended on an enduring supportive relationship between Omaha and its musicians. Smaller conversations about potential venue locations snowballed into a deal that resurrected a dead neighborhood.

"It could be as simple as giving musicians parking permits to more easily load and unload equipment or starting a music advisory council," said Seman, whose master's thesis examined Slowdown. "Little investments can potentially go a long way."

Other local governments have capitalized on art to create jobs, according to a 2012 study by the National Governors Association. The city of Phoenix and Arizona State University, for example, partnered in 2004 to create an "innovation hub" for creative firms on a barren 42-acre lot. Seven years later, the local economic council found that it generated 733 new jobs and about $113 million annually in economic impact.

Seman, singer and guitarist for Shiny Around the Edges in Denton, Texas, believes that local music scenes also attract and retain the next generation of workers. It's no shock that Austin, Texas, which has the country's highest number of music venues per capita, is the fastest growing city in America, he said. An estimated 110 people move there every day.

Anchor for rebirth

Omaha wants to harness the same power.

The $10.2 million Slowdown project formed to solve two seemingly unrelated problems. First, musicians wanted somewhere to host a big-time show. The only options in the early 2000s were airless basements and overcrowded dive bars. (The venue owners spent in loans about $8.5 million in addition to the $1.3 million in public funding.)

State and local economic development planners, meanwhile, sought to clean up a dilapidated sprawl. North Downtown, the site of the project, was the first thing visitors saw driving into the city from the Eppley Airfield. The window into Omaha was an industrial strip of abandoned buildings and weed-ravaged lots.

In 2006, the city partnered with the Chamber of Commerce to draft a full-scale redevelopment plan: "North Downtown should evolve into Omaha's newest and most exciting neighborhood."

The anchor, all parties agreed, should be the greatest music venue in Nebraska. The young and hip would ideally flock there, dine at nearby restaurants and rent loft spaces in old factories.

And so Slowdown was born. The 56,000-square-foot mixed-use space opened in 2007. The city, however, had one particularly key requirement: it pledged to accept only tenants with an "indie ethos." (Several corporations applied, but a nondisclosure agreement keeps them off the record.)

"They got applicants from everywhere," city planning consultant Steve Jensen said. "Local, national -- everyone wanted to be near the indie rock scene."

Steve Jensen did not listen to Bright Eyes or Cursive or The Faint, Omaha's biggest stars. But he saw the movement as an opportunity.

"Everyone knew about Saddle Creek," he said. "They were looking for a place to grow and expand -- and we were looking for a way to do the same thing."

His verdict, so far: The tax increment financing investment in art is paying off. Two apartment buildings, a restaurant, a coffee shop, an independent cinema and an Urban Outfitters have sprung up around Slowdown. (The TD Ameritrade Baseball Stadium, home of the College World Series, opened nearby three years ago; planning for that $131 million facility was unrelated.) Local college students trek there nightly to shop, study and dance.

"That didn't happen a decade ago," he said.

North Downtown is much livelier than before, Jensen said, but it needs more foot traffic to keep growing. People come for events, like this week's Dizzy Wright concert or an Urban Outfitters' sale. They don't exactly stumble into establishments.

To fix that, the city is considering a trolley between the neighborhood and a cobblestoned shopping district called the Old Market.

The owners are rallying for it.

"When we built the Slowdown, there was nothing around us," said Jason Kulbel, the venue's co-owner. "No hotels. No apartments. No restaurants. It was like being on an island."

Kulbel, 40, met Nansel, his business partner, decades ago at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln before they worked together at Saddle Creek. The independent rock buffs decided to open the concert space because Omaha lacked options in the early 2000s. "Our only real venue then was a smoky basement that was essentially a fire hazard," Kulbel said.

The city cut them the tax-increment financing deal and a land discount to move on the North Downtown lot instead of a rehabilitated space in the Old Market. Seven years produced rapid change, Kulbel said, but a three-block parking lot across the street stalled it.

"We need something like an apartment building with shops below it there instead," he said. "For now, the bands bring the people out. Not the area itself."

Kulbel's friend, Saddle Creek musician Orenda Fink, previously half of Azure Ray, agrees that the Omaha music scene has grown but has not met its potential.

"When I moved here from Athens, Georgia, about 12 years ago, it was just shockingly bleak," Fink said. "The city needed a serious infusion of culture. I remember attending a show at the only real music venue, and every toilet in the building broke."

She stayed because her husband, The Faint frontman Todd Fink, grew up in Omaha and believed in the community, where artists partied with fans at house shows on every night of the week. (Oberst included, she said: "He was always the jokester.")

"The city has transformed since then in such a profound way," Fink said. "The music scene is no longer just Saddle Creek. It's dispersed. More people are playing shows, opening venues. It was a chain reaction I was happy to watch grow."

Even back in 2002, Jenny Lewis, of Rilo Kiley and Saddle Creek, and now a star in her own right, sang about the city's early musical potential: "Bring with you history, and make your hard-earned feast/Then we'll go to Omaha to work and exploit the booming music scene."

SundayMonday on 09/14/2014

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