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Several Nebraska towns have weathered the loss of a massive employer, including Sidney in western Nebraska. It was about nine years ago when Cabela’s moved out. Sidney’s City Manager Josh Hanson talked to Nebraska Public Media’s Dale Johnson about how new economic initiatives are helping the city diversify its landscape so it’s not as reliant on a major employer again.
Josh Hanson: Much of the focus of the time wasn't around supporting Cabela's. So now, in the aftermath of that, we're looking at opportunities to broaden that focus and really build a more resilient local economy. And that's where the e3 organization kind of really came in after that closure and really assisted in identifying and prioritizing local entrepreneurship. So I would say we bounced back significantly.
Dale Johnson: That e3 you're referring to, Josh, stands for Energizing Entrepreneurial Ecosystems. If I understand it correctly, it focuses on the local economy, helping local residents and businesses start and expand their small businesses rather than going out and relying on large outside corporations.
Hanson: The e3 side of things was a huge proponent to that. So through some support with the Sidney Donor Advised Fund, e3 was able to bring on an entrepreneur navigator, as well as a technical grant writer, to really work with those startup businesses, some of the existing businesses that we had in town, and just new entrepreneurs that were looking at expanding and transitioning ownership. The overall goal is connecting these new employers and entrepreneurs with the resources, financing options, training opportunities and then professional networks that they needed to succeed so that we didn't take that hard blow when we lost, you know, a good amount of residents initially. And when we're talking about losing residents, Cabela's employed around 2,000 individuals. Our population in Sidney since the 1990s has been sitting around just over 6,000 people, and that's where we're still sitting at today. So we did see a little bit of migration of individuals outside of Sidney, but we've seen a huge influx as well coming back into Sidney.
Johnson: It has to help, too to have the University of Nebraska knocking at your door and stepping into that 450,000 square foot Cabela's footprint.
Hanson: We've had a lot of presence from UNL representatives. They made several site visits, including one of our recent visits with architects and engineering consultants who are looking at conducting facility assessments and working on developing the preliminary classroom concepts for that building. And then we're also looking at corporate building one and kind of evaluating the feasibility of repurposing that building as well for some student housing, or just kind of exploring some opportunities for additional development with some of those existing acres of just new structures for that housing.
Johnson: Right now, what tops your to-do list?
Hanson: On the economic development side, we're really looking at the housing side of things. Over the last year even, we have had four or five single-family houses that have been completed. Three of them that have been sold, and one that's currently pending. We have two more that are getting ready to be completed by October of this year. We have six more scheduled to be completed by October 2027. So right now we're really prioritizing the housing side of things. We have just over 130 shovel-ready lots, and that's including the ones that we've already have sold that we're working on the housing side of things. So one of my big focuses out of the single-family housing is multifamily housing as well. We just filed for the opportunity zone because we had a census tract designation from the state for the opportunity to actually become an opportunity zone for about half of the city of Sidney, and within that census tract sits a multifamily housing unit called Sioux Villa on the north side of Sidney that used to be an old army barracks that they kind of reconfigured years ago to be in multifamily housing. We're really wanting to prioritize completely revamping and rehabilitating that area to establish additional brand new multifamily housing. We're looking at about 12 acres that we can develop, and right now we're just kind of waiting to see if we can get that designation of an opportunity zone because it'll be additional tax incentives for developers to come in and really build up our multifamily housing.
Johnson: Now we know more about Sidney, Nebraska, uniquely located less than an hour's drive from the Wyoming border and less than a 15-minute drive to Colorado. Josh Hanson joining me for the conversation, city manager for Sidney, Nebraska. I'm Dale Johnson, Nebraska Public Media News.