$17.5M OneWorld building marks milestone in $235M South and North Omaha state grant program 

​​​​OMAHA — A $17.5 million facility, funded largely by the state, soon will rise and expand the OneWorld Community Health Centers headquarters that currently spans 13 acres of the historic South Omaha stockyards area.

The new three-story structure is to be multipurpose, used as a training ground for healthcare workers, a center point for future pandemics and epidemics and to provide more behavioral health and child care services.

Construction is to start Friday, making it the biggest newly constructed project to break ground so far in South Omaha as a result of the $235 million North and South Omaha recovery grant program. The North-South grants were the key part of a broader economic development package hatched in 2022, approved by the Nebraska Legislature and Gov. Jim Pillen in 2023, and aimed at spurring jobs and reinvestment in some of the most disenfranchised neighborhoods in Nebraska.

‘No surprise’

The funding source for the North-South initiative started with deadline-strapped COVID-19 federal dollars, but a swap with state dollars later occurred to allow more time for a complex slate of projects to develop. 

Sharing the $235 million in North and South Omaha recovery grants are about 130 groups and businesses, whose selection by state officials were  based on potential for helping to reverse disinvestment.

Of the dollars earmarked for South Omaha, $64 million was awarded to Canopy South as the overseer of major projects for itself and six other nonprofits, including OneWorld, whose share was $9.5 million. 

Canopy South CEO Cesar Garcia said OneWorld is the farthest along of that group, with the others in various earlier stages of planning and development.

“No surprise,” he said, as OneWorld has been established over a half-century, since 1970. It provides affordable health care for more than 52,000 patients annually at 20 clinic locations in Omaha, Bellevue and Plattsmouth. And it had a jumpstart on an expansion vision.

The remainder of the OneWorld building’s cost is to be covered primarily by an ongoing fundraising campaign and philanthropic donations — including a surprise gift from the foundation of MacKenzie Scott, author and former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

True to form, the MacKenzie Scott gift came out of the blue, with a phone call that OneWorld CEO Andrea Skolkin thought was a “scam.” The reality was a $7.5 million gift (about $1.5 million of which is to go toward the new building), making OneWorld among the 2,450-plus nonprofits that since 2019 have shared in more than $19 billion “to use as they see fit for the benefit of others.”

Culturally-appropriate service gaps

Skolkin says the planned 29,000-square-foot facility — the fourth building at its campus near 30th and L Streets, which is anchored by the 11-story, H-shaped Livestock Exchange Building  — will help fill crucial  service gaps in the city. 

Already, the clinics are bursting at the seams, she said. “This is really about making sure everyone has access to care.”

OneWorld, as a federally qualified health center, provides comprehensive primary care and support services to underserved populations, offering a sliding fee discount scale to eligible patients. About 98% of its patients live at or below 200% of the federal poverty level. 

Skolkin said the organization’s federally-funded mission is to provide a comfortable and trusting environment for all, including new immigrants. 

“The need for quality, culturally-appropriate health care is only increasing in our community,” she said. 

OneWorld prides itself, she said, in the fact that 65% of employees are bilingual in English and Spanish. The clinic has staff able to communicate in other languages spoken, for example, by newcomers from Guatemala and Myanmar.

Child care, behavioral health, crises

Called the OneWorld Health Care Workforce Development Center, the new building will be built on a grassy area and parking lot east of the trio of buildings that currently make up the OneWorld campus. 

One floor is to feature training and upskilling for OneWorld staff and the larger community. Another is designed to expand and assure behavioral health services for people who face language and other barriers to care. 

Yet another level is to be operated by South Omaha-based Kids Can Community Center, and licensed for 90 children, addressing the shortage of childcare and early childhood educational development services for underserved families and OneWorld employees.

The two organizations working together are doing more than filling gaps,” said Kids Can CEO Robert Patterson. “We are building bridges to connect our families to a bright, healthy future,” he said.

An assembly area and drive-through testing area is to be carved out for potential epidemic or pandemic crises.

Overall, up to 50 full-time health care positions are to be created and result in expanded access to medical, dental, behavioral health, pharmacy and support services, OneWorld says.

With a groundbreaking event scheduled Friday at 4915 S. 30th St., OneWorld hopes to wrap up construction by the close of 2026.

Under guidelines of the North and South Omaha recovery grant program, the funds are to be spent by the end of 2027. 

Creating a ‘buzz’

State Sen. Terrell McKinney was a primary pusher of the North and South Omaha funding, along with then-State Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha. The South Omaha lawmakers at the time who helped champion the legislation, Tony Vargas and Mike McDonnell, also were term-limited.

“Things are moving,” McKinney said. “Most of the projects are on schedule.”

Perhaps the largest state-assisted project so far to come out of the ground in the North Omaha area was a Pacific Engineering Inc. manufacturing facility. PEI was awarded $10 million from the fund.

This point of progress for the grant program comes after a long, winding and often controversial path.

Skolkin said she’s seen little public investment in South Omaha, relative to other parts of the city. “This investment — it creates jobs, it creates activity, and kind of a buzz and positive momentum, showing that also the state and others are investing in the well-being of South Omaha so that’s an overarching impact.”

From a broader view, Skolkin said her staff is aware of “a lot of rhetoric and a lot of executive orders” that target programs reaching out to diverse populations. To date, she said, her health care network has not received word or guidance from its federal funding source of a need to change operations.

“Right now we still promote ‘DEI.’  That is who we are and have been since the beginning of time,” Skolkin said. “We just want to make sure that everyone gets the health care they need.”

Under the Canopy South umbrella

Of about 130 winners of North and South Omaha recovery grants, the largest recipient was Canopy South, which is serving as a “community quarterback” of sorts in managing over $64 million dispersed among seven entities.

Overall, $234,420,003 in grants was awarded for projects in the two urban communities of Nebraska’s largest city.

To be sure, numerous South Omaha businesses, nonprofits and  applicants beyond Canopy South — including El Museo Latino, Completely Kids and the Stephen Center  — received funding awards on their own. Some have started or even completed renovation or building projects.

But so far, the OneWorld building project under the Canopy South umbrella is believed to be the largest of the South Omaha ventures to start on its construction phase. Groundbreaking is scheduled Friday. 

Others under Canopy South management are in various planning stages: 

• Latino Economic Development Council, $25 million to makeover Plaza de la Raza parking lot into an amphitheater and community gathering or tourism area; to build a replacement parking structure elsewhere in South Omaha and to improve area streetscape and alleys. 

• Girls Inc., $11.2 million to help build a new South Omaha center, expected to rise in the grassy lot across from the Omaha South High football and soccer stadium. 

• Latino Center of the Midlands, $2.8 million to rehab its South Omaha headquarters.

• Simple Foundation, $7.8 million to overhaul its South Omaha headquarters.

• Lending Link, $1 million, to help homeowners, particularly around the South Omaha Q Street corridor, improve their properties.

• Canopy South, about $4.7 million, for multimodal improvements and a trail along and around Q Street, 27th to 36th Streets; provide free public Wi-Fi in the Upland Park area; establish a community coffee shop at Heartland Workforce Solutions on 24th near J Street. Canopy South also uses 5% of the total funds to manage the overall grant.