By Ronald Ahrens

Fifteen years of blogging has exposed us to various concepts for the re-use of old grain elevators. Proposals have ranged from interesting to daft.

Consider these examples:

• The sleek Mayer-Osborn elevator in Tempe, Ariz. was going to be made into a hotel, which struck me as daft.
• Two guys from Missouri had cast their eyes from big terminals in Buffalo, N.Y., to San Francisco’s threatened Pier 92, with a mind to developing vertical farms inside the tanks. It seems more practical to adapt other types of buildings for vertical farming.
• In 2012, the Vinton Street terminal complex in Omaha received national attention after the annexes served as the canvas for a public art project; a nonprofit organization commissioned artists to create themed banners that were draped over the silos. Then someone proposed turning the complex into a climbing facility. The art was intriguing, but the climbing facility was daft.

A few weeks ago, after we announced receipt of an archive of family papers and photos, Patrick Mason, director of business development for Dicon Construction, contacted us.

“Any chance they gave you anything related to the Vinton Silos? I am the owner. We are building apartments on the site but preserving some of the bins.”

We haven’t gotten to the blueprints yet, but there are among them records for the Vinton Street complex.

The Vinton Street complex, which was a signature project for Tillotson Construction Co., has been problematic for years. The Reader, which bills itself as “A Service of Nebraska Public Media,” reported “The old grain elevator and silos have sat empty for decades, attracting urban explorers, adventurous teens and an array of graffiti artists. In 2017, a man in his 50s fell about 30 feet, lying hurt with a broken leg until he was discovered at sunrise. In 2024, a teenage girl was seriously injured after falling 20 feet, and another teen was rescued after getting stuck.”

Latest news on the Dicon Construction’s adaptive re-use project is to knock down most of the elevator and annex, saw off a few tanks above ground level, and spent $56.2 million to build an apartment complex. A rendering shows a small building and the pool and patio resting atop the stubs of about 10 sawed-off tanks.

The Omaha City Council was considering Dicon’s application for $10.4 million in tax-increment financing.

The proposed project ranks somewhere between the high point so far, which is the public art project, and the low, which is the idea for a climbing facility. My wife lived two blocks from the elevator and points out the limited circulation of traffic in the neighborhood, which ends up pressing against Interstate 80.

Would hundreds of new residents improve or degrade the neighborhood?

All governmental units are perpetually hungry for added revenue. If the Omaha city council really wants to go ahead with Dicon’s unusual development, the members should have a midafternoon snack to tame their hunger and then think hard about the questions of public safety and the impact of a high-density development at this clogged-up location.

I don’t have an opinion on the appropriateness of the project, although it seems quirky. Nor am I one who thinks every grain elevator should be restored and made into a shrine, as we’re seeing in Broken Arrow, Okla.

One thing to say, though, is that I continue to marvel at the way a derelict grain elevator fires the imagination.