Yet another big year for North Platte development in the cards for 2025

In a historical sense, 2025 will be North Platte’s most momentous economic year in two decades with April’s scheduled opening of the Sustainable Beef meatpacking plant. In a practical sense, the coming year fits into a multiyear evolution of development visions — particularly regarding housing — that will need the rest of the 2020s to fully unfold. “Now it’s (time for) the infrastructure and building up the (housing) inventory,” said Gary Person, president and CEO of the North Platte Area Chamber & Development Corp.

“You’ll see the results over the next three decades and significant results in the next five years.” Here's a recap of the status and hoped-for 2025 progress of North Platte-area development projects as 2024 ends. This view of North Platte's nearly completed Sustainable Beef LLC looks southwest from the 556,000-square-foot meatpacking plant's east end.



Economic projects across North Platte and from Hershey to Lee Bird Field — some related, some less so — will continue to take shape before the plant's scheduled March 24 ribbon-cutting. The $325 million-plus, 556,000-square-foot Sustainable Beef plant is about 90% complete at 26 months into construction, CEO David Briggs said. Hiring of the first 100 employees, he said, will accompany the final push toward Sustainable Beef’s ribbon-cutting March 24 — four years and six days after it was first proposed.

Briggs said the plant will gradually reach its capacity of 1,500 head per day and 800-plus employees by the end of 2025. City Council members threw their support behind Sustainable Beef in December 2021 and sold it a retired sewer lagoon for the plant’s site. Construction workers are framing the first three-unit "triplex" townhome at North Platte's 250-unit Village Park Flats housing development on West A Street near Eisenhower Elementary School.

Blue Sky Development LLC Brian Hall of Roca says the first units could be ready for occupancy by spring. Leaders of Blue Sky Development LLC of Roca broke ground Nov. 18 for the Village Park Flats development the council approved in July 2023.

The 250-unit project’s west edge will border DP Development LLC’s Victory Village apartments, which continue to grow toward a final 240-unit size. Framing work has started on the first of an eventual 48 triplexes. Blue Sky CEO Brian Hall said his firm expects to finish 12 triplexes, six single-family homes and three duplexes in 2025.

The first rental units could be occupied by spring, he said, depending on weather and progress on building Preston Drive on the west side and extending Dixie Avenue on its east. Besides the triplexes, he said, Village Park Flats will have 62 single-family homes and 22 townhomes when fully built in about five years. Victory Village, which dedicated its first 80 units in July 2022, won council backing Dec.

3 for a third 40-unit phase. Work on the 120-unit middle phase continues, DP President Brian Reilly said, but six of its 15 “eightplexes” are available for rent. The other nine are being framed.

He said tenant demand has remained brisk throughout the project, which won council approval in February 2020 but didn’t start construction for a year. Phase 3 of Victory Village will use much of the land DP had designated for “neighborhood commercial” use. The project’s southwest corner remains available for that, Reilly said.

North of the Union Pacific tracks, the chamber’s 51-lot Mulligan Meadows modular housing development has filled in its first eight single-family lots. A replat approved Dec. 17 lays out the next 16.

The chamber has applied for a $1.44 million Nebraska Rural Workforce Housing Grant to add three rental fourplexes on Mulligan Meadows’ south. Person said the grant, combined with a $360,000 local match from the city’s Quality Growth Fund, would establish a housing revolving-loan fund with project manufacturer BonnaVilla Homes its first recipient.

Ground may be broken this spring on Horizon Builders of Grand Island’s nearby 42-unit townhome development. Owner Josh Rhoads said he hopes to finish and lease a majority of his six “sevenplexes” by the end of 2025. Several upper floors in North Platte’s Canteen District are being renovated or converted to lure residents downtown.

They include Dave and Traci Hoatson’s Knights of Columbus Building and, two doors south, Charles Burwick’s McCabe and Hotel McCabe buildings. Burwick said he’s just finishing renovation of the McCabe pair’s 19th and last apartment. The others are occupied, he said.

He’s also doing a $350,000 to $400,000 main-floor renovation, started after the Good Life on the Bricks restaurant closed after a May 1 fire. A new eating place is planned in the main part of the restaurant and former Doris’ Tavern bar. The southeast corner will hold a different type of business, Burwick said.

Decades' worth of brush has been cleared away at the site of North Platte's planned 28-unit Canteen Commons apartment complex, across North Chestnut Street from the city's Federal Building. Developer Charles Burwick said he's aiming to have the first 14-unit building ready for tenants in fall 2025. Groundbreaking should take place soon for Burwick’s 28-unit Canteen Commons apartment complex, approved in June on the long-vacant west side of the block east of the Federal Building.

“We’re just doing the big macro stuff” at the moment, Burwick said, including plans to install utilities and replace a large city electrical transformer. He hopes to have the first 14-unit apartment building ready for lease next fall. MADD Properties LLC's renovation of North Platte's 1941 Sixth Street Market building, at East Sixth Street and Bailey Avenue, has recently exposed the building's telltale curved northwest corner visible in 1945 U.

S. Army Signal Corps footage of the city and World War II Canteen. The lower floor of the block-long building and former warehouse is being redone as business space, while the warehouse's upper floor is being transformed into 10 apartments.

MADD Properties LLC is renovating both floors — business spaces below and apartments above — of its 1941 Sixth Street Market building. Partner Jeff Moore said MADD soon should be ready to drywall seven one-bedroom and three two-bedroom second-floor apartments. A construction worker moves dirt at the once-condemned 50-unit Elms Lodge and Sherbeck Apartments on East Fourth Street in North Platte, now being rehabilitated to cater to potential workers at the city's soon-to-open Sustainable Beef meatpacking plant.

The City Council gave its blessing in April to modernize the condemned 50-unit Elms Lodge and Sherbeck Apartments near Memorial Park. Jacob Erdei of Omaha, who co-owns North Platte Complex LLC with his brother Elijah, said two fourplexes fronting Bryan have been rehabilitated. Half of its units are occupied, with the others set aside for construction workers, he said.

Renovations continue on the 16-unit building on Elms Lodge’s north side and a 10-unit one on its east. The brothers plan rents of $750 to $850 per month, with utilities and high-speed WiFi included. If Sustainable Beef hires someone needing a home, Erdei said, “they’ll have a place to stay that day without having to turn anything on, provided they pass the background checks.

” Commercial projects, led by the District 177 refit of North Platte’s mall, account for construction activity south of Philip Avenue and around and south of Interstate 80 Exit 177. The central part and northeast corner of the 1972 main mall have yet to be redeveloped. Owners Rev Development LLC also plan a second mixed-use apartment-retail building near East Francis Street, co-owners Mike Works and Justin Hernandez have said.

North Platte-based Kwik Stop, a convenience-store chain stretching across western Nebraska and northeast Colorado, has begun building its first North Platte store south of Interstate 80 at West Walker Road and Buffalo Bill Avenue on the road to Lake Maloney. South of I-80, construction has begun on a Kwik Stop convenience store on Buffalo Bill Avenue and is nearly complete on a new Murphy Tractor & Equipment home on U.S.

Highway 83. North Platte's first Chick-Fil-A restaurant is expected to open in early 2025 in Interstate 80 Exit 177's northwest quadrant, on the site of a former Pizza Hut. A new Chick-Fil-A restaurant is expected to open in early 2025 in Exit 177’s northwest quadrant.

In the northeast quadrant, Keenan Management LLC welcomed Jersey Mike’s Subs to its Dunkin’ Donuts building in September. Keenan also owns land annexed in summer 2019 between there and the NPPD Canal. As Sustainable Beef construction nears its end, the site of North Platte’s largest-ever housing development has yet to be disturbed between Philip and the South Platte River.

Groundbreaking is expected by March 1 for the mixed-use project and its eventual 800 or more housing units, said Midwest Land Development LLC partner Austin Hillis of Ashland. KOW Council LLC, a group of local investors, led the way in assembling 222 acres of vacant farmland. That includes 65 acres the city will sell on the south end of North Platte Industrial Park.

The City Council first approved the project in March, then agreed in August to reconfigure Midwest Land’s lot and street plan to add 215 more housing units. Parks and retail and light industrial areas also are planned. Hillis said Midwest Land always planned to bring in Collaboration Real Estate of Urbandale, Iowa, to build and lease the development’s apartments, townhomes and row houses.

Groundbreaking will be followed by construction of extensions of South McCabe Avenue and East Francis and layout of building sites, he said. Midwest Land then will start building the first 46 of an envisioned 400-plus single-family homes. Hillis said half of those 46 may be done by late 2025.

“It’s a rinse-and-repeat model” that will take several years to complete, he said. “We really feel this is the next phase of how housing is needed in North Platte. .

.. It’s still a substantial need.

” Collaboration will start building the first apartment buildings south of Philip in April, managing member Mike Stessman said. Construction of a child care/early childhood center on Philip will start in the summer, he said. Three other retail lots are available on Philip, with light industrial lots on the project’s east.

Across the South Platte, Chief Development LLC has been working since 2019 toward a “senior living” complex and commercial projects between the NPPD Canal and I-80. Their plans include an evolution of the former Iron Eagle Golf Course, purchased from the city in 2021. Framing has been completed on Wilkinson Development LLC's Fat Dogs Truck and Travel Center, the first retail building in the northeast quadrant of Interstate 80's 40-year-old Exit 179 at North Platte's Newberry Access.

It's expected to open sometime in summer 2025. Wilkinson Development Inc. won council backing in April 2023 for a multiuse development in I-80 Exit 179’s northeast quadrant.

Chief Operating Officer Clarine Eickhoff said it hopes by summer to open its Fat Dogs Truck and Travel Center, which is framed out. The North Platte chamber has finished building streets to open up the rest of Twin Rivers Business Park along East State Farm Road, Person said. Construction has begun at the 105-year-old North Platte Regional Airport on the first new passenger terminal since 1952 at the first lighted U.

S. airfield. The $29.

6 million Lee Bird Field project is mostly being built with federal funds. The most far-flung projects are near the U.P.

tracks at Hershey, home to the Port of the Plains rail park and inland port authority, and at Lee Bird Field, where construction has begun on a $29.6 million passenger terminal. The North Platte chamber, Lincoln County and the inland port share responsibility for building out the 300-acre rail park project launched in 2020.

A small transloading yard is being designed, and White River Nutrition LLC of Omaha recently received an extension on its exclusive right to develop a “soybean crush” plant as the first anchor tenant, Person said. A 2024 state law will allow Lee Bird to be part of the inland port, he said. Ground was broken Oct.

8 on its unrelated terminal project, most of which will be paid for by federal funds. Get local news delivered to your inbox! Special projects reporter {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items..