EDITOR’S NOTE: As North Omaha becomes a focus of public and private entities, it can sometimes appear as if a land grab is underway. In response to community concerns that outside interests are asserting major influence in the ownership and control of North O property, NOISE asked a prime player in real estate holdings, Susie Buffett, to explain the rationale and process behind acquisitions made by her Sherwood Foundation and RH Land Management. NOISE does receive grant funding from the Sherwood Foundation, and we maintain full editorial and publishing control of our content.
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By Leo Adam Biga

Susie Buffett is an American philanthropist who is the daughter of Warren Buffett.

If urban redevelopment is to meet the critical mass necessary for the community to thrive again, then stakeholders agree investments must come from public and private sources from both within and outside the community.

Among the many players investing in North Omaha is a name bearing much weight and history here and elsewhere: Buffett.

The Highlander Village is located at 2120 North 30th St.

The late Susan Thompson Buffett, the first wife of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, made North Omaha a personal cause through social and charitable activities she championed during the Civil Rights Movement and beyond. Though not as directly involved, her Berkshire Hathaway chairman husband supported her efforts. The couple’s only daughter, Susie Buffett, continues that legacy by serving on boards of various North Omaha organizations and making philanthropic gifts through her Sherwood Foundation. Both father and daughter are major supporters of the Highlander Village purpose built community, a $90 million anchor point on the North 30th Street corridor at 2120 North 30th St., and the parent Seventy Five North Revitalization Corp. that developed it.

Her foundation is a driving force behind an Educare center, Girls Inc. and The Union for Contemporary Art. just to name a few other North O endeavors. Last spring, the Omaha World-Herald reported that a company associated with Buffett and Sherwood, RH Land Management, has acquired more than $4 million in properties in that area over the last decade. The three dozen or so properties range from abandoned churches to a row of business suites to open lots.

In an interview with NOISE, Buffett said all the acquisitions are meant to stabilize and improve neighborhoods and are only made at the behest of area organizations or individuals. In some cases, problem properties are secured and then razed to make way for new development. There is an emphasis on extracting properties from absentee, long-distance owners or preventing properties from falling in the hands of such owners.

Buffett’s concerted efforts there are not incidental.

“I have a very long history in North Omaha,” she said, “My mother was so deep in the community. I watched my mother work in that community. She was not just writing checks and sitting in her little white neighborhood. My dad wasn’t as active because he was going to the office every day, but he was a hundred percent behind my mother in every way philosophically and supported her in everything she did.”

Girls Inc. CEO Roberta Wilhelm got a dramatic appreciation for how much the mother, who also went by Susie, meant to the community when a procession of women and men bearing food showed up at the 45th and Maple facility after her death.

“She passed on the day of our community playground build,” Wilhelm recalled. “It was a chaotic day. There was little parking. I saw folks coming up the hill, walking, with pans of food and at first I thought it was for the volunteers we were feeding. But I discovered it was for ‘Ms. Susie’s family.’ A couple of them told me about things she had helped with in the community or how much she would be missed. More than one person told me ‘we had a special bond.’ I realized they were talking about Susie senior. She definitely had a way of making everyone feel special.”

The daughter feels her own rooted connection to the community that her mother made such an impression on.

“I spent a huge amount of my childhood back in the early ‘60s in that community. I taught sewing in the housing projects (Pleasantview) at 30th and Parker when I was in high school. I remember when North 24th Street was burning in the riots. You know, it doesn’t look all that much better (50-plus years later). It makes me so sad. I don’t know what the answer is.”

Girls Inc. is located at 2811 N 45th St.

Her own support of North Omaha runs deep and that includes Girls Inc. “Sherwood has funded our operations as well as special projects like the Katherine Fletcher Center expansion, where they provided the lead gift of $5 million,” Wilhelm said. “As the lead donor, they could have had their name on the facility but felt Susan Buffett would have liked to have had her friend Katherine Fletcher honored with the naming. Sherwood also contributed to our South O facility renovations and the renovation of a convent converted into Protégé House transitional housing on North 65th Avenue.”

Buffett is trying to align her efforts in North Omaha with revitalization initiatives by the city and community to address housing, healthcare, education, and other needs there.

“Seven or eight years ago we added up how much money we have put into North Omaha and at the time it was around $96 million,” Buffett said. “It would be a very different number now. I would count certain things, like all the stuff we do in North Omaha schools, as part of that giving. We’re putting a lot of money into a lot of schools in North Omaha to do things that would not be happening otherwise. And I think that matters.”

Howard Kennedy Elementary is one beneficiary of that giving. Nearly 98 percent of Kennedy students qualify for free or reduced lunch and nearly one-quarter are refugees. With support from Sherwood and in partnership with the Omaha Public Schools district, the school has a dramatically increased budget and staff and has added early childhood education; a curriculum focused on science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM), project-based learning; and a longer school day and year.

While the Buffett-Sherwood name is prominent in North Omaha, Susie is quick to point out other white philanthropists, such as the Weitzes and Loziers, invest there as well.

She told the Los Angeles Times, “It’s not just me. There are a lot of people participating and a lot of good things in Omaha. We can make a pretty big dent I hope.”

She’s also cognizant that some folks have a problem with investors like her, namely a wealthy white philanthropist who doesn’t live in North Omaha, placemaking in their community.

“People are going to say, well, she shouldn’t be doing that, she’s rich, she’s white, she’s whatever,” she said.

There is a consensus of approval among area organization CEOs and elected officials for what Buffett does in North Omaha.

Michael Maroney on the front cover of Revive! Magazine - a community newsroom focused on elevating Black voices in our community.

Michael Maroney, CEO of Omaha Economic Development Corporation, echoes many others in saying that redevelopment of the long stagnant area must be led by a wide array of change agents. He sees good intentions and positive outcomes from Sherwood investments in North O. He points to the Highlander on North 30th Street as a prime example.

“I think it adds value. It’s a one hundred percent turnaround,” he said.

As for other Sherwood projects, he said, “They’re welcome additions to those neighborhoods.”

Omaha City Councilman Ben Gray has expressed trust in the Buffett track record to date in North Omaha.

On a grassroots level, some residents want greater community input before acquisitions are made and organizations move in, say a pair of community advocates. Long School Neighborhood Association president Juanita Johnson and OIC Neighborhood Association president Tanya Cooper. The women say the residents they represent want a say before certain community properties get exchanged or reused.

“I think people need to speak up and come together about what they want to see and don't want to see in the neighborhood, but the only way we’re going to be able to do that is if we’re included at the beginning,” Cooper said.

Johnson agrees and calls for a mechanism that “invites residents who will ultimately be impacted by the change to have a voice at the table from the beginning through the end of a project.”

When Sherwood-RH takes action with a building or lot in a given area, Buffett said it does communicate with the relevant neighborhood association, neighboring business owners and others. Questions and concerns about what’s happening with a property can be made to Sherwood, said Buffett, who adds that she often fields such inquiries herself. If messages are directed to her specifically, she noted, she does respond.

“I’m not inaccessible. If people want to know what’s going on, call the foundation, ask us.”

An important point that Buffett feels gets lost in the fervor over local control is that there is a process involved in how properties come to Sherwood’s attention and what happens with them.

“I’m not the one deciding what happens with any of this. We don’t identify them. We’ve never identified one property for acquisition. We don’t drive around looking for properties to buy in North Omaha. We’ve never bought anything unless someone from North Omaha asked us to buy it. We don’t go around asking for advice about what to buy.”

There is a temptation to equate the Buffett presence there with the influence wielded by another old-monied family, the Mercers, in the Old Market. But where the Mercers are for-profit entrepreneurs, Susie Buffett’s foundation is non-profit, and where the Mercers’ holdings and operations are concentrated in a defined district, Buffett’s are dispersed over a large segment of the Omaha community.

Indeed, Buffett senses there is a general misconception that she or Sherwood somehow profits from the properties, when in fact the properties are acquired, maintained, and sometimes donated as part of a philanthropic charter.

“We’re not buying anything to make money,” Buffett said, “All of the real estate transactions either break even or lose money.”

Another misperception, she suggested, is that Sherwood-RH cultivates properties by some design or agenda. The World-Herald inferred as much in its May story, saying Buffett was not revealing her “plans.” The story further fanned speculation or suspicion when Buffett and her staff refused comment. However, Susie Buffett has commented to national press about her philanthropy in Omaha, telling the Los Angeles Times, “We are trying to touch everybody in Omaha in so many different ways. Starting with the public schools. I would say that gets just about every kid. And we’re doing so many different things in the public schools.”

Her support of public education often happens through grant support of nonprofits that work directly with schools, such as the millions it gives to Seventy Five North, which in turn partners with neighboring Howard Kennedy School.

Sherwood’s Educare centers (there are two in South Omaha as well) are another example. “I wish we had an Educare for every child who would be eligible,” she told the L.A. Times.

NOISE asked Buffett to go on the record in her hometown in order to help inform the community at large about her actions.

“People keep asking me ‘what’s your plan?’ My ‘plan’ is to donate the properties to organizations and groups who can use them or to maintain them so the neighborhoods don’t go down hill. And if someone wants them for a charitable purpose, they can have them,” she told NOISE.

Of prime interest to Buffett is stemming the tide of properties held by neglectful owners, many living out of state, who let the properties run down and become eyesores or worse.

“They don’t care about the properties or the community, they just want to rip people off by renting the properties and not taking care of them. We buy them so that doesn’t happen because people ask us to do that. We’re buying properties in certain areas of the community when people ask us to buy it to protect it from ending up with that kind of a landlord.”

The approach taken by Sherwood is a holding action akin to what the Omaha Municipal Land Bank does. At the request of organizations, Sherwood-RH Land Management obtains, manages, and maintains properties to prevent them from deteriorating until the time they are reactivated and become neighborhood assets again.

“We end up mowing the lawn, shoveling snow, planting flowers, spending money to maintain the properties. Then, if there’s a reason to do something with them – if some nonprofit comes along with a use for it, we donate it. We generally assist financially when we donate the property. We don’t go into places and say ‘here is what you should do’. How would I know what’s supposed to go on in other people’s communities? Many times we have come in and purchased a property because someone from the community said, ‘hey, we want to fix this up or we want to put this here or we want to build this’. There’s tons of that.”

The Union for Contemporary Arts is located at 2423 N 24th St.

An illustration of this was Sherwood securing the historic but long empty Blue Lion Center at 24th and Lake as the new home for The Union for Contemporary Art. Extensive renovations were made to the three connected buildings comprising the center. The reuse designed by Alley Poyner Macchietto Architects has won national recognition. Since moving into the space in 2016, the Union has helped reactivate the historic intersection it stands on with exhibitions, residencies, classes and co-op activities.

Union for Contemporary Arts Founder/Executive Director Brigitte McQueen-Shew — Union for Contemporary Arts Founder/Executive Director Brigitte McQueen

Before occupying the Blue Lion, The Union operated out of a former food bank facility, where it found support from the Weitz Family Foundation, the Omaha Community Foundation and individual philanthropists such as Paul and Annette Smith. The game-changer for the nonprofit came when Sherwood and the Peter Kiewit Foundation came on board as donors.

“That of course opened doors for us,” UNION founder-executive director Brigitte McQueen said.

Sherwood then acquired the Blue Lion complex from the City of Omaha and proceeded to pick up the entire multi-million dollar tab for its renovation. Sherwood was one of the key players, McQueen said, that took a “leap of faith” with her, importantly, it was her vision for the Blue Lion, not Buffett’s or the foundation’s, that Sherwood literally bought into.

When McQueen made known her plan for the center, Sherwood saw it as a positive community addition to a critical corner in need of new activity.

Supporting redevelopment on the North 24 Street Corridor, the historic hub of Omaha’s Black community, is part of a Sherwood-RH strategy. Buffett said her organizations concentrate on acquisitions there, especially in and around 24th and Lake, in support of community and city efforts to revive it as a cultural district.

A more recent example of this was Sherwood-RH buying a row of bays north of Love’s Jazz and Art Center facing North 24th Street. “The owner came to us and asked us if we wanted to buy it,” Buffett explained. Improvements are being made to those office suites and businesses, including installation of new HVAC systems.

Another focus of Sherwood-RH real estate activity is the area surrounding Highlander Village between Lake and Hamilton Streets and between 30th Street and U.S. Highway 75. The development group that built and manages Highlander, Seventy Five North Revitalization Corp., takes its name from the highway that severed the community. Sherwood is a prime funder of Seventy Five North, whose Highlander is built on the site of former public housing projects. The mixed-use development is an attempt at bridging gaps through quality affordable housing and community amenities, including a coffee shop, eateries, adult continuing-ed classes, health screenings and indoor-outdoor event spaces.

Former Seventy Five North CEO Othello Meadows worked with Sherwood-RH to keep the area free of unwanted influences.

“We buy a lot of properties around Seventy Five North, the 30th and Parker area,” Buffett said. “Some of the things we bought because Othello (Meadows) called us. We saw to it that a dollar store didn’t move in next door. That’s a perfect example.”

New Seventy Five North CEO Cydney Franklin confirmed that Buffett’s support in these ways not only keeps bad actors at bay but nurtures community enrichment efforts so that the area can flourish.

“The Sherwood Foundation, like many of Omaha's philanthropic groups, support nonprofits all over the city and their missions,”

**– Seventy Five North CEO Cydney Franklin**

“The Sherwood Foundation, like many of Omaha's philanthropic groups, support nonprofits all over the city and their missions,” Franklin said, “Sometimes that support is in the form of real estate and land accessibility. But more often the support is for community-serving programs or operating needs. Some of the most cherished and respected organizations in North Omaha and across Omaha, sit on land or in buildings donated by philanthropic organizations. The Sherwood Foundation is one of more than 30 foundation and corporate funders that support Seventy North's mission to strengthen North Omaha's Highlander neighborhood. Any local philanthropic funding received by Seventy Five North supports our goals to build and make available high-quality mixed-income housing, community resources and a strengthened neighborhood education system.”

In the case of North Star Foundation, 4242 North 49th Ave., Buffett monies funded the acquisition and razing of properties with high incidences of crime, adjacent to where the nonprofit wanted to build an education and activity center for boys vulnerable to negative influences. What helped convince Buffett the project was needed in the community was the insistence of parents such as Barbara Robinson. Her daughters attended Girls Inc., but her sons had no equivalent program to attend.

According to Buffett, “Every time I ran into Barbara, she said, ‘You need to build Boys Inc.’ When we had the groundbreaking I said, ‘Barbara, this is for you. You are the one who asked for this. You said we needed a place for boys, which I agreed we did.’”

“It was not because I decided it needed to happen,” added Buffett, “it was because there were parents at Girls Inc. saying how come there’s no place for just the boys.”

“When we built North Star there was property across the street from there to the east owned I think totally by out-of-town landlords. It was a well known area with the police because there was so much awful stuff going and the properties were dangerous. We bought those because we wanted to tear down what really was a mess and couldn’t really be fixed. We ended up getting the street changed because it was a dead end which caused more crime. We did that because nobody wanted that going on across the street from where the North Star kids are.”

Generally speaking, she pointed out, “We’ve never bought anything that wasn’t from someone asking us if we wanted to buy it. We’re acquiring at the request of either the current owners or people in the community.”

Rodney Evans (pictured far right) with the MAYS team. MAYS stands for Metro Area Youth Services.

More recently, her team acquired the vacant St. Paul Lutheran Church and school at 5020 Grand Ave, looking to match it with a pro-active community purpose for it. They found the right fit in MAYS (Metro Area Youth Services) Foundation, which had outgrown its old space at 50th and Ames Ave, and was seeking a new home.

“The work we were doing came to the attention of the Sherwood Foundation,” MAYS founder and CEO Rodney Evans said. “They wanted to be as supportive as they could for what we’ve got going.”

When he first inquired about the former St. Paul complex, the asking price was beyond his means. He was shown other properties owned by Buffett’s interests. But he decided to press for the former church and school because it was in his group’s service area.

“I asked if it’s something they’d be willing to partner with us on and they were like, we'd love to help expand your program.”

Clinching the deal, he said, was aligning his program with a vision for a youth serving campus there to include a potential Sherwood-led mental health residency program. “They asked if I would like to be a part of it and I said absolutely. That’s kind of how we got into this space.” Evans is in talks with community partners to house satellite activities at the campus.

Not every property that comes to Sherwood’s attention is one it is prepared to purchase or interested in purchasing. “We’ve had people come to us and ask us if we want to buy things,” Buffett said, “and they’re overpriced, so we don’t buy them.”

“Young people would rather have Black residents in the community buying the buildings. So would I. ”

**– Susie Buffett**

Artist portrait of Buffet created by Ryan Melger.

Buffett is acutely aware that some observers may question why, as she puts it, “the white girl with all the money,” is buying property in North Omaha. “There are people who are always going to think that about me. There are also lots of people in North Omaha who do know me and know what my motives are.”

She wants cynics to know that “what we’re buying isn’t exactly prime property,” she said. “Young people would rather have Black residents in the community buying the buildings. So would I. But that’s not happening. There’s a whole bunch of stuff we would all rather have happening.”

Until Black entrepreneurs and developers can do more placemaking at scale, she says, she’ll continue trying to stem blight. “I don’t want the pay day lenders or bad landlords going in.”

She reiterated that anyone who has an issue with her M.O, is welcome to air it out with her. “The people that are concerned can call me at the foundation or email me.”

Ultimately, she feels her part in the mosaic of public-private efforts focused on revitalizing North Omaha is a calling she cannot refuse.

“If I wasn’t doing this with the money I have, my mother would come back from wherever she is and bop me on the head and say what is wrong with you, were you not listening. I could not in good conscience live in this city and have the opportunities I have just because I happen to be born into the family I was born into if I did not try to make the whole community the best place it could be for everyone. And a big part of that is North Omaha.”

Visit the Sherwood Foundation website at sherwoodfoundation.org
Direct questions to Susie Buffett or her team at 402.341.1717 or info@sherwoodfoundation.org

Susie Buffett addresses the role her Sherwood Foundation and RH Land Management play in North Omaha property acquisitions

By Leo Adam Biga