A building that has stood at the corner of 36th and Cuming for over 100 years is coming down piece by piece.
For the last 27 years the building has served as The Salvation Army's Lied Renaissance Center, helping those who struggle with everything from homelessness to substance abuse.
Before serving as a Salvation Army outpost, the building was the original Methodist Midtown Hospital.
Major Poppy Thompson says it was not an easy decision to tear down the Lied Renaissance Center, but it was much needed. "There came the day when we had to make a really tough decision, and that was can we afford to upgrade this 100 and some year old facility or would it just be better for us to go ahead and put that money into a new facility."
Thompson says it would have been incredibly costly and time intensive to bring the old building up to code and make the updates the facility desperately needed.
Out with the old, means in with the new and Thompson says the new building will be able to serve all of the community's needs. "We've been building for over a year and a half and it's just a lovely, new facility that meets every requirement that we could ever have."
Thompson says the new facility is a modern, upgraded center that will offer the best services for those in need in the Omaha community. "It has better meeting rooms and facilities that we can use to help everything from early childhood education to how to live on your own after you've come out of a residential treatment kind of a program."
The whole project cost about $17 million dollars and although the new building is smaller than the Lied Renaissance Center it houses 30 apartments for low income residents and sixteen beds for their mental health respite program, along with their head start program.
The new building is already open, with residents moving in earlier this spring. The old facility will be completely torn down by the end of the summer and replaced with a parking lot, which should be completed by the fall.
1 of 2 2 of 2