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Maybe Lynn Johnson couldn’t play favorites when he was in charge of all the city parks, but now that he’s retired the truth comes out: Pioneers Park was at the top of his list.

That made it seem like the perfect place to name a building after the man who — for the past 22 years — led a department that oversees parks, swimming pools, trees, plants and the city’s recreational activities.

After Johnson announced his retirement, members of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board and the Lincoln Parks Foundation discussed how best to honor him. The nature education building in his favorite park seemed appropriate.

The building on the west end of the park opened in 2020 — three years after a blaze destroyed its predecessor.

The building checked all the boxes: It’s designed for summer camp students and sits on 2 acres of buffalo grass lawn and prairies. It has exterior shower heads to clean off dirty campers, a covered patio, two glass garage-style doors, a kitchenette and a small office.

And a cupola on top — one of the design elements that Johnson envisioned.

Johnson’s fingerprints are all over the city — capital projects, native landscape design, preserved greenspace, protected prairie, all manner of youth development programs.

“They agreed this would be a wonderful way to recognize Lynn and the legacy he’s left for us,� said Denise Pearce, Lincoln Parks and Recreation social projects administrator. “This nature center building represents so many facets of his work — education, recreation and community outreach.�

The City Council will hold a public hearing and vote on the proposal to rename the Lynn Johnson Nature Education Building on Monday.

Fire inspectors ruled arsonists started the blaze that destroyed the old building and insurance proceeds paid for much of the $400,000 cost of the new one, along with donations and funds appropriated in the city's capital improvement program.

Mostly, it's home base for summer nature camp programs, but it also is a starting point for school hikes, Girl Scout badge classes and soon — Johnson's supporters hope — a way to honor a man who spent much of his career making sure places like it exist.

Old project and new sidewalks

Sidewalks and curbs along a stretch of 14th Street in downtown Lincoln are getting a face-lift, improvements that will be paid for with tax-increment financing from a 14-year-old project.

The City Council recently approved a resolution to expand TIF — a financing tool that allows the future property taxes a redevelopment generates to pay for certain costs — on a project first approved in 2008.

Then, the city authorized $764,000 in TIF for the Lincoln Flats/Bank of the West project to renovate a commercial building at 1314 O St. into a first-floor commercial space and 24 condominiums. Lincoln Flats opened in 2013.

At the time, the city was more conservative in its use of TIF, in part because the city often held the notes on the loans, said Hallie Salem, redevelopment manager for the city’s Urban Development Department.

Changes in the way financing is set up and the way future redevelopments are calculated now allow the developer to take more risk, so urban development directors asked — and the City Council approved — authorizing up to $500,000 in additional TIF.

Council members Richard Meginnis and James Michael Bowers voted against the proposal. Meginnis said he saw the move as a “money grab� by the city for something it didn’t need earlier. He said it didn’t pass the “but for� test — but for the money, the project wouldn’t happen.

Salem said she understood Meginnis’ concerns but said the streetscapes had been identified early on in the Lincoln Flats project, but because the city was trying to be conservative, it cut those improvements from the list of priorities.

Now, the money will be used to upgrade the sidewalk and curbs on the west side of 14th Street along the University Square parking garage. The main floor of the garage was once a drive-thru for Bank of the West, but is now used for parking.

A developer plans to turn that first-floor parking into commercial space, and the city’s sidewalk improvements would go along with that, Salem said.

Other streetscape improvements could be made outside the condominiums along the north side of O Street between 13th and 14th streets, and an alley north of Lincoln Flats.

In broader terms, the improvements play into the city’s downtown “principal corridors project,� an ambitious project to revitalize key entryways and streetscapes in the downtown area. Part of that is creating a music district, which is likely to involve that stretch of 14th Street.

Waverly aquatic center gets a boost

Lancaster County Commissioners decided last week to give $250,000 in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds to Waverly to help pay for a new aquatic center.

Waverly has wanted to replace its aging swimming pool for years — and in 2020 voters approved a $3.5 million bond issue and a half-cent sales tax increase to pay for an updated aquatic center.

Like most everything else, the pandemic brought the project to a screeching halt, but city officials are now determined to move forward.

“We literally do have duct tape holding parts of our pool together this year,� City Administrator Stephanie Fisher told the Lancaster County Board last week. “So we are at mission critical now.�

Initially, city officials estimated the aquatic center — which would meet ADA requirements, have zero-entry features, a current channel, slides, a diving board and twice the capacity of the existing pool — would cost about $4.5 million.

Enter supply chain issues and inflation, and the lowest bid city officials received was $6.4 million, Fisher said.

Counting the bond issue, fundraising efforts and grants, Waverly has about $4.6 million in hand.

The city and the Greater Waverly Area Foundation Fund are still fundraising, Fisher told the county board. And supporters told the city council at a meeting in May they want to get the project going, because fundraising will get harder the longer they wait and at least one grant for the project has an expiration date.

“This is a project the city needs,� Fisher told the county board. “We’re just trying to figure out how to get it in the ground.�

To that end, county commissioners — who said such an aquatic center would benefit tourism and the entire county — allocated the money from the $62 million in federal stimulus funds it received.

Construction could begin in August or September.