From the patio at 3548 Center Street you can watch the sun set behind the Field Club of Omaha golf course, beer in hand, while five lanes of traffic run past the curb. On Sunday, Oct. 11, from noon to 6 p.m., those lanes between 34th and 36th Streets will hold food vendors, a beer garden, a makers' market, a live DJ and family activities.

Centerfest is back after a year off. The Hanscom Park Neighborhood Association hosts it, and the festival describes the day as the six hours when that stretch of Center Street "belongs to the people who live on it." The quote fits the timing. This year, a City of Omaha engineering study is asking whether some version of that slower street should become permanent.

The block that filled in before the festival came back

Centerfest has a lot more to work with than it did the last time the street closed. In the past 15 months, two of the six businesses on the festival's list of "Center Street neighbors" either opened or reopened under a new name.

Know Good opened at 3528 Center in July 2025, in the space that used to be Sunnyside on Center. It's a bagel bakery and brunch spot serving house-made bagels, sandwiches, toast and pastries. When The Reader reviewed it in February 2026, the line was out the door.

The bigger change came at the corner building. The Bull Moose served its last night on Feb. 13, 2026. By June, Zaska! Beer Co. had opened in the same space. It's the first and only taproom for a brewery that does its brewing in Seward, Nebraska. Before this, its beer was poured only at Junto Wine. The Teddy Roosevelt mural from the Bull Moose is still on the wall. It shows his 1910 speech at the Field Club across the street, and he's now blowing kisses to the crowd.

The building has been reinvented before. Omaha Exploration's history of it starts with a Standard Oil station built in 1932. The building became an auto repair garage in the 1970s. In 1995 the owners of Lo Sole Mio remodeled it into Lo Sole Mio Trattoria, with a patio that hosted summer concerts. After that came a doggie daycare called Noah's Bark, then the Bull Moose from 2022 to 2026. Zaska is the latest use, and the patio has been the draw through most of those versions.

Here's what's on the strip and what it means for festival Sunday:

Two of those rows matter more than they look. Carter & Rye posts Sunday storefront hours that end at noon, the same hour Centerfest opens, so hand pies are a morning stop. Zaska doesn't run a kitchen. Its website advertises food trucks but doesn't name any, and the June write-up confirmed the taproom has no food of its own. Festival-day food will come from the event's vendors, Know Good until 2 p.m., and Vis Major's kitchen across the street. Posted hours have shifted since June. Zaska's own site now lists different hours than the ones reported when it opened, so check each business before you go.

Centerfest is free, with a suggested donation. Vendor applications closed Sept. 30. When we checked, the festival's schedule page said performers and the vendor list were still being finalized.

What the city is studying for this stretch

The street that closes for the festival sits inside a project the City of Omaha calls Center Street Safety Improvements. It covers Center Street from 32nd Avenue to 42nd Street, a corridor the city's scope of services describes as "currently a 5-lane section." The same document notes the corridor includes "a neighborhood business district and parks/trails," and then says this:

"The City's Vision Zero Action Plan also recommended to consider a road reconfiguration (road diet) on this section of Center Street."

The project now has money and a consultant. On Oct. 28, 2025, the City Council approved an agreement with the Nebraska Department of Transportation, which will administer the federal funds. The Federal Highway Administration has pledged to cover 80% of eligible project costs. A 2026 resolution then approved a task order with HDR Engineering for preliminary engineering, capped at $114,909.51. The city's local share is $22,981.90, paid from the 2024 Transportation Bond Fund. The city's draft 2027 to 2032 capital improvements program lists it as "2025T - 150 Center Street Safety Improvements."

Nothing has been decided yet. The scope calls for a traffic analysis of the current layout and up to three alternatives, with cross-section and intersection concepts reviewed in a workshop. It doesn't set a final lane count or decide on bike lanes, turn lanes or parking. The June 30, 2027 date in the agreement is the deadline for the consultant's work, not a construction date. KETV reported in October 2024 that the project was expected to be finished by 2030. The newer engineering documents don't repeat that date, so treat it as an early estimate.

The idea isn't new. In 2022, KETV covered a renewed push by residents and businesses to cut this stretch from five lanes to three, possibly with a bike lane. At the time, the city engineer said traffic studies didn't support a change. Since then the city has added a Vision Zero recommendation, federal funding and a consultant contract.

How neighbors get a say

The engagement plan is written into the contract, and it names both neighborhood groups that put on Centerfest. Here's what the scope commits the consultant to:

1. Up to ten one-on-one or small-group virtual meetings with key stakeholders. The list includes the Field Club Homeowners League, the Hanscom Park Neighborhood Association, the Veterans Affairs hospital, Field Club Omaha, the Omaha Parks Department, the District 3 council member, and key business and property owners.
2. An introduction letter or email to key stakeholders and adjacent properties explaining how to take part.
3. A digital survey asking about user experience, possible options, and what people would like to see improved.
4. A postcard mailed to residents and businesses within a half-mile of the project, pointing them to the survey.
5. A stakeholder toolkit with a flyer, social media posts, newsletter copy and a project handout.

Most of Field Club is within a half-mile of this corridor. The postcard is how the survey will reach most households, and the Field Club Homeowners League newsletter is a likely place for the toolkit's newsletter copy to show up. We haven't found a published survey date or meeting date yet.

One Sunday on a three-block test strip

So Centerfest lands in an unusual year. The two groups the city expects to consult about the corridor's future are the host and a sponsor of the one day each year when part of that corridor has no cars at all. The block they're closing has filled in: a bakery that opened in 2025, a brewery taproom that opened in 2026, a brewery with a kitchen across the street, and a patio that has drawn people back to this corner building for decades.

Omaha Exploration hoped Zaska and Vis Major would complement each other once "the upcoming road diet" arrived. The documents show a study, not a design, and a festival doesn't settle a traffic analysis. But for six hours on Oct. 11, anyone who walks from Know Good to Zaska will cross 35th Street with no traffic, on the same pavement HDR is now modeling.

If you're walking or biking over

If you're coming by the Field Club Trail, there's one current caution. The city's September 2026 trail update lists the trail as under construction because the shoulder has eroded on sections north and south of the Woolworth Street overpass. Warning cones are up. Parks Maintenance will need to close that section for repairs but hasn't set a start date. Until a date is posted on the city's trail status page, the city's guidance is to use caution on that section, and the cones mark the spots to watch.

Have questions about how the Center Street study could affect your block? We follow corridor projects like this one closely because they shape midtown. Reach out to Renada Kelly and the SK & Ren team, or come say hello at Centerfest. Work with SK & Ren.