Reported by Bill Kelly, STATEWIDE Correspondent

For over 100 years, farmers have been unloading cattle for market at the Omaha Stockyards. Every load of cattle is herded through the metal railings designed to withstand charging out of control animals. They're met by commission men who help producers get the best price possible for their stock. Livestock buyers from small and large meat companies look for good beef at a good price. Since the 1940's it's a routine that's been familiar and often profitable for the Crook family of Nebraska City.
[Tim Crook] "The basis of the terminal market is the competitive bidding. This is what makes the terminal market like Omaha so important to us. It is what we use -- the livestock industry uses to establish the price of cattle not just here in Nebraska but as far as the Rocky Mountains."
But even on a busy day, it's not like it used to be. It's not the Omaha Stockyards from days gone by. In 1883 Alexander Hamilton Swan, a Wyoming cattle baron, came to Omaha and pitched the idea of building a livestock market to John A. Creighton and five other businessmen. That's the same Creighton family that has the university named for it now. Omaha was still a small town supported by a few grain businesses and the Union Pacific Rail line. Omaha was a welcoming stop for trains loaded with people and cows traveling back to the Chicago livestock market. A year later, Swan's business group formed the Union Stockyards Company of Omaha and began to build. To meet the growing demands of office space for buyers, commission men, and other business operators, the stockyards company built the 11-story Livestock Exchange Building. By 1955, Union Stockyards Company had marketed over a half a billion dollars in livestock earning the number one ranking in the industry. Livestock pens spread over 250 acres of land, larger than many small towns in Nebraska. Carl Hatcher, today he is the operations manager for the Omaha Stockyards, he remembers when he was doing the dirty work down in the chutes years ago.
[Carl Hatcher] "We were running, you know, 10-12-13,000 cattle a day the first Monday and Tuesday of the week. We would run anywhere from 15-20,000 hogs a day here five days a week."
It was an exciting, hectic, and frankly, a smelly place. But for the producers like the Crook family, it was the place to be.
I road to Omaha with my dad a lot of times, and years ago it was so busy that we might have to wait an hour or two just so we could unload. Tremendous numbers of livestock. Omaha used to be the biggest livestock market in the world. The stockyards and its neighbors, the large meat packing companies like Cudahay, Armor, and Swift, attracted a lot of wealth to Omaha. That created dozens of opportunities for other entrepreneurs ready to cash in on cattle country. Frank Kawa was one opportunist turning an old pool hall named Johnny's into a steak house extraordinare.
[Jack Kawa, President of Johnny's] "Johnny's Cafe was established in 1922 by my father. In their booming years, Johnny's itself, we had breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We opened at 5:30-6:00 A.M. and went till 2:00 A.M. We almost went around the clock. All we did was exchange menus. We never shut down between breakfast and lunch or lunch and dinner. It was constant traffic. You had the cattle trains that came in with cowboys from western Nebraska and Colorado and Wyoming. They would stay three or four or a week until their cattle were sold. It was fast paced. There was just characters and personalities. You met new people every week. It was exciting."
Through the 1950's and 1960's, it seemed like cattle and cash were here to stay. But just as the Omaha Stockyards made history as the world's largest livestock and meat packing center, business began to drop off and rapidly. Meat packing companies relocated their operations to rural areas. They began buying their cattle directly from ranchers. That eliminated the need for central markets like Omaha. The stockyards changed owners three different times.
[Hatcher] "One time we operated on 250 acres. Now we're operating our livestock operation on about 15 and could be operating on about five or six acres. We have been changing over the years, practically every year since that time."
The most recent opener, the Canal Randolph Company, sold off some of its vacant land to the City of Omaha for redevelopment of a shopping plaza and movie theater back in the 1980's. Nature moved in on the rest.
[Hatcher] "The owners of the property have let a lot of the property surrounding that we're not using for our livestock operation is in disarray and is falling down, weeds growing in the alleys where livestock pens used to be. They have also run into some financial difficulties and had not been able to do any development of their own."
Canal's neglect motivated the City of Omaha to purchase the remaining land for $900,000.
[Bob Peters, Acting Planning Dir., City of Omaha] "This area generally comprises the 55 acres the City of Omaha has purchased. This is the Livestock Exchange Building which is a generously-sized 11-story structure that will hopefully be redeveloped into a multi-use facility. The vision that we conceived when we initiated the project basically shows a business park environment."
[Hatcher] "After 114 years at this location and knowing the past history of the Omaha Stockyards and what it meant to the city of Omaha, to actually not have anymore consideration from the City administration or the council or from the owners of the property to not include us in the negotiations, if you will, of the property is very, very disappointing to me. I thought we could have commanded a little more respect."
Carl Hatcher and his company tried appealing the decision to Omaha's mayor and the city council. Both agreed the stockyards were no longer an asset to south Omaha.
[Hatcher] "We no longer are the operation we once were. We realize that. We would have been willing to move and consolidate our operation into about five or six acres of the ground. We tried to get the City administration to see that. We weren't able to convince them that we had a future here on any of the ground."
[Peters] "We expect approximately a $40-50 million investment to take place publicly and privately and resulting in approximately 2-300 new jobs and obviously substantial educational resources for the college itself."
For now the Omaha Stockyards opens for business daily supported by loyal customers. It's still an interesting attraction for sightseers.
[Julie Rothermund] "Today the kids had a day off and I thought it would be an interesting opportunity for them to learn a little bit more about where things happen, and since the livestock is going to move, I thought this would be a good opportunity for us to see this part of the program."
It's much more than a piece of history for the cattle sellers and employees, and for all of south Omaha.
[Crook] "It will be hard to replace -- to replace the actual facilities that they have there today."
[Hatcher] "This has kind of been my home away from home so... I like working with the livestock. I love working with the people that's involved in raising the livestock. It's been a great run."