Affordable duplexes, community center among northeast Lincoln project amenities
Two of the matriarchs of northeast Lincoln said plans to fill what on Thursday was a mud-filled lot near 52nd and Holdrege streets with affordable duplexes, a community center and community gardens will continue the traditions of the place they've called home for decades.
"It's such an investment in the place I call home," said Kathy Danek, who has lived her whole life in northeast Lincoln and has been a fierce advocate for her neighborhood as a member of the Lincoln Board of Education for 24 years.
Danek and Marian Price, a longtime northeast Lincoln resident who also served on the Lincoln Board of Education for 13 years and as a state senator for eight years, co-chaired a fundraising campaign for FiftyOne Commons, a project of Family Service Lincoln to transform much of the 5100 block along Holdrege Street.
On Thursday, a groundbreaking ceremony celebrated what, by the spring of 2026, will be four affordable rowhouse-style duplexes, a 3,000-square-foot Community Crops garden, and an 11,500-square-foot community activity center that will be focused on youth programming in the areas of science, technology, engineering, art and math.
The community center — with a multimedia studio, a makers space, a computer learning lab, recreation areas and a gymnasium — will offer programming in the summer and on days when there is no school. The gardens will provide food for residents of the duplexes and learning experiences for the children at the community center.
Family Service Lincoln CEO Dennis Hoffman said the idea for such a space began about five years ago when the organization had the opportunity to buy what was once Havelock School. That deal fell through, but the idea stuck.
"I searched for a property or building that could provide the same resources, and in the summer of 2023 we found this unique but complicated property," he said.
The fact that it sits in a floodplain made it complicated (thus the giant dirt piles there now that will be used to raise the land out of the floodplain to meet new city floodplain guidelines). So did the fact that it had been neglected for years, with an abandoned house, overgrown weeds and volunteer trees. So did opposition from neighbors who worried it would exacerbate traffic and flooding issues.
But Hoffman said he believes the $8 million project will usher in a new era for the nonprofit and enhance the neighborhood.
The fundraising campaign has raised $6.6 million of its $8 million goal, Danek said, and she urged those filling the white folding chairs to spread the word and help them meet it.
The city allocated $250,000 from its affordable housing fund to the project, and Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird on Thursday said she thinks of it as a "big, juicy multi-vitamin."
"It's doing so many good things to support the health and well-being of our community and our neighborhood here in northeast Lincoln," she said.
Price said she has seen many families move to the neighborhood, and there is story after story of those who stayed.
Danek remembers the house next door to the project used to have roosters that would wake up the neighborhood.
"Some days my mom actually hated that rooster and wanted to figure out how to cook it," she said.
Her parents bought their house in 1964 and lived there until 2016.
"I remember (my mom) meeting the person who bought it and saying 'you need to raise a strong family in that house,'" she said. "That's what this neighborhood is all about. Family. So what better partner for this neighborhood than Family Service?"
Contact the writer at or 402-473-7226. On Twitter at Love Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter.
Local government reporter
