OmahaNebraska.com Interview: Emily Brewer, Community Development Manager at Millwork Commons
Omahanebraska.com is here with…
Emily Brewer.
Tell me a little bit about yourself and how you came to be at Millwork Commons.
I am an army brat, so moved around a lot growing up… kind of fostered a love for people and new spaces early, early on. I grew up in Colorado, went to school out in Bozeman, Montana, did a year abroad my junior year, so I studied in Spain. Love to travel, love to be in new places and spaces, and ended up moving to Omaha in 2010 because my dad had taken a government job out here.
I moved to Omaha after just having visited once, ended up really liking it. Learned quickly that if I didn’t only want to hang out with my dad, that I needed to make friends and form a community. And so naturally, the best way to do that for me was by volunteering. I found some great nonprofits in the area. I joined Big Brothers Big Sisters. So I was a Big for about 6 years.
I guess I would say I cut my teeth on the Omaha scene by working in restaurants, so I feel very fortunate to have worked in some really incredible restaurants with some wonderful people over…I’d say the last decade plus. But what got me out of the service industry and into maybe a different kind of service industry was the pandemic. Like many of us, when things were shut down and there was so much uncertainty, certain jobs either had to really pivot to being remote or to change how they operated. With restaurants, it’s pretty hard to wait tables remote.
I was unfortunately laid off from both of my restaurant jobs, and I spent the next however many months trying to figure out what I could be doing, because although I have three college degrees and a minor, I hadn’t really used them since graduating. I always just thought I would figure things out. I joke that they are dinner party degrees, so they’re good for conversation. Very liberal arts focused, but I just didn’t want to teach and wasn’t sure how to use them. I just knew I wanted to go to college and I did, and then afterwards I was like, “Okay, now what?”
Aside from traveling, which again the pandemic really shut that down for a while, I was feeling pretty restless. I ended up getting a job at a medical staffing agency here in Omaha and fortunately or unfortunately, during the pandemic, those were really booming. Travel nursing was a big thing. The pay was great for those wonderful nurses and doctors at the time, and so I took a job and eventually was doing… initially my role was community outreach, because that just kind of fell in line with things I already valued and was plugged into, but I was doing it on behalf of the agency I worked for. That then pivoted to a more internal role, being very employee facing, and so I did employee onboarding, I did events planning, I helped run some of our groups, certain DEI initiatives, all sorts of things, but I really loved interacting with and being face-to-face with employees. That was important to me. I love people. Also, I called it the three C’s—internal communications, culture, and community outreach were the main hats I wore.
And then… gosh, I’ve done some copywriting, just freelance for some agencies and companies around town. I’m not sure if I should name them or not. I don’t think it’s a secret. Is that—? Well, Omaha Performing Arts was a client. Yeah, there’s just some great people I’ve met through being out there in the community.
I love networking. It’s got such a dry term, but I really just enjoyed meeting new people, and so I was very lucky when I was approached about this role here at Millwork Commons. My title is community development manager, and I’m still fairly new in this role and I am still learning. I had some really incredible predecessors. I’m actually friends with both of these gals, and so it’s been really neat to see how the role is kind of evolving as Millwork Commons and the neighborhood itself grows… as businesses and tenants start to move in and they get their footing. It’s been really cool to see how people choose to activate the space, whether it is kind of an organic, natural flow where they’re coming in and working archetype with a coworker or a friend, or if it’s a planned meeting. There are just a lot of great things happening around the neighborhood. And so my role is to find new ways to activate the space, but also, to make sure that our current tenants are happy and are able to utilize it in a way that best suits their needs, whether it’s personal or professional.
Millwork Commons was thought of and planned and took a long time to develop. Do you know a little bit of the history of that, and why this particular space?
Not as much of the concrete history as some of my colleagues would, but a big mission and goal of the neighborhood and the folks who are actively developing Millwork Commons is to really push arts, music, tech innovation, and entrepreneurship, which I know are some exciting buzzwords, but really what Millwork Commons is hoping to do is to give community members, artists, creatives, whomever a space and a platform to—I hate to keep using the same words, but to innovate and to be creative.
As far as the overall vision for Millwork, it’s hard to be future-thinking without reflecting on how we got here. I’m learning that it takes a lot. You see the sausage, but learning how the sausage gets made is a completely different process. It’s trying to think broadly, as far as what does Omaha as a community want? And what do they maybe need that they themselves might not even recognize? And so with the dock, which is located in the Ashton Building within the Miller Commons neighborhood, that’s a space with a state-of-the-art video wall, a great sound system, and so we allow people to use that to show art, or we partner with “KIOS at the Movies” to show documentaries and things like that. We’ve used it for our One Million Cups presentations, all kinds of things. It’s one of those things where when you get people in a room or a space together, often they are greater than the sum of their parts. By creating a vibrant hub as a way to activate a space and bring people to a neighborhood, we hope that it can exist as a legacy neighborhood, as something that you see in other cities, where there are interesting and creative things happening, but not just arts and music…where it can be a tech-focused thing.
We are so lucky to have the Nebraska Startup Academy housed here as well, in the Mastercraft Building. There are some brilliant minds at work over there, and the fact that we have a space for tech-minded folks and those who exist more in the arts and creative world is amazing. We are neighbors with Hot Shops, and that is a slew of… a community in of itself, of some really, really wonderful artists here in Omaha and they are just across the street from us right here in Millwork Commons. It’s exciting to see who are our neighbors and who is visiting this space. My goal is to be a good steward of this neighborhood and a liaison between people …
Oh, another thing that’s great to mention is Millwork Commons is working to be a very sustainable neighborhood. We have native prairie grasses out in our space that we call The Prairie. So a lot of the design of the building, it being a historic site, that meant we weren’t leveling it and rebuilding it with cheap and also very costly materials. We were working with a structure that was here, to renovate it in a way that created less of a footprint, but also paid homage to what the structures were like beforehand. So the beams you’ll see when you walk around, or the exposed brick that we’re looking at right now, it was all very deliberate, but in an effort to lessen any sort of footprint and have a more gentle environmental effect. There are very smart people who are overseeing those measures, and I’m just grateful to be in a space that prioritizes composting and recycling and leaving a smaller footprint.
There’s a number of buildings here, and it’s grown slowly. Please tell me a little bit about each building that’s part of Millwork.
Well, there’s a teammate I would love to loop in, Jeff Slobotski and Steven Ausberg… they’ve both been with PGSA for a number of years and have feet firmly entrenched in the city planning world.
We’ve got the Hello Apartments that are just such a delight to visit. I love the branding that they’ve chosen. It’s a whimsical apartment building to live in, and I just think it’s a very cool space.
Dizzy Mule Apartments are open, and there will be retail there.
One of the things I’m always curious about and that we’ve been working on the blog is understanding how neighborhoods thrive. What helps them thrive? What helps them not thrive? And then how do they have a resurgence?
And so one of the things we learned over time was in this area Hot Shops that you mentioned earlier really had an impact on helping develop this area. And it’s interesting that you’re putting an emphasis on artists, and so were they. From what I’ve noticed with other places in other cities is that the artists take a chance, and obviously they can’t afford the fanciest place in town. They take a chance on the area and start to develop it, it starts to thrive. And then people get encouraged and excited by this, and then more development comes in.
So while in a lot of places, arts and science, arts and music and all of that are one of the first things to go, it’s one of the first things to help develop an area, which I find really fascinating.
Well said. I mean, truly, that’s a perfect way to phrase it. I think if you don’t give creatives—and you don’t just have to be an artist to be a creative, right?
Right.
You can just be someone who is passionate about something niche or something broad community wide, but I say “creatives” as kind of a broad categorization, but…
It’s innovators and entrepreneurs…they’re all creatives in some way.
Yes, exactly.
Even programmers. Yes, your language can be zeros and ones, or it can be watercolors or anything in between, but we want to give people a space. I think neighborhoods that folks are drawn to often have a center in creative arts because it scratches a lot of itches as far as aesthetics: you know, sight, smell, sound, touch, just an overall feeling, and not to get too hippy dippy, but I do think there’s kind of a palpable sense when, like, the energy of a space is more active. I mean, think about someone playing a show to a room of five versus a room of 200… even if it’s so silent in either scenario you could hear pin drop, there’s still this kind of electric shared energy.
And so neighborhoods that thrive. There’s some really cool ones in St. Louis, and there’s art-heavy districts in other cities…Denver. There’s tons of great pockets of neighborhoods, and I want to learn from them and emulate certain programming to give artists and creatives… entrepreneurs… a chance here. I think that there is also some grace in that there is room for things to fail first time around or maybe not get off the ground in the way we would have hoped or anticipated, but it’s just pilot programming, some of it, seeing, “Do people respond better to events at this time of day or that time of day? What about doing something over the lunch hour versus what about doing something after work?” You know, unfortunately, based on different work schedules, personal demands, family responsibilities, things like that, we can never find the perfect thing at the perfect time, but hopefully as I settle more into this role I can get creative myself and offer sort of a diverse range of things at different times, so that there are accessible programs for people who are interested.
And I’m very open and I very much encourage ideas from the community. For example, I met with someone who wanted to potentially host a bonsai workshop… the art of these trees. The Japanese art of pruning and growing and shaping these plants. But we talked about “Would that be something better suited to do in the dock for visibility?” And you know, it’s exciting to have people walk through and kind of be like, “Oh, what are you doing there?” Or I met with someone at Kross Strain, Sarah, who runs their programming… we talked about doing a Beers and Bonsai event. So people who sign up for this workshop, they get the materials, and then they can hang out and socialize and have a beverage if they’d like, but really, is that another fun way to activate a space within Millwork in partnership with one of our tenants? So yeah, I’m constantly floored by the really cool requests or ideas that people have shared. And again, if I had an unlimited budget, I would just say yes to everything, but until, you know… we’re a society that just trades in services and goods, I do have to keep in mind that I can’t say yes to everything.
I know that there’s the dock here at the Ashton, and … Hello Apartments. Dizzy Mule is relatively new.
We have incredible tenants here [Ashton] , and I hope shining a light on them and supporting them just makes room for other really great tenants, too. You’re not going to see a chain restaurant or anything like that. There’s a reason we have Archetype Coffee here instead of Starbucks, or, Dolomiti for pizza or Heirloom and Clean Slate… Kros Strain, a local brewery. We want to support local businesses, and having them in Millwork Commons is really a treat and I’d say a benefit to those who live in the area or who are visiting. We’re so close to the airport. When I do airport runs, I always …love making a stop and coming in and sitting down at Dolomiti and grabbing pizza with whoever I just picked up and kind of making that a welcome to the neighborhood.
Coneflower Ice Cream … Oh my gosh. Amazing. They have the nicest staff, they give you as many samples as you want, and they never make you feel guilty about asking for a seventh, but I love bringing people by here to grab a coffee at Archetype or take a spin through Heirloom and just grab … hostess gifts over at Heirloom because they have just great little local products: candles, honey, things like that, in addition to really good food. They just have … cards or chocolates, something I can just take a lap through and be like, “Okay, I didn’t know I needed this, but it’s coming with me.”
(Learn more about the Coneflower Creamery here:
https://coneflowercreamery.com
https://www.omahanebraska.com/blog/omaha-interview-brian-langbehn-and-katie-arant-chapman-of-coneflower-creamery-part-one
https://www.omahanebraska.com/blog/omaha-interview-brian-langbehn-and-katie-arant-chapman-of-coneflower-creamery-part-two)
There’s great artwork inside and outside here.
Yes. And one we’re currently working with Amplify Arts to do…it hasn’t been posted yet, but we’ll be doing a call for art and so on. Our video wall in the dock, that, you know we’ve got unless it’s being utilized for something else, we’ve got… and I wish I knew how many artists we had featured in there, but before I started here, they had done a call for art with local artists, and they either created new work, or could submit something existing that they had, and it was selected by a team of people. Again, we are very lucky to be working with Amplify Arts because they’ve got a wonderful pipeline for all of this. But again, we have just different visuals on display, just all the time on that video wall. And so we just thought it would be nice to refresh it. It’s been there for over a year now and just to give other artists a chance to submit some of their work and have it be seen by fresh eyes, and so as far as how they’ll do a call for art for those outside public spaces, we’ve worked with some other great local artists. I personally don’t know how folks are tapped or how that’s curated. Typically we will work with an unbiased organization so that they can help us with an art selection. But so it doesn’t fall to Paul and Annette [Smith], who are art collectors and very generous philanthropists in their own right, but so that everyone has a chance to have their art get seen.
Sounds like another good story there.
And again, not just artists and creatives in that sense, but the Nebraska Startup Academy, housed in the Mastercraft building. Charlie Cuddy and John Grange and Alyssa Cave. They are movers and shakers in that world, and they are so giving of their time and energy and just advice. They hold VC, venture capitalist, office hours after the weekly Wednesday One Million Cups meeting for people who just want to talk through things or ask questions. So they’re helping develop young entrepreneurs and those in the tech world just as much as an arts grant from Nebraska Arts Council or Amplify Arts, is doing. It’s really amazing that Millwork Commons is kind of a space where those worlds are intersecting and supporting each other, and hopefully thriving and just creating pathways for more.
That’s what I was thinking, too. How cool that is.
…
Was there a question you would have liked me to ask?
How can we support our tenants? How can community members support our tenants? And the nonprofits housed here.
Heartland Bike Share is another tenant that comes to mind. And they are just doing such great work to make E-bikes accessible to anyone in the community. You don’t need a special license, anything like that. We want to make public transportation as accessible as possible. We’ve got United Way housed here, Habitat for Humanity.
So ways to support the goings on in Millwork Commons: to follow us on our socials. Even to engage with some of those posts helps generate more eyes on the happenings, which in turn helps bring more attention to what is going on, and it’s just got a ripple effect. Coming down to Miller Commons, maybe carpooling with friends or family and just visiting some of our restaurants and shops or popping by the Hot Shops and seeing what they’re doing and asking if you can have a tour. Engaging with the people. In our surrounding neighborhood is a wonderful way to support us, and that’s what I want to emphasize to anyone listening to or reading this: that we want to build a neighborhood that is good for Omaha and that gives back to the community as much as possible. And so by folks who visit Omaha or who live here and come to see us and spend some time here, that’s the very best way you in turn can support us and then we can just continue this way of giving back and giving a platform to folks down the road.
Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you. I really, really appreciate it. So yeah, even you being so flexible with time this morning was… you’re a gracious interviewer and a lovely person.
Thank you.
I’ve seen you roll with quite a few punches. And shout out to, on the record, to our wonderful property management team, Mark with Colliers, and Bluestone Group. We’re grateful for them, too. Mark keeps the wheels on and then some, so I don’t know what I would do without some of these folks who operate behind the scenes. I think the takeaway is that I am lucky and grateful to be here.
Millwork Commons Social Media:
https://www.facebook.com/millworkcommons
https://www.instagram.com/millworkcommons
https://www.linkedin.com/company/millwork-commons
https://x.com/millworkcommons
Website:
https://millworkcommons.com
Shout out to Archetype Coffee for the great coffee and service we had!
Catch our interview here with Isiah Sheese, owner and founder of Archetype Coffee:
Omaha Interview: Isaiah Sheese of Archetype Coffee
https://www.omahanebraska.com/blog/omaha-interview-isaiah-sheese-of-archetype-coffee
