The city of Omaha is a pleasant surprise to many people.  It is conservative, yet cosmopolitan; casual but vibrant.  It is a gateway to the West’s wide-open spaces, yet the trees and rolling hills and parks sometimes surprise first-time visitors.

Culturally, Omaha boasts of ballet, the opera, symphony and a major art museum, Josyln.  Concerts and Broadway shows, as well as the nationally renowned Omaha Community Playhouse offer live stage entertainment throughout the year.

The five-county metropolitan area also is the financial, retail, cultural, transportation and communications center for a large surrounding area.  Shoppers in Omaha can cruise any of several well-appointed malls, or taste the tradition of old Omaha in the Old Market area of downtown, with its shops and unique eating establishments.  Restaurants, over a thousand of them, in fact, could be one of Omaha’s major industries, with all varieties well represented.  No visit to Omaha would be complete without an authentic Omaha Steak.
The area’s 17,600 businesses are widely diversified, providing a stable economy and creating one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation.  Omaha is headquarters of four fortune 500 companies: Bershire Hathaway Inc., ConAgra, Inc., Mutual of Omaha Companies, and Peter Kiewit Sons Corporation.

Nearly 500 churches, temples, mosques and synagogues dot the landscape representing 70 different faiths.  The city has 16 full-service hospitals and two prestigious medical schools, the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Creighton University, both sites of prodigious medical research.

The quality of education in the Omaha area surpasses most in the nation.  Some 90 percent of Omaha high school students graduate, and 75 percent go on to college.  Excellent schools are among the reasons why Omaha has been ranked as one of the United States’ top 10 cities for raising a family.

Omaha is nationally recognized as a great sports town.  The home of the NCAA College World Series draws baseball fans from across the nation to Rosenblatt Stadium.  Omaha is also home to the AAA Omaha Royals baseball team, the Omaha Beef indoor arena-football team, the University of Nebraska-Omaha Division-1 hockey program, and the River City Lancers of the United States Hockey League.

Omaha.  It’s a nice place to visit…but it’s a better place to live.