Lender-Grade SBA and USDA Feasibility Studies, Calibrated to Nebraska

3. Omaha MSA Deep Dive

The Omaha–Council Bluffs MSA contains roughly 1.0 million residents across Douglas, Sarpy, and Washington counties in Nebraska and Pottawattamie County in Iowa, anchored by a corporate base that includes Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffett's global investment holding company, headquartered downtown), Union Pacific (the nation's largest railroad by market capitalization, headquartered in Omaha with worldwide rail operations managed from the city), Mutual of Omaha (new downtown tower under construction), ConAgra Brands, Kiewit Corporation, Werner Enterprises, Fiserv (acquired TD Ameritrade), OPPD, Children's Nebraska, Creighton University, and the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue — home to U.S. Strategic Command and the 55th Wing, the largest wing in Air Combat Command — employed 10,818 people in FY2024 (6,202 active duty military), generating $2.69 billion in statewide economic output and more than 23,000 total jobs per the December 2025 University of Nebraska Bureau of Business Research study.

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The Omaha industrial market is among the tightest in the Midwest. At close of 2025, Cushman and Wakefield reported $566,668 square feet of Q4 net absorption and 1.6 million square feet absorbed year-to-date; Colliers Omaha reported overall industrial vacancy at 2.4 percent with average asking NNN rents of $7.49 per square foot and 2025 investment volume near $499 million across 95 properties totaling 4.9 million square feet. Vacancy runs roughly 460 basis points below the 7.0 percent national industrial average, placing the Omaha corridor among the five tightest major-format industrial markets in the central United States. The I-80 east-west spine, I-29 Missouri River corridor, I-680 metro beltway, and Union Pacific intermodal network are the logistics backbone; any industrial site within approximately 30 miles of a UP intermodal ramp underwrites at a structural rent premium that reflects the Omaha HQ effect on drayage reliability and rail frequency. Speculative pipeline has remained conservative relative to peer Midwest metros, preserving the vacancy discipline.

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Multifamily closed 2025 at 8.3 percent vacancy, up 270 basis points year-over-year, with average asking rent at $1,288 per unit (up $53 or 4.3 percent over the year and up $134 or 11.6 percent over three years) per CBRE Omaha. The Southwest submarket leads at $1,582 per unit; downtown averages $1,300. Supply growth outpaced leasing in 2025 — 3,793 units delivered year-to-date, a late-cycle absorption gap — but still produced positive rent growth year-over-year. For any Omaha multifamily study, the underwriting recommendation is to model rent growth at 2 to 3 percent trend rather than the recent 4.3 percent, with a 24-month lease-up assumption on new construction in submarkets that received meaningful 2025 supply.

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Office closed 2025 with modestly positive Q4 net absorption of 73,592 square feet (Cushman and Wakefield), against a backdrop of post-COVID sublease pressure. Downtown remains challenged; suburban Class A and West Omaha corridors hold the financeable inventory. Retail recorded 128,601 square feet of Q4 absorption, stable in grocery-anchored formats and Sarpy County growth corridors anchored by rooftop expansion in Papillion, La Vista, and Gretna.

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The Omaha data center corridor sits primarily on the Iowa side of the MSA — the Council Bluffs Google campus represents $6.5 to $6.8 billion of cumulative investment since 2007 — but the Nebraska side carries its own emerging thesis. Google's Lincoln-area campus (Project Agate, approximately 580 acres near I-80 and N. 56th Street) is part of a $1.2 billion tranche bringing Google's total Nebraska investment to more than $3.5 billion since 2019. In March 2026, reporting from Flatwater Free Press and Hastings Tribune disclosed that Google is exploring an additional Nebraska data center potentially requiring 1,000 to 3,000 megawatts of load — more than the entire Lincoln Electric System peak summer capacity — with Tenaska actively optioning land in Otoe and Gage counties and potentially conditioning the project on new gas-fired generation. No confirmed announcement exists as of the report date; sponsors and lenders should treat this as directional market intelligence, not a confirmed demand anchor.

4. Lincoln and the University Nexus

Lincoln–Lancaster County anchors the state capital and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln flagship campus (roughly 23,000 to 25,000 enrollment), producing a dual-engine demand base of state government employment and the university ecosystem that no other Nebraska market replicates. The Lincoln industrial corridor runs northeast of downtown along I-80 and the N. 56th Street spine, where the Google Project Agate campus represents the single largest CRE-adjacent investment in Lincoln's history. Stearns Bank, Union Bank and Trust, Pinnacle Bank, and NEDCO are the primary SBA and 504 partners for Lincoln-area originations.

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Lincoln's multifamily market closed 2025 at 5.8 to 7.4 percent vacancy (CoStar and CLS CRE report different methodologies) with 3.2 percent effective rent growth and cap rates of 5.50 to 6.25 percent — a late-cycle moderation from the 2021 to 2023 peak driven by UNL enrollment stability and state government employment. For any Lincoln multifamily study, the vacancy methodology matters: CoStar's broader physical vacancy (7.4 percent, a multidecade high) reflects total stock including lease-up; the financeable stabilized comparable set runs tighter. MMCG calibrates to the stabilized pool with explicit lease-up assumptions on new product.

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Lincoln's LB 840 local-option economic development fund stacks directly with ImagiNE Nebraska credits and SBA or USDA financing, and the combination of Lincoln's LB 840 fund, Opportunity Zone census tracts in the core, ImagiNE Economic Redevelopment Area eligibility, and NIFA LIHTC allocation produces the highes

t multi-layer incentive density in Nebraska for qualifying workforce housing and adaptive-reuse industrial conversions.

Major Lincoln employers include the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, State of Nebraska agencies, Bryan Health, Nelnet, Spreetail, Hudl, Ameritas, Sandhills Global, Lincoln Industries, and Zoetis animal health — a private-sector base that is deeper than Lincoln's population ranking suggests and that underpins the city's structural demand advantage over peer Great Plains markets of similar size.

5. Duluth, the Iron Range, and the Northeast Arrowhead

Central Nebraska from Kearney through Grand Island to Hastings (Buffalo, Hall, and Adams counties) constitutes the highest-density beef processing and agri-industrial geography in the state and one of the most concentrated in North America. JBS USA's Grand Island facility processes more than 1.4 million head of cattle annually on 131 acres, employs more than 3,600 people, runs approximately 6,000 head per day capacity (representing roughly 5 percent of total U.S. cattle slaughter), and completed a $95 million expansion in 2021. For any beef-adjacent industrial, hospitality, workforce housing, or multifamily feasibility study in Grand Island or Kearney, the JBS demand anchor is modeled explicitly rather than assumed — processing employment drives lodging demand, apartment absorption, and retail capture in ways that no national comparable set replicates without local calibration. Hornady Manufacturing, headquartered in Grand Island, adds a defense-industrial employment layer that diversifies the Hall County demand base.

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The North Platte corridor hosts Union Pacific's Bailey Yard, the largest railroad classification yard in the world: 2,850 acres, 8 miles long, 315 miles of total track across 200 classified tracks, approximately 14,000 rail cars processed daily through two hump yards, and roughly 2,600 UP employees on site. This is not merely an economic-impact statistic — it is a supply chain infrastructure fact that conditions how agricultural commodities, ethanol, and processed goods move from every Nebraska production county to the national network, and it is the reason that any industrial feasibility study involving rail-served logistics within the state must treat North Platte intermodal access as a structural underwriting variable rather than a location amenity.

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Nebraska's ethanol industry generates $5.7 to $6.9 billion in annual output value across 24 plants, roughly 2.4 billion gallons of annual production capacity, and employs tens of thousands directly and indirectly per the University of Nebraska agricultural economics program. The ADM Columbus Corn Processing Complex, which opened the world's largest bioethanol carbon-capture-and-storage facility in November 2025 — transporting CO₂ via the repurposed Tallgrass Trailblazer pipeline to sequestration in eastern Wyoming — is both a landmark project and a template for how Nebraska ethanol plants will increasingly monetize the carbon intensity differential under USDA REAP, IRS Section 45Z clean fuel production credits, and voluntary low-carbon fuel market demand. For any ethanol expansion, co-product upgrade, or ag-processing deal, USDA REAP is the most active program in Nebraska, and MMCG models the relevant grant and guaranteed-loan sizing against the ImagiNE incentive stack as a standard capital-structure analysis.

6. Northeast Nebraska, Columbus, and the Data Center Corridor

Columbus and Platte County host Nebraska Public Power District's headquarters, the Loup Public Power District, and the ADM bioethanol CCS complex — making the county the state's single most energy-infrastructure-dense corridor outside the Omaha MSA. NPPD's centralized generation and transmission authority, combined with Platte County's position within the Union Pacific rail network, makes Columbus the most frequently discussed alternative to the Omaha-Lincoln corridor for hyperscale data center siting, though as of the report date no confirmed hyperscale investment in Columbus has closed. Congressman Mike Flood (NE-01) has publicly pitched Columbus, Fremont, and Norfolk for future data center recruitment; the technical conditions — public power access, available land, and fiber connectivity — exist, but MMCG flags any Columbus data center feasibility thesis as directional pending NPPD load-study confirmation.

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Northeast Nebraska beyond Columbus is anchored by Tyson Foods' Dakota City pork and Madison beef complex, Norfolk as a rural commercial center, the Wayne State College education anchor, and a deep agricultural processing supply chain across Madison, Pierce, Wayne, Cedar, and Dakota counties. The single most consequential development in northeast Nebraska industrial underwriting in 2025 was Tyson Foods' November 2025 announcement of the closure of its Lexington beef plant (Dawson County) — characterized publicly as Nebraska getting "its butt kicked" by state officials — which has left the Nebraska Department of Economic Development, USDA Rural Development, and Dawson County seeking alternative industrial anchors for a workforce of several hundred displaced production employees. For any Lexington or Dawson County feasibility study through 2027, the Tyson closure is modeled as a baseline demand-destruction event before any new-entrant thesis is quantified.

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Fremont (Dodge County) operates the WholeStone Farms pork processing facility (formerly Hormel, sold in 2018 for $30 million), which sources product under a long-term supply arrangement. Behlen Manufacturing (Columbus), Costco's Lincoln Premium Poultry complex (Lincoln), and a deep independent-manufacturer base across the northeast complete the regional industrial picture.

7. Agricultural Minnesota: The Red River Valley and the Southern Farm Belt

Western Nebraska from North Platte westward through the Panhandle spans three distinct economic geographies, each with its own USDA Rural Development thesis and its own Ogallala water constraint.

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The Panhandle (Scotts Bluff, Box Butte, Cheyenne, Kimball, Banner, Dawes, and Sheridan counties) is anchored by Western Sugar Cooperative's Scottsbluff processing plant, dryland wheat and irrigated corn and dry edible beans, and feed cattle. Box Butte County recorded groundwater table declines exceeding 10 feet in 2025, among the most severe in any Nebraska NRD, and water availability is the binding feasibility constraint for any new ag-processing capacity in the western High Plains sub-basin. The USDA Rural Development Western Area Director desk in North Platte is the correct point of contact for any Panhandle B&I or Community Facilities deal.

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The Sandhills, a 19,300-square-mile sand-dune grassland system designated a National Natural Landmark — the largest such formation in the Western Hemisphere — spans roughly 20 counties (Cherry, Brown, Rock, Keya Paha, Holt, Loup, Garfield, Blaine, Thomas, Hooker, Grant, Arthur, McPherson, Logan, and surrounding counties). The Sandhills produce cattle on cow-calf operations at an intensity and scale unmatched in any other North American grassland geography, drawing on the Ogallala's most favorable recharge zone. USDA B&I and Community Facilities pipelines in the Sandhills focus on ranch-supporting businesses: veterinary facilities, feed and grain storage, equipment dealers, rural healthcare, and workforce housing for agricultural operations. For any rural Sandhills deal, USDA Rural Development is structurally the preferred program over SBA because of the rural-eligible designation of nearly every Sandhills county, the community-benefit orientation of anchor employers, and the long-term cash flow horizon that aligns with USDA B&I underwriting standards.

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The southeast Missouri River corridor (Nebraska City in Otoe County, Beatrice in Gage County, Auburn and Falls City in the southeast tier) operates as a riverine industrial base supporting grain handling, food processing, and river commerce. Tenaska has optioned land in Otoe and Gage counties in connection with potential data center generation infrastructure, and the southeast corridor may become the state's next energy-infrastructure investment zone if the Google Project Agate demand thesis materializes at the 1,000-to-3,000-megawatt scale disclosed in March 2026 reporting.

8. Other Asset Classes MMCG Covers Across Nebraska

Beyond the corporate, industrial, ag-processing, and energy anchors, MMCG produces lender-grade feasibility studies across the full range of Nebraska asset classes. Self-storage demand is calibrated to the Omaha suburban growth corridors in Sarpy County (Papillion, La Vista, Gretna), the Lincoln northwest and southeast suburban rings, and the Kearney and Grand Island regional markets where processing-plant workforce housing demand drives secondary storage absorption. Hotel and hospitality feasibility spans the Omaha downtown and Old Market convention market, the Offutt AFB travel and defense-contractor demand in Bellevue, the Lincoln state government and University of Nebraska event calendar, and the Grand Island and Kearney regional lodging markets anchored by processing employment and agricultural trade show traffic. RV park and outdoor-hospitality feasibility draws on the Sandhills ranch tourism corridor, the North Platte and South Platte river systems, and the Niobrara and Platte River heritage routes with explicit seasonality modeling for shoulder-month demand. Gas station and convenience, truck stops and car wash feasibility is calibrated to I-80 corridor traffic counts and the suburban rooftop growth of Sarpy County, with Kwik Trip, Casey's, Pilot Flying J, and Bosselman competition modeled directly. Assisted living and senior housing feasibility is matched to the Douglas, Lancaster, Sarpy, Hall, and Buffalo county demographics, with the Offutt and processing-plant military-and-manufacturing workforce producing earlier peak senior demand than coastal peer markets. Daycare feasibility reflects the dual-income agricultural and manufacturing household base that produces above-average childcare demand per capita across the Central and Northeast Nebraska corridors. Each asset class is benchmarked against the relevant Nebraska submarket comparable set rather than national averages, with the public power cost advantage, the property tax burden, and — where relevant — the NRD water allocation and ImagiNE eligibility modeled directly.

9. The Nebraska Energy, Water, and Environmental Overlay

Nebraska's 100 percent public power structure is simultaneously its most durable industrial cost advantage and its primary constraint on hyperscale data center build-out. NPPD, OPPD, and LES were not designed to absorb 1,000-to-3,000-megawatt hyperscale loads without new generation, and the March 2026 reporting on Tenaska land optioning in Otoe and Gage counties for potential gas-fired generation illustrates that Nebraska's data center thesis is approaching the point where it requires dedicated generation investment, not merely spare transmission capacity. For any energy-intensive feasibility study — data center, ethanol expansion, large food processing, or industrial manufacturing — the operative first question is which public-power provider serves the site, what the current available load capacity is, and whether a new or expanded generation commitment is required. MMCG obtains load-availability confirmation from NPPD, OPPD, LES, or the relevant municipal or cooperative utility as a standard first-gate deliverable before any energy-cost or site-feasibility line is modeled.

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The Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy (NDEE) governs large concentrated animal feeding operation permitting under the Nebraska Environmental Protection Act — a livestock facility permit is required for any operation above defined thresholds (generally 1,000 animal units or more depending on receiving-water classification), and Title V air permitting applies at federal thresholds. For any CAFO-adjacent industrial project, MMCG calibrates the NDEE permitting posture and the relevant receiving-water basin classification, parallel to the NRD groundwater analysis, as a front-loaded site-constraint determination.

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The Ogallala water trajectory is the environmental overlay that conditions every Nebraska ag-processing feasibility study on a 10- to 20-year horizon. The 2026 statewide groundwater monitoring report found that 62 percent of monitored wells declined in 2025, the most widespread annual decline in recent monitoring history. For any USDA B&I deal with a 20- or 30-year repayment horizon and irrigation-dependent production throughput as the revenue driver, MMCG models a water-scarcity scenario alongside the base case — not as a tail risk but as a material variable — and presents both to the lender in the Financial Feasibility analysis.