The Pier Took Ten Years to Open. Three Blocks Away, Main Street Turned Over in a Summer.

On Wednesday evening, families parked near the River's Edge Pavilion, grabbed something from the Tastee Treet or Kona Ice trucks, and walked south along the levee trail while Tony Schneider played acoustic guitar. There was no ribbon, no program, no speeches. City staff had said as much ahead of time: come enjoy a summer evening and be among the first to walk out onto the new pier. That was two days ago. If you missed it, the pier is still there, and so is the view of the Missouri River and the Omaha skyline that comes with it.

What most people walking that trail on Wednesday probably didn't clock is that the pier isn't really a new thing. It's the last piece of something that has been under construction, in one form or another, for close to a decade.

Ten Years, Three Openings

The current wave of River's Edge news started earlier this summer. In June, the city opened the MidAmerican Energy Adventure Tower, a 138-foot climbing structure with caving and a roll glide, alongside the Borman family-funded Treetop Walk, a half-mile elevated path through the park's restored woodland. Pete Tulipana, president and CEO of Southwest Iowa Nonprofit for Collective Impact, the group leading the project, put the timeline plainly when the tower opened: the work on the tower and the pier together represented almost ten years of planning, fundraising, and construction.

The pier that opened this week is the final named component of that same push, officially called River's Edge Phase Four. Before any of it broke ground, the site went through woodland restoration starting in 2021 and the addition of Belles' Play Garden the same year. Construction on the tower and treetop walk began in 2024. The pier followed in 2026. Three separate ribbon-cutting moments, one continuous project, and most residents probably experienced each opening as a standalone headline rather than as chapters of the same story.

Mayor Jill Shudak connected the pier back to what residents have actually been asking for. She's pointed to Council Bluffs' ongoing 2050 comprehensive planning surveys, where outdoor recreation space consistently comes up as the top priority, and described the pier as a chance to give the Iowa side of the river the same kind of activated waterfront Omaha built on its own bank.

Nobody Raised Your Taxes for This

Here's the detail that tends to get lost once a project reaches the ribbon-cutting stage: none of River's Edge Phase Four came out of city tax revenue. The entire $50 million budget was raised through private donations, with the Iowa West Foundation providing a lead gift of $16.5 million. MidAmerican Energy funded the tower that carries its name. The Borman family funded the treetop walk. The Charles E. Lakin Foundation funded the pier, and the city's own project documentation states directly that tax increases are not part of the River's Edge funding plan.

That matters for how residents should read the next phase of announcements, whatever they turn out to be. A decade of visible, expensive waterfront construction happened without a bond issue or a mill levy fight. If you've been bracing for a tax conversation tied to more park development, the pattern so far suggests that's not how this particular project has worked.

Three Blocks Away, a Different Kind of Turnover

While River's Edge was finishing a project that took most of a decade, downtown's historic 100 Block was in the middle of a much faster kind of change, and it didn't need a foundation's name on anything to happen.

In mid-July, Tipico Helado, a Mexican ice cream shop, opened next door to the Council Bluffs Chamber of Commerce office on the block. Owner Cindy Estrada chose that specific stretch of downtown because her family has history there, tracing back to her grandparents cleaning the Methodist Church nearby when they lived in apartments close to the block. A few doors down, Bloom Works has been selling flowers on the same block for more than two decades, run by owner Alisa Roth the entire time.

Lindsey Rodgers of the Council Bluffs Chamber described the moment as something more than a couple of new storefronts. She's called it the start of a next era for a block that already has businesses with decades of history, and said the energy is being felt well beyond the historic district itself, positioning the 100 Block as part of a larger downtown rather than a standalone destination.

The contrast with River's Edge is the part worth sitting with. One project took a coordinated decade of fundraising, engineering, and a nonprofit built specifically to manage it. The other is a handful of independent owners, some with family ties going back generations, deciding on their own timeline to bet on a block that was already there. Both are real momentum. Neither required the same kind of institutional machinery to happen.

What This Looks Like If You're Already Here

If you live in Council Bluffs and haven't made it out to either spot yet, both are close enough to do in one loop. Park near the River's Edge Pavilion, walk or bike south along the levee trail to the new pier, and take in the skyline view before the crowds figure out it's not a secret anymore. From there, the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge sits right at the park's edge if you want to extend the walk into downtown Omaha. On the way back, swing through downtown Council Bluffs itself. Grab something from Tipico Helado, pick up flowers at Bloom Works, and see the 100 Block for yourself before it fills in further.

Neither of these stories has much to do with real estate directly, but they say something about the town underneath the headlines. A place doesn't usually get a ten-year, privately funded riverfront transformation and a generational small-business turnover on the same historic block in the same summer by accident. Both point to the same underlying thing: people, from foundations to flower shop owners, are still willing to put money and time into Council Bluffs' long-term shape.

If you're watching this kind of change and wondering what it means for a specific street or a specific home, that's a longer conversation, and one worth having with someone who tracks this market closely. Better Homes & Gardens | The Good Life Group works across the Omaha metro, including Council Bluffs, and can walk you through what's actually happening on the ground here, block by block. Contact a Good Life Group agent when you're ready to talk specifics.