Concrete Wave - Omaha NE

Operated illegally for half its life

(David) Jon Morrison, Son of the Governor Frank B. Morrison got a permit to renovate the former Dobie’s Restaurant but didn’t tell officials what he was planning to do.  This detail was important because property was in the floodplain of the Big Papillion River. 

Morrison spent $130,000 and added bowls and snake runs and almost got to the point where he could open the park, but another guy tried to get permits to build another park upstream. That guy was denied a permit, and he said “Oh yeah, but Jon Morrison’s doing the exact same thing!”

Officials realized they’d made a huge mistake and tried to walk it all back. Morrison was hostile.

“I was very friendly until (the unidentified inspector) told me ‘you are zoned wrong and I’m going to shut you down permanently.’  I told him to get back in his foreign car (a Honda) and get off my American taxpayer-paid property,” Morrison said.

So he opened the park nine days later, without permits.

In March 1978, six months after the park opened, Morrison offered to build breakaway fencing and a water catchment channel one acre downstream from the park to account for floodplain issuses.  A permit was finally granted in May 1978.

The park closed for winter in September 78, and in October there was a burglary and then the pro shop was burned down in November. 

 “We would’ve opened this spring if we didn’t have the break-ins and the fire,”  Morrison told the Omaha World-Herald.

 In March 1979 Morrison sold the property to Packers National Bank to destroy the park. 

“That will probably end up another cocktail lounge,” Morrison said. “That’s what we need in this town, more cocktail bars and less recreation for kids.”