For most of the last two decades, the Elkhorn story was told in subdivisions. New rooftops west of 204th, new schools, new roundabouts, new access roads. Olde Towne kept its brick, its train whistle, its Saturday coffee crowd, and stayed mostly the same size it had been since annexation in 2005.
That is not the story of this summer. In 2026, the growth is happening inside the historic core, not around it. If you already live in Elkhorn and you have not walked Main Street between Elkhorn Drive and the tracks in the last six months, you are behind on your own neighborhood.
The Bella Vida building finally has a plan
The corner of Main and Elkhorn Drive has been a question mark for more than two years. The 1897 brick building that used to house Bella Vita sat vacant while everyone speculated. In December, the answer arrived. Chuck Olson, who also owns Main Street Cellar a block away, is renovating the structure to hold two restaurants under one roof.
Downstairs will be La Vida Nova, meaning "The New Life." Upstairs will be a still-unnamed fine-dining concept built around a chef's tasting menu, with its own separate kitchen. La Vida Nova is targeting a May open, with the upstairs room following a couple of months later. Olson framed the project around keeping the small-town feel of downtown intact rather than handing the corner to a chain.
Two things worth noticing here. First, this is a locally-owned pair, not a franchise, going into the most visible corner in town. Second, a chef's tasting menu is not something Elkhorn has ever had. That is a Blackstone or Aksarben Village concept landing on our Main Street.
Elkhorn Landing filled in fast
If you walk west on Elkhorn Drive from the tracks, you now see two buildings where there used to be one. Elkhorn Landing Two came online this past year, and the tenant list reads like a small commercial district compressed into a single address.
- Foster's Mercantile anchors the main floor of Building One
- Cedar Creek Coffee & Art opened on the lower level of Building Two this past fall
- Fluff, an interior design firm and retail store, took the upstairs
- The third floor holds single-office suites for lease, with move-ins that began in July
- The top floor is home to Choice Homes, the builder behind both Landing buildings
Across the street to the southwest on 205th, the new three-story is The Nomad at Olde Towne Grove, an event and meeting space. And on the west side of Main at Elkhorn Drive, the building finished around the arrival of Coneflower Creamery, which drew a line out the door within its first two weeks and has not really let up. Coneflower's upstairs neighbor is RAEVA Mane Street Oasis, a salon and wellness space.
Read that list again. Coffee, ice cream, a design store, a mercantile, a salon, a meeting venue, two restaurants going into the historic corner. That is a functioning downtown, not a strip of specialty shops.
Put these dates on the fridge
The summer calendar is loaded, and most of it happens inside a ten-minute drive of your front door.
| When | What | Where |
|---|---|---|
| May 28 to 31 | Elkhorn Days: parade, live music, car show, cornhole, beer garden, fireworks Friday at 10:10 PM | Throughout Elkhorn |
| Every Monday in summer | Monday Night Market | Olde Towne Elkhorn |
| Thursday nights, summer | Farmer's Market | Main Street, trackside |
| August 6 to 7 | Pinnacle Bank Championship | The Club at Indian Creek |
A few notes on that table. Elkhorn Days claims the area's largest parade, and Firework Friday featured live music from Southland this year with the fireworks show timed to 10:10 PM. The Monday Night Market has become the low-key summer routine most locals plan around, particularly if you have kids who can burn off a scoop of Coneflower on a walk to the tracks. And the Pinnacle Bank Championship is the Korn Ferry Tour stop hosted at The Club at Indian Creek, right off 202nd, which means professional golf gets played six minutes from your driveway.
The breakfast, lunch, dinner reset
If you moved into Elkhorn even three years ago, the dining rundown you memorized is out of date. Here is what has actually shifted.
Breakfast now has a legitimate sit-down anchor. Time to Rise & Shine opened last August in the former Suny Side Elkhorn space at 2611 North 204th, from Javier Trujillo, who also runs Javi's Tacos, Helados Locos, and Frosty Mugs Sports Bar. If you have been driving to west Omaha for weekend brunch, stop.
For a real dinner out, Approach at Indian Creek is doing chef-driven Midwestern cooking with global technique year-round out on the club side of the neighborhood, and Talus Spirits and Sustenance keeps drawing the craft-cocktail-and-fusion crowd. Both read as destination restaurants that happen to sit inside Elkhorn rather than as neighborhood spots you settle for.
Downtown, the reliable rotation still runs through Boyd & Charlies BBQ for ribs and the bar-stool talk that goes with them, PROOF 192 Whiskey Bar & Craft Cocktails, Corner Tap, Double Zero Pizzeria, and Don Carmelo's for New York-style pizza from a family that has been at it since 1958. The specialty retail spine on Main, including Little Scandinavia, is still standing and still worth an afternoon.
Add in Coneflower for after-dinner and Cedar Creek Coffee & Art for the morning, and a full Saturday can happen without leaving the historic core.
One thing to notice if you have lived here a while
There is a 3.6-mile stretch of original brick just across the tracks, laid in 1920 as part of the Lincoln Highway between New York and San Francisco. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. Most days it is a quiet drive.
What is new is that the businesses on Main Street are starting to feel like they belong to that stretch of road again. For most of the annexation era, downtown functioned as a memory pinned in place by a few holdouts. This summer it functions as a place people drive to on purpose from Blackstone, Aksarben, and Millard, not just a place locals swing through on the way home.
If you have been telling out-of-town family that "there is not much downtown," update the script. Bring them to the Thursday market, walk to Coneflower, and let them ask where they are.
What this means for the rest of the year
Two things to watch between now and fall.
First, La Vida Nova's opening will change foot traffic on the Main and Elkhorn Drive corner in a way the block has not seen in years. If it lands, it will probably pull the upstairs tasting concept open by late summer or early fall, which turns that single building into the most-booked address in Olde Towne.
Second, the Pinnacle Bank Championship in early August pulls a national golf audience through the neighborhood for a long weekend. That is one of the few times each year Elkhorn residents get to see their own town the way a first-time visitor sees it. If you have friends flying in for the tournament, the itinerary basically writes itself: coffee at Cedar Creek, market on Thursday night, dinner at Approach or Talus, drinks and dessert back downtown.
The summer is not a highlight reel of unrelated updates. It is one story. Elkhorn's next chapter is being written inside its oldest four blocks, and it is being written now.
If you are curious what the growth in Olde Towne is doing to home values in the blocks around Main, or you are thinking about a move within Elkhorn to be closer to the walkable core, Selling Sisters would love to talk it through. Schedule a consultation whenever the timing feels right.
