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Smiling business owners and community leaders snipped a red ribbon, celebrating a new employer at 2401 Lake St. that plans to create 100 north Omaha jobs.
A block to the east, serious-faced police officers worked inside a yellow ribbon, gathering evidence against a man they had just taken into custody.
The contrast between the simultaneous nearby events Tuesday morning was stark, and they are tied together at a basic level.
“You have to make a transition to a thriving community,” said Tony Williamson, who with his wife, Shelleye, is opening the new Ajasa Technologies office in north Omaha. “People got to have jobs. People got to have hope.”
He got a big hug from Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle, who helped cut the red ribbon.
Suttle said the incident down the block — which attracted seven police vehicles — reinforces the need to encourage business development and, at the same time, tackle social ills in troubled parts of the city. Community leaders are talking with three other businesses about locating offices in north Omaha and South Omaha with a potential total of 1,300 jobs, he said.
“It's the joblessness,” Suttle said. “We have issues like this all across the city.”
Autumn Frazier, Shelleye's sister and the Golden Valley, Minn.-based company's business development director, was driving by 24th and Lake, the traditional heart of the city's black community, on Super Bowl Sunday when she happened to see a vacancy sign at the Family Housing Advisory Services building.
But choosing a site in north Omaha was deliberate, part of the company's goal to serve its communities, she said.
“I'm a visionary,” Frazier said. “I like it on this side of town.” When the company outgrows its first office here, she said, she will find a larger location nearby.
Ajasa officials heard about Omaha through the Midwest Minority Supplier Development Council and the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce's North Omaha Development Project. The project also takes credit for attracting Atlanta-based ALL(n)1 Security Services, which announced in January that it would open an office in north Omaha and create 100 jobs over three years.
The Williamsons' company is exactly the sort Omaha covets.
Co-founded in their Twin Cities-area basement for about $150 in 1995, today their 170 employees and 275 subcontractors generate about $35 million in annual revenue. Ajasa's staff members tackle technology-related projects for clients in banking, financial services, government, retail, manufacturing and other industries.
Ajasa is a name made up of the first initials of family members: Anthony IV, Julius, Aiyla, Shelleye and Anthony III
Williamson said his personal goals include serving as a mentor and adviser to people who want to start businesses, people who have “a dream and an idea.”
“Entrepreneurship is the key to breaking an economic cycle of poverty,” he said. “Hopefully we can uplift the entire entrepreneurship society here.”
Chamber President David Brown said the chamber's philosophy is that all parts of the city must succeed if the city is to succeed. He said adding good businesses and new jobs in north Omaha will help prevent incidents such as Tuesday's gunfire.
After the welcoming ceremony, those at the open house snacked on shrimp, sandwich wraps, and crackers and cheese, but a block away police were hard at work.
Omaha Police Sgt. Harold Scott said officers went to 25th and Lake because someone reported a man shooting a gun at a house. The man threw a gun into a weedy patch of ground nearby. Officers took the man in, found the gun and no one was hurt.
Ajasa has four contract employees on a project for Creighton University and has signed up Blue Cross and Blue Shield as a client. Frazier, the company's Omaha chief, is searching for more clients, with a goal of having 100 Omaha employees within two years.
A block away, the officers were searching for shell casings with the goal of proving that the man in custody had fired the gun.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1080, steve.jordon@owh.com
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