Kelli Bello was drawn to her leafy pocket neighborhood long before she and her family moved into it in 2022. “I used to walk my dog near here and sort of creep around,” she said. “I was so curious.”
She’s not alone. The collection of 11 treehouses on about an acre-and-a-half of land behind a Cape Cod farmhouse near 60th Street and Western Avenue has piqued Omaha’s curiosity since it was first built in the late 1970s. “It’s such a romantic origin story,” Bello said. “Five friends, all architects, in their thirties and at the start of their careers, coming together to create a little compound up in the trees.”
The endeavor—which came to be known as The Treehouse Association—was one of Omaha’s pioneering urban infill projects—an architectural practice of utilizing underused land to make the most of space in population-dense areas. It was spearheaded by renowned local architect Tom Findley, who brought in colleagues including his brother Scott Findley, Gary Bowen, Gary Tasich, and Jack Savage…