Loudest Backers of Tax-Funded Arena Get Big Contracts

Nice compensation for their efforts

LINCOLN — Some Lincoln business leaders who were among the biggest backers of the city's plan to build a $346 million basketball venue downtown are getting some big contracts to help build the arena and related development.

Perhaps the most visible cheerleader for the project — the man who led the drive to get Lincoln voters to approve the biggest public works project in the city's history in 2010 — was Dick Campbell. He chaired a mayoral task force that studied the arena and talked to more than 100 groups about the merits of the project.

Now his landscaping company has landed a $620,927 landscaping contract and is bidding to do streetscape work in the former rail yard being developed west of the Haymarket and south of the rising arena.