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More streets have been laid. More steel framing is rising. Saturday, hundreds of Applied Underwriters employees each planted a tree.

And on Tuesday, the corporate driver behind the 500-acre Heartwood Preserve redevelopment visited Omaha to officially dedicate the mixed-use project announced in 2016.

“Welcome to Omaha’s big new family room,” Steve Menzies, founder of the California-based Applied Underwriters, told a few dozen guests, including Mayor Jean Stothert and other city and business officials. He said it is where people “will work, play, relax, study and communicate with each other.”

Menzies described the project southwest of 144th Street and West Dodge Road as a strategic investment by his company in a city where the company’s key operations and most of Applied workers are based.

More than 500 local Applied employees, currently in three different buildings, are expected to move into their new office campus in early 2022.

Menzies highlighted the varied residential, commercial and recreational uses to be offered at the tract that previously was green space and farmland.