Sterling Ridge's Trail Loops Past 20 Years of Shared Ground

Start the loop at the retail row on Sterling Ridge Drive and you pass Charred Burger + Bar, Pacific Eating House, and Summer Kitchen Café before the pavement curves past the water feature and the sculpture garden. Keep walking and the trail doesn't dead-end at the last parking lot. It continues onto 35 to 38 acres of shared ground where a synagogue, a mosque, and a church sit within a few hundred feet of each other, sharing parking, walkways, and an interfaith center that opened its doors in October 2020.

Most people who moved into Sterling Ridge after the retail corner filled in know the restaurants. Fewer know what the trail connects to on the other end, or why it exists at all.

The Golf Course That Became Three Front Doors

Sterling Ridge sits on what used to be the Ironwood Golf Course, later known as the former Highland Country Club property. Lockwood Development bought the land in 2011 with a plan to build all three pieces of "work, live, play" into 150 acres near 132nd and Pacific: office towers, a retail strip, single-family homes, senior housing, and a piece of ground set aside for something that had nothing to do with golf or groceries.

That same year, the Tri-Faith Initiative purchased its portion of the property after a long search for land. The timing wasn't a coincidence. Temple Israel, the American Muslim Institute, and Countryside Community Church needed a site large enough to hold three separate congregations that had agreed, years earlier, to build next to each other on purpose.

Nearly Twenty Years of an Arrangement Most Neighborhoods Don't Attempt

The agreement that made this possible predates the buildings. In November 2006, leaders from Omaha's Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities signed a Memorandum of Understanding establishing the ground rules: each congregation would retain full autonomy, each would construct and own its building, none would use the shared commons to recruit members from the others, and the common space would function as shared parking, outdoor gathering ground, and a venue for joint programming.

The buildings went up in sequence once the land was secured. Temple Israel's synagogue was completed in 2013. The American Muslim Institute's mosque and Islamic center followed in 2017. Countryside Community Church, a United Church of Christ congregation, opened its facility in 2019. The Tri-Faith Center, which hosts lectures, classes, and community events open to anyone in the metro, held its grand opening in October 2020.

Reporting on the project has put the total cost of the campus at roughly $65 million, funded largely through donations from the three congregations and their supporters. Each congregation covers construction and operating costs for its own building. Tri-Faith itself operates as a separate nonprofit that manages the shared commons and the programming that happens on it.

The organization describes its purpose as working to "challenge and inspire people across religions, cultures and identities." That mission plays out in practice through lectures, interfaith courses, and informal gatherings that Tri-Faith opens to the broader community rather than restricting to its three member congregations. The organization has marked 2026 as the twentieth year since that founding memorandum, a milestone that puts Sterling Ridge in the position of hosting one of the longer-running shared religious campuses in the country, on a piece of land that used to be a fairway.

What Actually Sits Along the Path

Walk the trail today and the sequence is straightforward: retail buildings first, then landscaped commons with water features and sculptures, then the three worship buildings and the interfaith center. Gardens and an orchard on the Tri-Faith property serve the wider community, not just the congregations that built around them. None of it requires membership in any of the three faiths to see. Tri-Faith offers guided tours of each building and makes its speakers available to outside civic and community groups on request.

The point isn't that residents are required to engage with any of it. The point is that the same trail loop connecting the restaurant patios to the walking path also connects to a piece of infrastructure that most West Omaha neighborhoods don't have and that grew out of a formal agreement.

The Retail Corner Keeps Changing While the Campus Stays Fixed

Contrast that permanence with what's happening at the other end of the loop. The restaurant row along Sterling Ridge Drive has turned over repeatedly since the retail buildings opened, and 2026 has been an active year for it.

Pacific Eating House opened to the public in late March 2026 at 1130 Sterling Ridge Drive, from the same owners who run Twisted Cork Bistro. Darrell and Laura Auld, who opened Twisted Cork at 105th and Pacific back in 2007 after moving from Seattle, built the new menu around flavors found in states and countries along the Pacific Ocean, with executive chef Joe Berg creating the entrees. The restaurant keeps hours Tuesday through Sunday, with happy hour running from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m.

A few doors down, Summer Kitchen Café had already filed permits by early 2025 to take over the adjoining space once occupied by Arc Bridal Boutique, nearly doubling its footprint to around 4,000 square feet. Arc Bridal relocated to Loveland Centre near 90th and Center. Summer Kitchen also runs a second location in La Vista's Southport area, and the Sterling Ridge location keeps morning hours from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Charred Burger + Bar rounds out the row at 1150 Sterling Ridge Drive, serving wagyu beef burgers and a full bar menu seven days a week. Between the three, plus Clase Codigo, Smokin Barrel BBQ, and Hotpot 88 nearby, the retail corner has become the kind of place where the tenant list shifts almost every year even as the physical buildings stay put.

Two Kinds of Permanence on the Same 150 Acres

That's the actual shape of Sterling Ridge right now. One end of the trail sits inside a retail experiment that keeps testing new concepts, expanding footprints, and occasionally sending a longtime tenant like Arc Bridal to a different part of the city. The other end sits inside an arrangement that grew from a signed memorandum and three separate building campaigns, culminating in a nonprofit interfaith center that can host a lecture series without any of it feeling improvised.

Both halves trace back to the same 2011 purchase of a golf course nobody was using anymore. Lockwood Development wanted a mixed-use site that could hold offices, homes, and commerce. Tri-Faith wanted enough land for three congregations to build next to each other on purpose. The fact that both projects share a trail loop is what makes a walk through Sterling Ridge different from a walk through most other West Omaha subdivisions built on former golf courses. Somewhere along that same paved path, a restaurant that opened six months ago sits within walking distance of a religious campus built around an agreement first signed in 2006.

If you're weighing a move within Sterling Ridge, or trying to figure out what a home near this stretch of trail is actually worth right now, Nico Marasco has the local read on this corridor, from the retail turnover to the commons next door.