A national leader in urban planning lauded Omaha’s Dundee-Memorial Park neighborhood Wednesday for its “strong sense of place” and its “interesting and unique characteristics.”

Bruce Knight of Champaign, Ill., immediate past president of the American Planning Association, presented an award to Dundee-Memorial Park as one of America’s 10 best neighborhoods. Such areas, Knight said, are places where civic planners “stop and take pictures to bring back to our communities.”

Mayor Jim Suttle, city and state elected officials and about 75 others attended the award ceremony at 50th Street and Underwood Avenue, the middle of the Dundee business district.

Marty Shukert, former city planning director now in private practice, paid tribute to those he called “heroes” in preserving the neighborhood: Lannie McNichols, the late State Sen. Peter Hoagland and the late Don McVaney, who owned the former Baum’s pharmacy.