Nov. 4, 2024

Two years after it was announced, a major residential development in northwest Sioux Falls is beginning construction of a manufacturing facility that will help build hundreds of homes.

The Harvest Hills development is 325 acres near George McGovern Middle School — an area bounded by Maple Street, Benson Road, La Mesa Drive and Valley View Road.

“We got started and got a lot done, and little problems surfaced, and now we’re back at it,” said Mark Luke of Mark Luke Cos., the general contractor on the project.

“We’re really excited. It’s going to be a great project.”

The former farmland was purchased by an investment group that is led by the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe. The Harvest Hills development is being led by managing partner Allen Gordon, whose background includes a similar smaller-scale project in Madison and two decades leading Superior Building Systems in Watertown.

The first phase is about half the total development and has room for 85 houses, Luke said. The grading is done, and roads will start to be finished either yet this year or next spring.

The big piece needed to move the development forward is a 100-by-1,000-foot hoop-like structure being built by a firm from Canada, which is where “they’ll put the whole house together inside, set it on a trailer and take it to whichever site each person decides to buy,” Luke said.

“Our job is to have the site ready, the basement and all the concrete work, and they’ll set the whole house on at one time and finish out whatever has to be finished. The garages will come together in a few pieces we will set together quick, and away we go.”

There could be as many as one dozen homes being manufactured at once, he said.

“So they will be semi-subject to choices by the owners, but they won’t be 100 percent custom,” he said. “But we’ll have several different floor plans, and then they’ll be able to choose (things like) cabinets.”

Floor plans for the houses start at about 1,600 square feet with a basement and could include a three-stall garage and up to four bedrooms on the main level, with additional built out on the lower level.

Luke said the quality “is going to be really good because being built inside instead of the typical stick-built, you don’t have rain and snow and everything else that hits these houses before they get enclosed,” he said. “They’re going to be very high-quality construction, consistently built well, and I think they’re going to be very popular.”

The hope is to have the manufacturing facility enclosed before winter so manufacturing of the houses can begin, he said.

The full development is estimated at 733 homes, with additional phases based on sales.

The hope is “to have some model homes probably by late next spring or early summer and be able to start selling houses I think probably first of the year,” Luke said.

When the project was announced two years ago, it was estimated that homes would start around $500,000, but “it’s a little market-driven,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of inflation since then … so we’re going to play it by ear.”