Sept. 18, 2023

As one financial services company moves downtown, another is backfilling its office space.

Wells Fargo & Co. will move some of its teams into the former Bancorp space off the southeast corner of 69th Street and Western Avenue. Bancorp is moving to the building that will bear its name at the expanded Cherapa Place downtown.

The new Wells Fargo office at 6100 S. Old Village Place will include some employees currently assigned to the downtown offices at 101 N. Phillips Ave. The bank branch, branch employees and some operations employees will remain downtown.

“As part of our multiyear effort to build a stronger, more efficient Wells Fargo, we continually assess our real estate portfolio to ensure we are best meeting the needs of employees and customers, responding to consumer and economic trends and managing our costs responsibly,” Wells Fargo spokesperson Staci Schiller said.”We are committed to our Sioux Falls-based employees, but we have more real estate than we need to support them.”

The new southwest Sioux Falls location won’t be a branch, but wealth management and commercial banking teams will be among those using the space.

“Bancorp will vacate that building Oct. 31 and turn over possession to Wells Fargo Nov. 1, and Wells won’t be in that building for a good nine more months,” said commercial broker Gregg Brown of NAI Sioux Falls, who brokered the deal. “It’s going to be a full gut and rebuild. I was happy we got a deal done. It’s a great location for them.”

The future of the downtown building long anchored by Wells Fargo is more intriguing. Broker David Shelton of Century 21 Advantage, who represents the ownership, said he is working on a large-scale redevelopment of the site at Ninth Street and Phillips Avenue.

The concept calls for multiple buildings, including a replacement for the Wells Fargo-anchored structure, that would bring a mix of uses, along with additional parking and a plaza space to the block.

“We put together a world-class team,” Shelton said. “What we hope to do for Sioux Falls is level this up so we can attract people that are not yet here that Sioux Falls is a natural fit for … that’s compatible with what the city wants to be downtown in densifying.”

In the meantime, the building has solid occupancy, Shelton said.

About half of the fifth floor is open with a deal in progress, and the other half of the floor just leased to an insurance adjustment company.

Shelton is not currently marketing any space from Wells Fargo, he said.

“We have half the fifth floor left and a couple thousand square feet on the third, and we have an engineering firm I believe is going to go in, so we have very little space available in that building,” he said.

Other tenants include two law firms, a precision risk management firm and most recently The Original Corn Pie, which is leasing the kitchen to support its pop-up vendor operations and offering retail hours from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday through Friday,

“That’s super exciting for us to help incubate businesses downtown,” Shelton said.