Aug. 20, 2023

The end of my week was bookended by two boutiques, two ends of our city’s core and two owners somehow both with the same first name.

Between them is one common message: Sioux Falls should be thankful that entrepreneurs of all kinds are investing in buildings and neighborhoods that might otherwise continue to be underutilized.

It starts at 824 W. 10th St., where I stopped in to meet Christi Petersen the day before she opened Seasoned Style. Her boutique will be open Thursday through Saturday the third week of each month.

It’s a repurposed home that years ago was The Willow Tree boutique. Within the first floor, Petersen had transformed the rooms into a fun shopping experience featuring many of her vintage thrifting finds.

I couldn’t tell you the last time I visited a business anywhere near this one.

But for Petersen, these are old stomping grounds. She used to live in the neighborhood and had no reservations about returning as a business owner.

The vintage feel of the space itself only made sense with the brand she was trying to create, she said.

“I came in and looked at the ceiling, and it highlights my style,” she said.

A lot of neighbors have walked by and stopped to say hello or chat out of curiosity. She said she doesn’t feel unsafe and likes that her business has the potential to bring new visitors to the area as a destination.

She’s excited to check out El Chamoy, which opened a dessert bar nearby, and to send shoppers over to The Perch when the restaurant opens around the block.

The next day, I headed to the east end of downtown to check out Farmhouse Market, which is a second location for owners Kristy and Phil Vander Ziel.

It’s located in, fittingly, a building that once was a discounted furniture store and has been renovated extensively by new owners, law partners Rhonda Lockwood and Tressa Zahrbock Kool.

“We had searched a lot of places,” Kristy Vander Ziel said. “We had been searching for a good eight months before we found this place, and we just saw the potential of it.”

The parking helped — and so did learning about the potential of the Riverline District nearby.

But she too hopes the business will help serve as a draw to bring others to the area.

“We’re kind of strangers in this neighborhood, but I feel like there’s a lot of excitement and others starting to check out this area,” she said.

I thanked both of these business owners for being willing to put a proverbial stake in the ground in areas where retail hasn’t clustered because it’s key to honing the sort of neighborhood-level commerce we know enriches communities.

I could say the same about photographer Wes Eisenhauer as a visit to his studio at Dakota Avenue and Brookings Street showed me the potential of that neighborhood north of downtown for revitalized neighborhood commercial and residential activity.

Or for lawyer Alex Halbach, whose true labor of love ultimately will bring a restaurant, The Perch, to Ninth Street and Grange Avenue.

I think too of retailers who opened in the Jones421 Building on the north end of downtown, 8th & Railroad Center on the east end or Sunny’s Pizzeria next to the University of Sioux Falls, which converted a former neighborhood laundromat into a restaurant.

It seems like there should be funding of some kind that helps incubate businesses in neighborhoods where we want to see unique, local commerce. Otherwise, we risk large swaths of core neighborhoods with no retail activities and a cookie-cutter approach to strip malls and neighborhood commercial centers in newer areas. Small local retailers struggle to afford those rents, and the spaces themselves lack the character of our core areas.

But, absent such funding, it’s on us to support those business pioneers who establish themselves in areas others might be inclined to avoid. As you consider your own spending, keep owners like these in mind.