Feb. 5, 2024

The group that has spent a year looking at options for the downtown property known as the Riverline District has a recommendation: Move the Sioux Falls Convention Center there and turn the existing facility into space for indoor recreation.

The Friends of the Riverline announced what’s being called a 50-year vision for the community at an event today at the Sioux Falls Convention Center, which temporarily had added areas of recreational games for kids.

“We’ve asked the community to dream big with us,” Mayor Paul TenHaken said. “There’s been a lot of great ideas that have been brought forth. … Where do we want to be as a community in 2025? Twenty-five, 26, 27 years from now, what does Sioux Falls look like? it’s going to look very different than it does today.”

A new, larger downtown convention center “has the potential to be one of our strongest economic drivers in our entire community with this single facility investment,” he said.

The 8.3 acres on the southeast edge of downtown includes the state’s labor department office, which is moving to the new South Dakota One Stop office building at Dawley Farm Village.

The Sioux Falls Convention Center opened in 1996.

It is “at a point where the “is hindering reservation growth and the ability to hold larger events,” said Lynne Keller Forbes, co-chair of Friends of the Riverline District.

“This facility was built for our community to grow into, but now we are at a point where we are stunting our growth and limiting our economic impact to our community.”

Rapid City and Fargo also offer more convention space than Sioux Falls, TenHaken said.

“This facility was the right size in 1996,” he said. “We are now twice the size of a community as we were in 1996, and so there are opportunity costs by not having a bigger facility that we are missing out on.”

Conceptual renderings show how a new convention center might look.

The recommendation did not speak to options for the Sioux Falls Arena, which was built in 1961, or Sioux Falls Stadium, home of the Sioux Falls Canaries, which was built in 1964. Both those facilities were part of the events center study group, which back in 2019 recommended demolishing both of them, adding onto the Convention Center, adding convention space downtown and exploring a partnership for another hotel on the campus.

Relocating the convention center downtown brings the strongest return on investment, while renovating the current one for recreation fits a community need, TenHaken and the Friends of the Riverline Center.

Input in the past year along with continued public feedback to the city parks department has called for more  year-round recreation, indoor play and fitness.

“We are woefully behind in indoor recreation space in this community,” TenHaken said. “We’re losing right now. We’re not a community that likes to lose. We can do better, and we can do more.”

The recreation space could include room for basketball, pickleball, soccer and a walking path, while leaving flexibility to co-host events needing flat space with the rest of the complex. But nothing about the plan is final, he emphasized.

“The cake is not baked at all. We don’t know what this is going to look like,” he said.

The Sioux Falls Development Foundation has the option to buy the Riverline District land at 10th Street and Franklin Avenue, although it’s ultimately expected to be bought with city funds for about $8 million. The property has been owned by an investment group called State Partners LLC since 2013. The option requires that the city use the property for the purpose of constructing and maintaining public assets, including a convention and event center, Forbes said.

A dozen banks helped fund a $75,000 economic impact study for the area done by Johnson Consulting, based in Chicago. It looked at “the highest and best use of the Riverline District site,” she said.

Next steps include a plan to purchase the land and move forward with more community engagement and visioning before bringing forward a funding plan.

“This is going to be a marathon not a sprint,” TenHaken said. “This is going to take years. The leaders before us dreamed big, and that gives us the opportunity to dream big.”

How behind is Sioux Falls in indoor recreation? ‘It just doesn’t exist’