May 19, 2022

It almost seems like overnight, but the first of four new structures coming to Cherapa Place downtown is going vertical.

The Bancorp building is rising up along the Big Sioux River just south of Sixth Street, ultimately reaching 10 stories of retail, office space and condominiums.

“It’s on track,” said co-developer Anne Haber of Pendar Properties. “We’ve challenged the team to work together, whether it’s in redesign or other creative ways to overcome budgetary and procurement challenges.”

Like the majority of construction projects underway, the expansion has run into higher than expected costs.

“We’re overcoming some issues without compromising the heart of the project,” Haber said. “It’s been challenging being faced with some of these increases, but we’ve found ways around them. We found a local material, concrete, instead of going with a steel building, and we’re utilizing local quartzite for stone.”

Many of the materials have been procured “way ahead of schedule … to prevent problems with supply chain,” co-developer Jeff Scherschligt added.

“There’s nothing of scale that we cut back. We added parking spaces. We added a 5,000-square-foot gym attached to the corner of building four.”

There is space left on the first and second floors of The Bancorp building, but the rest of it essentially is filling up. Tenants include Eide Bailly, ISG and MarketBeat in addition to anchor tenant The Bancorp Inc.

“We don’t have that much left,” Scherschligt said.

There’s 30,000 square feet on the first floor that could be retail or office and 20,000 square feet left on the second floor.

“We slowed down (leasing) just trying to get a handle on costs to provide more certainty to tenants, but we know our scope, the holes are being dug, and you can see we’re a long ways down the road,” Scherschligt said.

Condo sales are picking up too.

“We have six sold, one pending, and we have five really beautiful units left,” Haber said. “The sooner the better because interest continues to be very strong, and it is super-limited supply. The views are incredible on floors nine and 10, with amenities galore.”

Two of the other new buildings will be mixed use, with retail on the ground floor and apartments above.

There’s an active deal for the retail space in one and interest in the other, Haber said.

The fourth new structure will be a parking garage.