City to replace century-old workspace with new building

The city of Sioux Falls’ traffic, light and power team is about to step into this century with a new building years in the making.

“We’re excited,” said Mark Cotter, director of public works. “One of the buildings they’re in today is over 100 years old and doesn’t even have the capacity in the floor to have our vehicles park on it. It has some of the old engine generators in it from the earliest days of having a municipal power utility. So we’ve definitely gotten our use out of the building.”

Municipal power service has its roots as far back as 1885, when the city of Sioux Falls contracted with two private enterprises: one for electric and one for gas lighting. While the electric light provider proved superior, the city wasn’t completely satisfied with the service and made it a municipal utility in 1901.

Today’s city light and power division distributes power to more than 2,900 residential, commercial and government customers. It maintains a power system comprising 29 miles overhead and 60 miles underground.

Bringing the light and power team together with traffic operations and the engineering division in a new approximately 60,000-square-foot building combines teams that often work together.

“We really need a new facility that can set this traffic system up for the next 50 to 100 years,” Cotter said.

“The location is going to be on a piece of city land which is between water reclamation’s facility and the new public safety campus, so it’ll be up in that northeast part of the city and will be a nice, modern facility.”

Most operations there run 24 hours a day, “and we’re going to have a facility now that can carry us through and get us ready for that next generation,” Cotter said.

Some members of the traffic team will move out of City Center, and others have outgrown a traffic maintenance facility near the street maintenance campus where all city street signs are made.

“Our signal bays where we build some of our controllers will get moved. We’ve got almost 100 miles of fiber optic lines that are underground that connect city facilities but also signalized intersections that team will run out of  (the new building),” Cotter said. “So a lot of different functions really under that traffic, light and power umbrella will all be in one location.”

About 25 people will work in the building at first, with room to grow.

The plan is to start construction in the next month or so, and from there it’s about an 18-month build.