From a new ball field to beautification projects, neighborhoods put grant funds to use

In the 12 years that Emily Fink has lived in Sioux Falls’ Heather Ridge neighborhood, she hDanas never seen an organized baseball game take place on the diamond in Prairie Meadows Park.

“I’ve never seen an actual game played there,” Fink said. “I’ve seen a couple of kids do a kickball scrimmage, maybe a dad doing batting practice with his kid.”

To be fair, except for a lonely backstop, there’s not much to indicate that a baseball diamond even exists at the park on Grange Avenue, adjacent to Journey Elementary in the Harrisburg School District.

“There’s only a dirt strip that indicates where the pitching mound would be, but nothing else,” Fink said, “not even a dirt track for a diamond.”

That could change later this year if a group of volunteers can raise $150,000 by May 15. Those funds would result in excavating the grounds, constructing a dirt infield, establishing bases 60 feet apart and building dugouts for the teams. It also would include a fence from first to third bases, a new backstop and a concrete walkway from the parking lot, permitting access for people with disabilities.

Committee members are seeking donations now, but some funding already has been awarded. The Heather Ridge neighborhood is among a dozen groups that have received Neighborhood Grant Funds from the city of Sioux Falls.

The program was established in 2012 with a budget of $5,000, said Diane deKoeyer, neighborhood and preservation planner for the city. This year, $100,000 was awarded. The funds will make changes in neighborhoods across Sioux Falls.

“It’s an investment,” deKoeyer said. “It goes into the neighborhoods, and obviously the city benefits from these neighborhood changes.”

Twelve neighborhood groups will receive $500 each toward a National Night Out, a community-building gathering scheduled for Aug. 5 this year.

The other projects include proposals that depend on the neighborhoods’ visions: sculpture leases at Siouxland Libraries’ Oakview and Ronning branches, tree planting in Pettigrew Heights and Southern Hills, new vinyl wraps on 19 light-pole bases in All Saints and steps to improve safety at the Phillips Avenue intersections with 10th and 11th streets.

Tree reforestation projects — Kingswood and Terrace Park received grants this year, All Saints and McKennan in 2024 — are popular as boulevards have lost trees, deKoeyer said.

“In the boulevards, over 40,000 trees have been removed,” she said. Most of those are ash trees doomed by the emerald ash borer. Homeowners are asked to pay $40 toward a new tree; the neighborhood groups seek to supplement the total cost of $200.

Margaret Blomberg moved to the Tuthill Park area 35 years ago and has been active in the neighborhood group since 2021. It was formed to raise funds to restore the historic Tuthill House, which is a public gathering place and part of the city’s Parks & Recreation Department.

For three years, the Tuthill Park neighborhood focused on trees. Not only has the neighborhood lost ash trees, but it also was affected by damage caused by straight-line winds that accompanied a nearby tornado several years ago. Additional trees were planted in Lions Centennial Park on East Marson Drive and in Tuthill Park itself, Blomberg said.

The entrance to the Tuthill Park neighborhood is marked with brick columns that have distinctive metal spheres atop each. The bases were crumbling, and last year Neighborhood Grant Funds were used to restore them and add new lights inside the spheres.

New signs also will be part of this year’s Tuthill Park neighborhood renovation in what is considered the city’s first upscale development, Blomberg said.

“This year, we are putting new signs in Tuthill Park, one for the house and one for the formal gardens, replacing the old wooden ones,” she said. “They look terrible.”

This spring, metal signs in black, gold and white, designed to reflect the Tuthill House’s trim and the spheres, will be installed. In addition, neighborhood identity signs will be added to the street signs at intersections when city crews have the opportunity.

The Neighborhood Night Out funds will be used to pay for the permits for food trucks to use the park and for performers, including a drum line and a singer.

Possibilities for next year’s grant funding have been considered, Blomberg said.

“Some neighborhoods are putting up those solar-powered radar speed signs,” she said. “We talked about that, and the consensus seems to be, even among police and street (division) people, that they work for a few weeks, then people just ignore them. We elected not to do that.”

About two dozen neighborhoods are registered with the city, making them eligible for grant funding, deKoeyer said. Other unregistered groups also exist.

In 2026, the city expects to have $150,000 in grant funding to disburse among the neighborhoods. deKoeyer said. It’s also possible that the number of established neighborhoods that can receive funding could increase.

“If anyone is interested in starting a neighborhood program, they should reach out to us, and we’d be happy to work with them,” she said. “There’s a lot of benefits and news and information coming from the city. We have police available if they want them to attend a meeting, we have a forester with Parks (Department) available if they’re putting in new trees, we have the arts coordinator available if they want to add art within the area.”

In the five years that deKoeyer has worked with neighborhoods, she has seen the requests change. Requests for traffic-calming equipment were once more frequent. This year, the only focus is making pedestrians safer as they cross 14th Street at Main, Phillips and Second avenues.

“Some of them certainly with their projects are thinking bigger,” deKoeyer said. “They always have the opportunity to expand their boundaries. They find some people outside their boundaries that want to be included, and they’re expanding that way too.”

No neighborhood — this year at least — is thinking bigger than Heather Ridge. The group requested $10,500, and the city was able to provide $12,000 for the new ball field, deKoeyer said.

The Heather Ridge neighborhood extends from Minnesota to Western avenues between 69th and 85th streets, Fink said. When Fink and her husband relocated from Nebraska to Sioux Falls, they chose that neighborhood because her husband had college friends who lived there. On visits, they had become familiar with what the area had to offer.

“It’s grown a lot in the last 12 years,” Fink said. “My family often asks me, ‘When are you going to move back to Nebraska?’ and I don’t know if we will. All these families we know in the neighborhood are so great.”

The Finks, which include sons age 12 and 10, are a baseball family, and every time she drove by the backstop in Prairie Meadows, Fink would notice how lonely it looked in the large park that has little infrastructure. No plan to change that existed, she said.

“The city has no plans to do anything with this park, and it’s city land, so the school doesn’t have anything to do with it either,” Fink said. “It was just going to sit there.”

Not for much longer if the volunteers can raise the funding. Nothing extravagant is planned — no turf, outfield fencing, scoreboard, lights, sound system, bleachers, locker rooms, concessions or restrooms.

The Harrisburg Baseball Association agreed to use its nonprofit status to apply for grants, and the city Parks & Recreation Department and Harrisburg School District support the plan, Fink said. Volunteers are spending this month contacting businesses for donations and raising awareness among neighborhood residents.

When she reached out for help, support was immediate, said Fink, a grant administrator for Sanford Health who happened on a grant that would help pay for the capital equipment to build out a ball field. She already had received a Neighborhood Grant in 2024 to plant trees in the park. That was a test run, which gave her the confidence to think bigger.

“That triggered in my brain because it’s so sad there,” Fink said. “I asked my older son’s baseball coach who also lives in the neighborhood about building it out, and he didn’t flinch. He said, ‘I’ll help whenever you want.’” I talked to another baseball dad in the neighborhood, and immediately he said, ‘I’ll help.’”

Fink shared her idea on a neighborhood Facebook page, and within hours had 10 volunteers raise their hands.

“The city has been so great to work with,” Fink said. “Diane, she’s so responsive. She shares information, and she’s cooperative and flexible and understanding. The Parks guys have been great at guiding this process. I’m so appreciative of their time and effort and cooperation.”

The field will be dedicated to Dane McCoy, who lived in the Heather Ridge neighborhood until his death Feb. 17, 2022 in a snowmobile accident. The son of Rob and Jackie McCoy was 11 years old and a fan of baseball and other outdoor sports.

“His parents aren’t on the committee, but they’re aware of what we’re doing, and we’re keeping them aware of all the moving parts,” Fink said. “We’ll have a permanent sponsorship sign, and his name will be on there. There are other ways we’ve talked about memorializing him, but we haven’t figured that out yet.”