Inside city’s 5-year, $1B+ capital plan: Major road projects, pools, parks

The city of Sioux Falls plans to spend $1.1 billion over the next five years upgrading everything from major roads to at least three neighborhood swimming pools.

Mayor Paul TenHaken’s administration delivered its proposed 2024-28 capital improvement program to the City Council today.

The overall plan is an increase from the current five-year plan, which is about $931 million. There’s about $300 million budgeted for projects and equipment in 2024, based on 5 percent annual sales tax growth.

“There were a lot of needs,” director of finance Shawn Pritchett said. “Not surprisingly, it’s the largest capital program in Sioux Falls history. … We’re still seeing the supply chain shortages, although that’s improving, and inflationary pressures are improving.”

But the demands of the city’s population growth still drive a need for everything from upgraded roads and future fire stations to new parks and  swimming pool replacements. It’s all reflected in the five-year plan.

Public works

The majority of the five-year plan is dedicated to infrastructure. Of the $1.1 billion, 82 percent of it goes to streets and utilities. Utility projects primarily are funded by user fees, while sales tax revenue pays for streets.

“Our maintenance program has seen costs go up, so we’ve worked hard over the five years to incrementally grow all those maintenance programs,” director of public works Mark Cotter said. “So we can invest in arterial streets and concrete streets … but accounting for inflation.”

Major projects for the next three years are designed to keep up with state- and federally funded construction of Veterans Parkway and the future Interstate 29 interchange at 85th Street. The city’s share of those projects includes building out intersections along the corridor. In the next several years, that means projects from Cliff through Western avenues and out to I-29.

“Those two are really important because the first two sections are closest to the most mature part of the city today, and it’s important to get them under construction,” Cotter said. “The short-term heavy lift is funding those intersecting arterial streets, so we can continue to deliver those streets.”

It’s also necessary to address the adjacent roads, such as 85th Street from Louise to Minnesota avenues, where the city is working this year to do an overlay and planning a traffic signal at 85th and Western.

“We’re being really thoughtful about this scale of construction,” Cotter said. “We’re moving a lot of traffic in the south side of Sioux Falls and daily commuters from northwest Iowa and Harrisburg and Tea, so we’re trying to be conscious about detour routes.”

The most visible road project in 2024 will be an overlay of 10th Street from Interstate 229 east to Sycamore Avenue, similar to what’s being done on Cliff Avenue this summer.

“We just bid 26th from Cleveland up to Sycamore, and that will be done this summer and is tired,” Cotter said. “Sixth Street from Cleveland out to Sycamore is getting done this summer, so east-siders will appreciate (10th Street) having surfacing improved.”

Later in the five-year plan, the city plans to build on its enhancement of Minnesota Avenue, which is wrapping up this year with final aesthetic improvements in the first phase south of Russell Street. The next phase likely will go from Second through Seventh streets.

Public safety

Much of the public safety-related funding in the capital plan takes the form of land needed for fire stations and police report-to-work stations.

That could include building a fire station in northwest Sioux Falls in 2026 and rebuilding the existing station at 41st Street and Marion Road within the later years of the five-year plan.

There’s funding planned for 2025 to acquire the west-side report-to-work station that the Police Department leases and designing and constructing an east-side report-to-work station in 2026 and 2027.

“We still have some excess property with fire station 12 they believe will be enough to utilize for that, but they’re still assessing that,” Pritchett said.

Pools and parks

Construction could start a little sooner than expected to replace the McKennan Park wading pool. The city proposes funding it with cash instead of including it in the broader bond coming to cover pool replacements at Frank Olson and Kuehn parks and potentially a new south-side swimming pool.

The 2024 capital plan includes nearly $7 million for the McKennan Park project and master plans for the other two pools, which would allow the city to start designing the wading pool next year and start construction after the 2024 swim season.

“We’ll start design work with the neighborhood on what that plan looks like,” director of parks and recreation Don Kearney said, adding construction will take potentially until midsummer 2025 depending on the scope of the work.

“The other thing we’re working on is if there’s private support to build a refrigerated rink at that location,” he said.

The city is in the process of finalizing consultants to work through plans for the other pool projects. It hasn’t been determined yet whether the city will recommend indoor or outdoor facilities or potentially expand the scope to a multigenerational recreation center. Funding through the bond would be available for projects starting in 2025.

Elsewhere in the parks system, the capital plan calls for 7 miles of new recreation trail over the next five years, including the Cherry Creek trail on the west side that will extend the trail from Family Park. There’s also an east-side trail segment planned to tie into the Mary Jo Wegner Arboretum and Arrowhead Park.

Also at Arrowhead, the city plans to renovate the inside of what’s known as Arrowhead House, including replacing a deck, “to make it more of a meeting and gathering space for parties, and we’ll be able to do programming out there,” Kearney said.

The five-year plan also calls for several new neighborhood parks, including Willow Ridge in northeast Sioux Falls, Whispering Woods in the southeast and Wild Meadows on the east side near Dawley Farm Village.

What’s next

The capital improvement program is only part of the city’s overall budget. TenHaken will present the operating budget in July, and the City Council will vote on the entire budget in September.