Mayor TenHaken offers inside look at 2022, with hopes ‘COVID cloud’ will lift

One year ago, the last thing Mayor Paul TenHaken hoped he’d be talking about to start 2022 was COVID-19.

“We all thought when we got the vaccine in January that COVID was done and we were going to move on and it was going to be 2020 (that was) the year we wanted to forget, and 2021 has been more of the same,” TenHaken said.

“It’s almost like the year of deja vu.”

Speaking from his office in the final days of 2021, it did feel that way.

“The hospitals are still very full, and COVID is still on people’s minds, and the vaccination issue became so polarizing that it just spills over into every other facet of life, whether it’s returning to work or schools or what to do with kids,” said TenHaken, who is entering the final months of his first term as mayor.

He calls 2020 the worst year of his life; and while 2021 didn’t take that distinction away, it’s clear there’s plenty still on his plate.

“For Sioux Falls, it’s a year of record-breaking growth on every level, and with that comes record-breaking challenges and opportunities,” he said. “You only have to drive around town and look at the license plates to get anecdotal evidence there are a lot of new faces in this market that are new in the last year to 18 months.”

For the city, 2021 has been a year dominated by attempting to manage growth, and 2022 is looking to bring more of the same.

“It’s created a historic workforce shortage and historic housing shortages, and as much as I’d love to say here’s the solution to housing or the one or two silver bullets, there’s not a city in this country not dealing with housing challenges.”

Violent crime was down year over year, but no one is suggesting calls for police service are going to decrease as the city adds thousands more residents every year.

“They’re not all law-abiding citizens,” TenHaken said. “So we doubled down on public safety initiatives, whether it’s the training center, opening a report-to-work location or adding staffing resources with a behavioral health community resource officer and our first six months of The Link, which indirectly is a public safety initiative because we’re trying to keep people out of jail who don’t need to be in jail but need other kinds of help.”

From a planning perspective, it’s a balance between wanting to grow and trying not to grow too fast.

TenHaken compares it to when he led digital marketing firm Click Rain and experienced double-digit growth multiple years in a row.

“After awhile, it’s exhausting, and I remember in year four or five telling the team if growth happens we’ll take it, but we’re not going to seek it because we have to make sure the car we’re driving is running smoothly before we go faster. You neglect deferred maintenance when you’re in hypergrowth mode.”

It’s not a race to see how fast Sioux Falls can rival Omaha or Lincoln or Minneapolis, he added.

“We’re not in a competition to grow. We’re trying to retain the quality of life and culture we love while still embracing those economic opportunities that continue to come at us almost daily.”

And that’s not an exaggeration. The mayor said he continues to hear from businesses regularly interested in expanding to Sioux Falls.

“We’re able to be a little more selective right now,” he said. “We have thousands of jobs coming in the next few years.”

Downtown – and one of his biggest disappointments

The coming year could be the largest ever in terms of construction occurring downtown.

On the public side, the city will be reconstructing the Sixth Street bridge along with three blocks of Phillips Avenue and Ninth Street.

And work will be underway at Falls Park West on Jacobson Plaza and its new ice ribbon and accessible playground.

On the private side, two marquee projects will begin changing the skyline to the north and east at the Steel District and Cherapa Place.

“When people look at a community, they look at the heartbeat of the downtown, and if downtown is thriving, the rest of the city is often thriving,” TenHaken said. “So $500 millionish between Cherapa and the Greenway and the Steel District and Jacobson in only a couple-block area just there alone is unheard of for downtown Sioux Falls, and what’s exciting to think about is the spinoff economic development and projects that will come out of it.”

Downtown also is the site of what the mayor calls “one of my biggest personal disappointments of my first term.”

The unfinished multiuse parking ramp project along 10th Street east of Phillips Avenue has been tangled in a legal dispute between the city and developers since 2019.

“I want people to know we are laser-focused in trying to get to a resolution,” TenHaken said. “I wish we could talk about it more and talk about it publicly because I think people think we’re sitting on our hands waiting for something to happen, and we’re not. There’s not a week that goes by that we’re not engaged in some kind of activity trying to bring closure. In 2022, I’m confident there’s going to be significant action in that.”

The ramp itself is cash-flowing, he added.

“We’re not losing money. It’s not costing a red cent to have it sit there like that. Is it ugly? Absolutely. There’s probably no one in the city of Sioux Falls that wants that thing buttoned up more than Paul TenHaken. It’s a project that has tremendous opportunities and potential, but when I got into office, there were challenges we knew we’d have to work through.”

Looking ahead

City government also plans to continue addressing its own workforce issues this year, TenHaken said.

“Our city employees are seeing the bonuses and incentives and work-from-home opportunities and every kitchen sink being thrown at employees … so we have to continue looking at how we’re being aggressive in retaining our people and making us an employer of choice,” he said. “We have to get serious about how to compete with the private sector. I have a lot of unfilled positions causing stress for the city.”

Despite the challenges, though, TenHaken said he feels “a very high level of optimism and excitement” citywide and that “people are thankful to be in Sioux Falls over the past two years,” he added.

“I will also say there’s a healthy level of skepticism on where the next two years go with federal dollars, inflation, Build Back Better plans, those things. I think we’re riding this wave, but we know every wave crashes into the shore at some point. People are cautiously optimistic but healthy skeptics as well.”

And – full circle – he said he’s hopeful the pandemic will begin to be behind us by midyear.

“We are going to probably be moving from pandemic to endemic and just having the COVID cloud lifted in the year ago,” he said. “I’m so looking forward to it because it creates a heaviness over every topic. It’s creating tension, anger, frustration. If we can start to lift that cloud, it will make for an even happier city.”