TenHaken on 2024:  A year of managing growth while positioning for the future

The city of Sioux Falls will have some big decisions to make this year.

Start with the future for two major areas of interest: the campus around the Denny Sanford Premier Center and the newly dubbed Riverline District on the eastern edge of downtown.

Add in multiple aging swimming pools and a long-term need for a new one to serve south Sioux Falls.

Then, there’s the Great Plains Zoo, which is holding off on bringing forward a new master plan while options are weighed for the future of the taxidermy collection of the Delbridge Museum of Natural History.

Against all of it is a backdrop of tightening budgets. After double-digit year-over-year sales tax growth in recent years, revenue growth has flatlined to the point where it’s not keeping up with inflation.

“The theme overall is we’re planning in the year ahead for a softer sales tax year,” Mayor Paul TenHaken said. “It’s how do we keep up with population growth when our primary revenue source we’re expecting to be in a place it’s probably not been the last few years.”

The early years of TenHaken’s administration were about basic needs: major road projects, improvements to the wastewater treatment plant, enhancements to public safety such as a new training center and combatting a seemingly endless string of disasters from tornadoes to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The latter years seem as though they could be more about quality-of-life improvements – from pools, parks, entertainment and visitor attractions to homelessness and other social needs.

“This will be a year where we try to set the chessboard a little bit for what a community growing at our pace is going to need to attract and retain young families well into the future,” TenHaken said.

By mid-first quarter, expect an update from the group tasked with considering options for the Riverline District, which sits on property along East 10th Street being used by the state of South Dakota for an office that’s relocating.

“We’re shooting to say ‘Here’s the vision. Here’s the dream around convention space and indoor rec space and all the needs the community has,’” TenHaken said. “The reason it’s been quiet is my administration wants the community to think really big and bold, and not just about one parcel of land but a bigger 2050 vision for the community and how the Riverline can be a piece of that.”

The work around that property also put a study group for the events center campus “a little bit on hold because they want to know what happens with the Riverline,” TenHaken continued. “If it’s determined we put a stadium there, that will affect plans. Or a convention center, that will affect plans. So they’ve been in a bit of a holding patten … and once we announce and move ahead with how that will affect the campus, they will have a clear blueprint on how they would like to proceed. There have been a lot of pieces in limbo.”

Still to be determined are how any major improvements would be funded, he added.

In the meantime, another large quality-of-life investment is expected to be considered by the City Council before new members take office later in the spring. City staff and consultants have been working through options to replace Kuehn and Frank Olson pools, as well as potential opportunities for a pool in south Sioux Falls, and at least two of the projects are expected to be part of a bond that will require a council vote.

“They’re still getting community feedback, but my thought is that we will likely be able to afford at least one year-round indoor aquatics facility, kind of a multigeneration facility,” TenHaken said. “Getting to two at both Frank Olson and Kuehn I think is going to be a financial stretch for the city, so we’ll see. I’d love to do it, but I’m not sure we can afford it, so that will be big.”

A new master plan for Falls Park also is expected to be finalized this year as construction continues on Jacobson Plaza.

In addition to the quality-of-life projects in play, major road work continues as well. Many of those are multiyear construction projects such as the diverging diamond interchanges at 41st Street and Interstate 29, as well as Benson Road and Interstate 229.

“We’ll finish the Sixth Street bridge, we’ll make more progress on water reclamation, which is supposed to open in 2025, and we’re 40 percent of the way toward completion,” TenHaken said.

A new interchange at 85th Street and I-29 is expected to start work this year, along with construction of the next segments of Veterans Parkway.

“We had significant projects around roads and traffic flow,” TenHaken said. “With the (South Dakota) Department of Transportation, which has given us really some sizable financial support, we impacted more than 50 miles of roadway in the city. There’s bridges going up, huge lanes of concrete have been poured, and we made substantial progress on Veterans Parkway South.”

The city also begins the new year with a new transit provider, Via, which is expected to bring in technology and service changes that allow for on-demand transit, a hybrid system of fixed routes, paratransit and micro-transit.

“We fully anticipate this is going to be a learning process for the community and the city,” TenHaken said. “It’s been decades since we had a new approach to transit, and we need the city to work alongside us on this, but so far all signs point toward that they’re going to be an awesome, great partner.”

TenHaken also sees himself “starting to take a little bit more active role in things related to homelessness and our homeless community, our homeless corridor, if you will,” he said. “Determining what’s the long-term vision for our downtown as we continue to move east, the city’s role in that, our partners’ role in that … we have to figure out how we’re going to work together as a community on homelessness as our city keeps growing.”

Through it all, he’s mindful that “I’ve got two years, four months left in the chair,” he said, alluding to the 2026 mayoral election to choose his successor.

“You don’t want to straddle the next administration with a vision they can’t agree on and get behind,” he said. “So it can’t be uber-controversial or something that feels forced. It has to be organic, and the community has to get behind it, so when a new administration starts in 2026, there will be momentum that will carry forward.”