$50M downtown development to include hotel, retail

A downtown development that could reach 14 stories and $50 million will include a hotel, parking ramp and retail space.

Called Village on the River and sitting east of 10th Street and Phillips Avenue, the project is a partnership between Legacy Developments and the city of Sioux Falls. It’s believed to be the largest private-public development in the city’s history, said Norm Drake, Legacy’s CEO.

“It should have a very, very large impact on downtown,” he said. “We know we’re short hotel rooms right now downtown. We also know we’re short in parking. And this will allow us to bring more businesses downtown and further develop other projects.”

The hotel will be a national name, but none has been confirmed yet. It will be 120 to 140 rooms on six or seven stories, Drake said. Village on the River also will include street-level retail, two or three stories above that with more retail and amenities, plus several stories of above-ground parking, bringing the total height to 13 or 14 stories.

A rendering of Village on the River by JLG Architects.

It will be an upscale, full-service hotel with a lobby at the corner of 10th Street and Mall Avenue, Drake said.

“It will be a covered structure that allows you to pull in under the structure, check in and valet park your car,” he said. “We hope to have a second level that will have a restaurant and bar and additional retail, and then the third and maybe a fourth level will have hotel amenities like a banquet room, a swimming pool, conference center and maybe a small outdoor space.”

Legacy was selected by the city earlier this year to partner on its parking ramp with additional development. The new ramp will bring needed parking to the area while fulfilling a larger goal of integrating additional development, city leaders said.

“We’re proposing to use zero taxpayer dollars,” said Daren Ketcham, director of community development.

The $20 million parking ramp portion would be paid through a bond secured with user fees for parking downtown.

“With this development, we can support hundreds of new jobs downtown,” Ketcham added. “We can accommodate hundreds of thousands of square feet of new development in our downtown.”

The project will add 525 parking spaces, addressing the city’s projected need for 1,000 to 2,000 parking spaces in the next 20 years.

“We feel this is the first step in … meeting that demand,” Ketcham said. “This is going to be another destination for downtown.”

This rendering by JLG Architects shows how Village on the River will change the downtown skyline.

Schematic design has been finished, and once the City Council approves elements of the project, Legacy will move forward with design and finalizing costs.

The parking ramp will start construction first, with the rest of the development following. Legacy could start its part of the project in late 2018 and open about a year later, Drake said.

The hotel is the second to be announced for downtown in the past week. Kelly Inns will convert the former Great Western Bank headquarters at Ninth and Phillips into an upscale boutique hotel called Hotel Phillips. It’s scheduled to open late next year.

Hotel Phillips to bring upscale boutique hotel downtown

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$50M downtown development to include hotel, retail

A downtown development that could reach 14 stories and $50 million will include a hotel, parking ramp and retail space.

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