Sept. 30, 2021

An effort years in the making to build an interactive outdoor plaza dedicated to agriculture at Falls Park will become a reality, named in honor of Jim Woster.

Denny Sanford contributed $1.5 million to bring the project to fruition.

“It’s Woster’s vision. He’s been at this so many years and it’s one of those iconic things in Sioux Falls — the Stockyards and everything that went around it and so many people have connections to it,” said Dana Dykhouse, First Premier Bank CEO, who co-chaired a fundraising campaign for the project and grew up helping his grandfather haul hogs to Sioux Falls on weekends.

The Woster Plaza plan calls for a design feature for experiential areas: cultivate, raise, tend and celebrate. It will highlight farming past and present, provide education for all ages and include a restroom and picnic shelter with farmyard thematic elements.

The 3.7-acre development will use original Stockyards remnants including the Morrell’s tunnel entry and Stockyards catwalk, the pump house, Stockyards pen gates, and even the Stockyards iconic pig.

At the entrance to the Plaza, visitors will walk into a beamed open space seeded in native grasses – reminiscent of ag fields. Just beyond the entrance on the left, visitors will be able to walk through a replica livestock truck drop off. Interpretive exhibits and digital display boards on history of ag, stockyards, and banking in the region will be found throughout. The original elevated catwalk will let visitors of all ages oversee ‘livestock pens’.

A replica livestock scale that moves into small livestock stage ‘selling’ area will be followed by an interpretive exhibit of a renovated tunnel building leading to meat processing plant across street still in operation.

The first phase of the project, the Stockyards Ag Experience Barn, opened to the public in March 2017.

Woster first helped bring the idea forward in 2012.

Sanford also wanted to see it done, Dykhouse said.

“He’s been a friend of Jim’s since he moved to Sioux Falls. Sioux Falls and the heritage of Sioux Falls is important to him and I know Denny wants to see those type of things preserved,” he said.

“This should put it over the top. This should get it done. It’s been a great partnership. There’s been literally hundreds of individuals. The city of Sioux Falls has been terrific. It’s one of those deals where private and public partnership come together for the good of Sioux Falls.”