Startup Sioux Falls plans move to downtown office

Jan. 3, 2022

Startup Sioux Falls is hoping to head downtown.

The nonprofit organization that works to support the city’s entrepreneurial ecosystem has plans to lease a building at 100 E. Sixth St. that’s owned by the city of Sioux Falls.

It most recently was an office for the city’s Parks and Recreation Department but has been vacant for the past several years.

If the City Council approves, Startup Sioux Falls would lease the building for $1 per year for 10 years while being responsible for renovating it and doing routine maintenance.

An entity was first established locally to support entrepreneurs as the South Dakota Technology Business Center in the early 2000s and later rebranded as the Zeal Center for Entrepreneurship. Zeal then merged with Startup Sioux Falls and fully adopted the name last year. It’s located at 2329 N. Career Ave. in a building owned by the Sioux Falls Development Foundation, Greater Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce and Startup Sioux Falls.

Plans for a downtown move have been contemplated for years for multiple reasons, said Brienne Maner, executive director.

“Visibility and accessibility – meeting our founders where they’re at,” she said. “We’re out on the northwest side of Sioux Falls. For some, that feels like a convenient location because we’re off the interstate. But for most, even though it’s only 10 minutes from downtown, there’s a perception it’s not in the core or the heart of our city, so we see less drop-in traffic and haven’t been able to build up that co-working community.”

The downtown move also will put the organization closer to resources partners such as banks and law firms, economic development entities and city government, where it could work in partnership with the city’s innovation department, Maner said.

“And then just becoming an active member of the downtown community where so many of our entrepreneurs own their businesses.”

The move will downsize the organization from a 45,000-square-foot building mostly leased to small businesses and resource partners to less than 7,000 square feet. But the pandemic has shown “the space we’re pursuing is big enough and versatile enough,” Maner said. “We’ve come away from the days of needing a shared copier and individual office suites, and we’ve become more of a community, and truly learned entrepreneurs need a community around them.”

The new space will have some individual offices, but they will be geared more toward one- or two-person resource partners, she said. There also will be an event space that can host up to 100 people and be used by businesses and nonprofits.

“And the most exciting part of the space for me is that co-working hybrid element,” Maner said. “If you think about walking into a Josiah’s or Queen City Bakery, a similar model exists. You can grab a table and work. We love the idea of versatility … and the delineator between us and a Josiah’s or Queen City is you can use our space as more of a refuge, a space where you can go work and connect with other like-minded entrepreneurs.”

While there will be a membership model to access the space, there also will be opportunity for anyone to use it.

The interior will need to be entirely remodeled, and the goal is to be moved in by the end of the year.

“The energy of downtown is like none other in our city, so it makes sense to harness that for our entrepreneurial community,” Mayor Paul TenHaken said in a statement. “We’ve been working on establishing a startup footprint in our downtown for some time, and in fact, it was a goal we had for Startup Sioux Falls back when I was their board chair. The right people and vision have come together and to see it finally happening is incredibly exciting.”

The City Council will hear the first reading of the lease this week and vote on it later this month.

“If you take a drive around our city, you’ll know the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in Sioux Falls. Local businesses have made our city a leader in the region for economic growth,” council member Alex Jensen said.

“The city of Sioux Falls is excited to partner with Start Up Sioux Falls to help even more entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses here. Start Up Sioux Falls provides business owners with education, resources, connections and anything else they need to make their business a success. I can’t wait to see the new ideas and innovations that will come from this partnership.”

The opportunity “is going to grant us 10 years, so after 10 years we’ll be needing to look into the future as far as how our organization is going to shift and potentially grow,” Maner added. “It’s really hard to predict, just like we couldn’t have predicted a pandemic was going to hit, and entrepreneurship has never been more prevalent in this community. So we’ll continue to keep our eyes open for opportunities to collaborate, and those partnerships have been a godsend.”

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Startup Sioux Falls plans move to downtown office

Startup Sioux Falls is hoping to head downtown.

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