Nov. 9, 2022

Meat processing plants can continue to build in Sioux Falls, voters decided Tuesday.

An ordinance that would have prohibited new construction inside the city limits, other than at existing locations, was voted down 52 percent to 48 percent.

“We’re grateful and overjoyed,” said Luke Minion, the board chair of Wholestone Farms, which is planning to build an estimated $600 million pork processing plant in northeast Sioux Falls.

“It’s great to be on this side of this. We’re really happy for the Wholestone farmers and thankful for the voters and how we’re doing, I think, the right thing beyond Wholestone. I think we got this one right for Sioux Falls and right for the state, and we’ll see how it goes from here.”

Wholestone began operating a custom butcher shop late last month on the 170-acre property in northeast Sioux Falls near Benson Road and Interstate 229, near Gage Brothers Concrete Materials.

It allows customers to select a Wholestone farmer and order a pig turned into Wholestone-branded products — from pork chops to pork loins.

“We’re having fun at the butcher shop,” Minion said. “We’ll continue to operate the butcher shop. We’ve got a lot of work to do to make it into what we want, but we have customers, and we’re selling hogs and breaking in our team. We have a startup business, but we’ll continue to operate that and the bigger picture, longer term project is back to where we can plan for it without this obstacle.”

Wholestone contended that as an existing butcher shop it would have been allowed to expand at the site regardless of the vote’s outcome, but had it gone the other way, the project likely would have drawn a legal challenge.

There are still issues to address before construction will start though. The plan is to finish some permitting Minion called “procedural but important” while analyzing the changing broader business environment facing the pork industry.

“It’s a very complicated time in the world, and we have to be successful in a project this size,” he said.

In the past 12 months, currency-related shifts in the export market combined with the inflation of labor, construction and borrowing costs make it a different picture to navigate, he said.

“They are realities we have to face in a business development plan,” Minion said. “We’ll do our best to work through and make good decisions, but we’ll be open and forthright. And right now, it’s just a day to be happy.”