SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO.com) — The downtown city parking ramp was an idea originally conceived in November 2014 by Sioux Falls city leaders to help solve the city’s deep-seated need for more downtown parking. Over the last five years, it’s been riddled with cost estimate increases, controversy, a terminated developer agreement, and the threat of a lawsuit.
There was also the collapse of the Copper Lounge, which killed a construction worker and left a woman buried in rubble for 3 and a half hours before being rescued. The construction company that made the error that led to the death of a construction worker Ethan McMahon had deep ties to the original private developer of the parking ramp, Legacy Developments.
After these ties were discovered, the city cut ties with Legacy Developments on the project. Five years after the plan was conceived,.we still have no completed parking ramp. But the city is holding fast. Mayor Paul Ten Haken in November said that the site and the project have been set up to accommodate a mixed-use structure…first, a public parking ramp, and then private development alongside it and on top of it, once the parking ramp is finished.
He says that when the time is right, his administration will work to advance a project that maximizes this location and the potential of the project. He says it is critical to add parking downtown so the city can grow its entrepreneurial climate.“That’s the top priority of the project.” The City Council recently approved financing the final 1.5 million dollars for the ramp, so Mayor TenHaken says the ramp will finally become a reality soon.
(Colin Strombeck of KELO Radio News contributed to this article.)
