Ok kids, this might come as a shock to you, but Downtown Sioux Falls — currently the hottest spot in town — wasn’t always alright.
If you’re new to town — or under the age of 21 — you might not know just how bad things had gone in the hub of our wee little metropolis.
It’s a typical story, repeated in a thousand other mid-size cities across the US: Some developer turned a cornfield into “The Mall” and suddenly the combination of air-conditioning and free parking(!) made shopping on (the metaphorical) Main St. passe. How can you compete with Orange Julius anyway?
Read up on the fall & rise of the coolest coupla blocks in South Dakota. Here’s a great place to start: The Argus Leader dug in and put all of the facts in one place for ya.
We like to make it easy to know your history. Hopefully, we’re learning from the mistaken ambitions of the past. If not, we’re bound to repeat them. We’re sure there’s another cornfield out by Tea or Harrisburg that some deep-pocketed guy believes to hold the pearls of the future. Let’s keep proving them wrong and keep Downtown happening for a long time to come.