Sioux Falls Building Permits need Clarity

The horns are a tootin’ and the noisy makers are out;

Sioux Falls set a record by surpassing $1 billion in building activity last year, setting the mark in late November. This year, the city hit $1 billion in less than seven months.

I have argued for years that I while this is a good thing, we really need a realistic breakdown.

I would first start with a simple breakdown;

• 100% Private investment vs. Institutional & Public

I couldn’t even guess what that would be, but I think private is probably the bigger percentage

I would also like to see this breakdown;

• Density vs. New development

In other words what percentage is building and rebuilding in our core and established neighborhoods and what is new land acquisition?

A more detailed breakdown would be;

• Public (city, state, county, school, federal, military, etc.)

• Institutional (Hospitals, non-profits, churches, etc.)

• Multi-Housing (Apartments, duplexes, etc.)

• Single family residential

• Commercial (100% private investment)

• Commercial (partial public investment like tax rebates and TIFs)

I think this data is important because it gives us a big picture of how we are breaking these records. I have asked for this data for years and never get anywhere. I did download the building permit spreadsheet from 2021 and tried to break it down but it was nearly impossible since many developers have multiple mysterious LLCs they are using for the permitting.

If the Planning Department wants to really boast about the permits, why not give us a picture of what that looks like.