Sioux Falls, SD (2025)
Still a fresh face along Phillips Ave, Jacobson Plaza is already a boon for Downtown Sioux Falls. This southern extension of the City’s namesake park has been slowly materializing since the early 2000s. Now it’s here, and as far as I can tell, the people can’t get enough.
In 2004, the City of Sioux Falls finished remediating decades worth of industrial soil contamination on the site of Jacobson Plaza and extended Phillips Avenue north to The Falls. With downtown’s main artery connected to its greatest natural attraction, the revitalization of Downtown Sioux Falls began. The City wisely designated the Jacobson Plaza site as future park land, setting the wheels in motion for this new destination.
The project was a highly collaborative public-private effort involving the City’s Parks & Recreation Department, a number of private donors, and a design team led by our friends at Confluence. Confluence designed the site in its entirety, working closely with the Parks Department on the accessible playground, the splash pad, dog park, and the overall layout and flow of the park. We designed two structures on the site: the equipment building and the centerpiece food hall and warming house. The City will handle the Zamboni (even though I offered to do it for free).
Broken-up masses and natural material choices are the main contributors to the success of the design of the 7325 SF main building. And the building is a contributor to the success of the entire park. Home to a New American restaurant called The Lodge, the food hall brings families and friends together in between playground and splash pad sessions or in between a concert at the Levitt Shell and a walk through The Falls.
In the summer, the warming house is a misnomer – a fully air-conditioned space used for yoga classes, corporate events, and, of course, renting roller skates. Its peak form will be in the winter when the roller skates are swapped for ice skates, the Sioux Quartzite fire places get rolling, and the refrigerated ice rink is lit up for evening skating. You can catch a glance of that atmosphere in the final image below: a wintertime rendering courtesy of Confluence.
Jacobson Plaza is a year-round gathering place and a necessary new piece of connective tissue for Downtown Sioux Falls. The upshot? More patrons of downtown parks means more patrons of downtown businesses, which means more new businesses, greater density, and higher municipal tax receipts for more and better parks. That’s a recipe for community building.
