Category: Directions Newsletter

By Bob Mundt, President & CEO

When I arrived at the Development Foundation in mid-2018, I was charged with the challenging task of recruiting people — as well as companies — to Sioux Falls. The previous Forward Sioux Falls program had identified workforce development as THE top issue facing our community and tabbed the Development Foundation with meeting that need. Their logic was that if the Development Foundation was in charge of creating new jobs through the expansion, retention and attraction of industry, we should also be in charge of helping our companies fill those positions.

After hiring Denise Guzzetta to lead this effort in 2019, we decided that the best strategy to address the labor challenge was to develop ways to add prospective employees to the workforce pipeline and connect them with our employers searching for talent. I am proud to report that over the past four years, we have met that challenge head on.

Our three-pronged approach centered on:

• Local Talent Development through programs aimed at middle school, high school, local university/tech school students; and upskilling of current employees to higher paying, in-demand jobs. Programs include:
  • Career Connections
  • Your Future STEM Camps and in-school opportunities
  • Second Chance Job Fairs
  • Health Sciences Clinical Simulation Center
  • UPSKILL Sioux Falls
• Talent Attraction with programming and marketing to universities/tech schools and regional talent hubs to recruit existing workers and specialized talent.
  • Talent Tours
  • Talent Now
  • Talent Draft Days
  • Talent Rebounds
  • Talent Thursdays
  • INTERN Sioux Falls
  • WORK Sioux Falls
• Business Partnerships sharing resources and best practices for recruiting and retaining talent in a competitive environment.
  • Sioux Falls Area Recruitment Council
  • WIN in Workforce Summit

Using social media, traditional media and leveraging our partnerships with education, government, the business community, and best practices from around the country, we continue to lead the region in recruiting talent. Our website, SiouxFalls.com, continues to generate connections to our Forward Sioux Falls investors, our members and our companies looking to hire talent. Literally, thousands of people from outside the region have connected with our companies and we continue to expose our local talent to the many opportunities for work after high school graduation, or advancement opportunities within their companies.

While our unemployment numbers remain low, I am confident that we are generating a buzz about working and living in Sioux Falls. As we move forward, we will continue to look for new ways to bring workers into the Sioux Falls pipeline. We appreciate your support and participation in these programs.

by Bob Mundt, President and CEO

For the past six years, the Sioux Falls Development Foundation has been challenged to provide the region with a workforce development strategy that will help our current companies recruit and retain workers and fill the workforce needs of companies we are recruiting to our region. I believe we have implemented a series of programs (13) that, in one way or another, have met that challenge.

Focusing on our middle schools, high schools, universities/tech schools and retraining opportunities, we have added to the pipeline. Internships and apprenticeships have brought new workers to our doorsteps, and our WORK Sioux Falls initiative has spread the word that jobs are available in Sioux Falls with amazing benefits and a superior quality of life. Even so, we continue to experience low unemployment and a constant need for more workers, triggering the question: Where have all the workers gone?

The article below from the Bank of America Institute may help explain what has happened nationwide since COVID-19 and the changing demographics of workforce development in Sioux Falls.

By: Steve Kolbeck

With every new year, there seems to be new challenges which in turn bring new opportunities. I am honored to be chairing the Sioux Falls Development Foundation this year as we rise to meet these challenges. Previous leadership has placed us in a good position to capitalize on past decisions and be ready when we need to be.

Foundation Park has met or exceeded expectations providing new development, tax base and new jobs for the community. With companies like Amazon, FedEx, Lineage Logistics, Nordica, Tessier’s, Dakota Carriers, and our newest tenants – Scherer, Inc. and Muth Electric in Foundation Park South, we established a Tax Increment Finance District north of the tracks with the help of the City to fund the build out of Foundation Park North to accommodate CJ Foods North America beginning in 2024.

In 2022, we graded the entire 500+ acres of ground north of the tracks and have just accepted bids for the installation of roads, water, sanitary and storm sewers. These actions taken by the Foundation will allow the development of “build-ready” lots north of the tracks soon and a premier showpiece for prospects considering Sioux Falls for expansion or relocation. With the changes in interest rates, inflation and supply chain issues, these buildable sites make our location stand above the competition.

In addition, our workforce development efforts stand as a model for the region as we administer 13 specific programs to help our existing companies find workers, ranging from Career Connections in our high schools to our university and tech school recruitment through INTERN Sioux Falls, UPSKILL Sioux Falls, WORK Sioux Falls, and a host of talent recruitment efforts reaching potential workers in the 300-mile radius.

2023 will be a year with new challenges, but the Sioux Falls Development Foundation is meeting those challenges. We encourage all of you to join us through membership in the Foundation and through connecting with us if you have expansions in your future. We appreciate your involvement in Sioux Falls and the Foundation and thank you for being a part of our growing community.

Win in Workforce Summit 2022 brought record onsite attendance as talent and workforce initiatives remain an important issue globally.

“We are very appreciative and grateful for the tremendous response from attendees and organizations supporting WIN in Workforce Summit 2022,” said Denise Guzzetta, Vice President of Talent and Workforce for the Sioux Falls Development Foundation. “We continue to build on a great initiative started in 2018 by the Talent and Workforce Committee with a simple desire to engage and share the best talent and workforce practices within our region. In 2022, we had nearly 800 people in attendance, and we are excited to start planning for WIN 2023.”

“Business and community leaders engaging each other in sessions about workforce-related topics covering culture, collegiate engagement, sustainability, and others illustrates why Sioux Falls is a great community,” says Bob Mundt, President and CEO of the Sioux Falls Development Foundation.

Special thanks to all organizations investing financially in WIN 2022, including Avera, City of Sioux Falls, First Bank & Trust, Forward Sioux Falls, Journey Group, MidAmerican Energy, Sanford Health, Sayre Associates, University of Sioux Falls, and Xcel Energy.

The Sioux Falls Development Foundation’s Career Connections program hosted Talent Tours for City and Industry with 16 employer partners on December 7, 2022, to share high-demand jobs with soon-to-be graduates.

With nearly 200 high school seniors from Brandon Valley High and Washington High School involved, students chose between different career tracks involving health care, manufacturing, construction, and local government, to gain valuable connections and resources for jobs related to their chosen career path.

The program connects students with business and community leaders during four separate 60-minute group tours to help students figure out their next steps after graduation in May 2023. From students participating in time drills to dress in protective fire gear, watching a suppression hearing about lawful searches, to building an HVAC system to support 500 occupants in a commercial building, students asked questions from experts about what their daily work involves.

“I participated in the government track and had no idea about the background and qualifications of fire personnel. This visit helped me understand how my interests in chemistry could be applied to a career,” said Hannah, a Brandon Valley senior graduating in May 2023.

“Hannah’s experience is normal,” says Denise Guzzetta, Vice President of Talent and Workforce for the Sioux Falls Development Foundation. “ We created Career Connections to combine career and educational exposure and exploration, leading to viable career opportunities available to students in the Sioux Falls region. “We know from long-term studies conducted by the U.S. government that high schoolers ages 16-19 years participating in career exposure and exploration programs have higher wages at 23 and gain higher quality jobs by 30 than their peers who were not exposed, by helping to shape their career journeys.”

Studies have also reported that students participating in career exposure and exploration programs gain critical thinking skills and self-esteem through research, business engagement, and focusing on areas of strength.

For more information about talent development programs, please get in touch with Denise Guzzetta at 605-595-4355.

By Mike Lynch

Work has begun on Vision Sioux Falls, a long-range, community-wide strategic plan that will provide a blueprint for moving our community forward for the next ten years.

Forward Sioux Falls is collaborating with the City of Sioux Falls, Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation, Sioux Empire United Way, and the Sioux Falls School District. The objective for Vision Sioux Falls is to be inspirational in designing a meaningful roadmap that will capitalize on the unprecedented momentum we have experienced as a community.

Omaha-based consulting firm RDG Planning & Design has been hired to coordinate the plan, which will focus on quality-of-life attributes within focus areas including the following:

• Arts/Entertainment/Recreation/Leisure
• Education/Training/Workforce
• Health & Human Services
• Housing
• City Image/Marketing
• Public Safety

To date, a public engagement plan has included surveys, listening sessions, community roundtables and one-on-one interviews. Several other opportunities for the public to participate will be offered over the next few months. A dynamic website, found here, is designed to track the plan’s progress, promote upcoming events and allow individuals to provide input using an interactive map. Feedback collected will be progressively evaluated to determine what gaps or trends rise to the top. Ultimately, action items will be identified, stakeholders named, and metrics determined.

A Community Allies committee, comprised of individuals within underserved areas of our community, serves as a bridge to conversations within marginalized populations. In addition, a Strategic Council includes representatives from a wide base of perspective from within the community. These individuals are meeting several times throughout the planning process to provide insight on priorities that focus on three key elements: Where are we now? Where do we want to go? How do we get there?

The strategic plan is scheduled to be completed by late spring 2023.

By: Karen Ruhland

Questions often arise in meetings, casual conversations, and formal requests as to where people come from and why they choose the area. Consider your own story, and often the answers aren’t too different.

Family, friends, education, opportunity, and careers answer the majority of the why’s. Add in quality of life, cost of living, and healthcare as important factors for others.

In terms of where our new metro area neighbors are coming from . . . Census data and the IRS can provide migration stats, moving companies and residential closings are additional sources. Conversations with new co-workers, neighbors, or friends of friends provide additional narrative and interesting stories.

So, what are all these sources telling us?

According to IRS county-based statistics, 4,500 individual tax returns that listed an out-of-state address in 2019 listed a Sioux Falls metro area address in 2020. While the majority of these come from our neighboring states, 104 came from Maricopa County in the Phoenix metro, 65 from two counties in the Los Angeles area, 41 from Clark County in the Las Vegas metro, and just shy of that from Seattle’s King County, Colorado Springs’ El Paso County and Chicago’s Cook County.

On a regional basis, new residents come from the Twin Cities, southwest Minnesota, Sioux City, northwest Iowa, Omaha, Fargo, Des Moines, and Lincoln in descending order based on IRS County-to-County Migration.

Year to date residential closings from one of our member organizations, First Dakota Title, indicate similar trends continued in 2022 with most of the movement coming from the Twin Cities, Omaha and Lincoln, different communities in Iowa, Seattle, and various metros in Colorado.

A quick look at the Foundation’s Board and Staff shows the vast majority are native South Dakotans with a handful of Nebraskans, Minnesotans and Iowans filling out the ranks and a few outliers. Where they received the education shows more diversity; about 40% obtained their undergraduate degrees out-of-state indicating most moved back or received their education in the area and stayed.

One block of residents currently living in southeast Sioux Falls encompasses even more diversity: two families originally from eastern Europe via way of Arizona and Iowa; natives of Colorado, California, Minnesota, and Iowa; South Dakotans from west river and Aberdeen and life-long Sioux Falls residents.

Stories the Foundation has posted recently tell of new residents from Portland, Detroit, Atlanta, Virginia, Alaska, and California; and why they moved here.

Sioux Falls and the surrounding towns will always be a draw for residents from southeast South Dakota, northwest Iowa, and southwest Minnesota. Attracting individuals and families from further afar will continue as well. Quality of life and opportunity are attributes, and the Foundation continues efforts to spread the word.

You can help! Invite your friends and relatives to check out the area, explore career opportunities available here, and connect them with your network of business contacts. Encourage high schoolers to explore the education offerings in our region. Encourage the college set to explore internship opportunities here and connect with our INTERN Sioux Falls Coordinator. Tout South Dakota tax advantages, healthcare options, and the plethora of activities available to the out-of-state soon-to-be retirees you know.

The Development Foundation can help make connections!

Disclaimer: Information provided by First Dakota Title does not include confidential information such as names of specific addresses.

Foundation Park continues to grow, not only with new tenants but with more developable acres of land. The Sioux Falls Development Foundation recently executed agreements and will be closing on 70 acres that will expand the industrial park boundary to the north. Any time you can acquire additional land that is contiguous to an existing park development it becomes very cost effective. These 70 acres will utilize the infrastructure that is being extended in the next 12-18 months to service all of Foundation Park north of the railroad tracks. This will bring the total overall developable land in Foundation Park to 926 acres.

The Sioux Falls Development Foundation also closed on 135 acres east of I-29 in October. This land, directly east of Foundation Park, became available in early 2022. It made sense for the Foundation to acquire the land as inventory for future development. The most important aspect of this land is that is resides in the same sewer basin as Foundation Park and will be served by the existing lift station installed for Foundation Park. The Development Foundation plans to work through the annexation process with the City and begin master planning. It’s realistic to see development in this area in the next 3-5 years.

Historically, the Development Foundation has acquired farmland on the northern edges of Sioux Falls and invested in infrastructure to transform the land into business and industrial parks. These investments ultimately facilitated the creation of tens of thousands of jobs for the greater Sioux Falls region.

Development Foundation staff members take pride in managing the inventory of industrial acres available so as to always be prepared when existing area businesses are ready to expand and when new businesses look to relocate to Sioux Falls. Over the years, Sioux Falls, the surrounding communities, private businesses, and most importantly, our residents, have benefited from these efforts. Those benefits include finding meaningful employment, raising a family, growing a business, and pursuing a high quality of life here in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Our mission “to collaboratively create quality economic growth and workforce development in the Sioux Falls MSA to improve our quality of life” will continue to guide (and drive) these efforts forward into the future.

As evidenced above, the Development Foundation has a long successful history in strategically developing real estate to accomplish specific goals. In quarter four of 2022, in partnership with Mayor TenHaken, Chief of Staff Erica Beck, Director of Planning & Development Services Jeff Eckhoff, and the Development Foundation’s Executive Board members Kurt Loundenback, Pat Costello, Steve Kolbeck, Ryan Boschee, and Kent Cutler, the Foundation identified an opportunity to leverage our institutional expertise, knowledge, and partnerships to strategically accomplish new goals. Goals that include supporting the community’s housing plan, slowing development sprawl, increasing land use efficiency, and ultimately keeping the Sioux Falls area investable for decades into the future. In order to preserve our mission and honor the storied legacy of the Development Foundation, this expanded scope of strategic land development will be operated by the newly formed Falls Area Development Corporation in partnership with the Development Foundation.

The Development Foundation is excited to begin a new era of real estate development for the betterment of our community and region. The Sioux Falls area has consistently achieved success for a litany of reasons, but the most important reason can be found in the mantra of our partner, Forward Sioux Falls: “A rising tide lifts all boats.” Transformational accomplishments for our community can only be achieved when private businesses, governmental bodies, and non-profits pause from competition and unite towards common goals. Our land development efforts, for both Sioux Falls Development Foundation and now Falls Area Development Corporation, rely on partnerships to be successful. We will achieve more by acting together, and we look forward to continuing to build successful partnerships in the future.

By Kurt Loudenback, President, Grand Prairie Foods, Inc.

2022 has been a year of resiliency and recovery. Our community has emerged stronger and more resilient as we have dealt with some crazy economic challenges over the last 2 years. Despite all of the headwinds we have faced, The Foundation has had another good year of land sales, prospect development and connection between workforce candidates and our members. We are collectively in a good spot to take advantage of continued interest in our state and region while addressing the need for expanding a skilled workforce.

Through various partnerships with both the public and private sectors, the Foundation is positioned to provide valued services to our members, our clients, and our community. Board identified priorities including business retention and expansion, business attraction, and workforce and talent development remain key focus areas. Foundation leaders created a plan centered around these areas three years ago and we have been executing on strategies and programs developed to address these needs.

Partnerships with existing companies looking to grow in the Sioux Falls region have increased dramatically. The Foundation’s Business Retention & Expansion initiative has paid dividends with several expansions. Additionally, the Foundation continues to work with the City of Sioux Falls on expansion projects and infrastructure developments.

Our Business Attraction efforts have resulted in land sales in Foundation Park and Sioux Empire Development Park 8; and we have implemented new and creative marketing techniques to promote the area. Our partnership with local brokers to tap into their national networks has created additional interest from companies across the country.

We have implemented new programs to identify and attract talent to the region and build up our talent from within. Many of our events are both in-person as well as virtual, allowing us to expand our reach far beyond our borders. Our WIN in Workforce Summit in October brought nearly 800 HR professionals, educators, and industry leaders together to share new ideas and best practices for successful talent recruitment, development, and retention. Talent Tours, Talent Rebound events and Talent Draft Day incorporate both in-person and virtual formats, resulting in hundreds of connections between local employers, high school, and post-secondary students to promote the benefits of living and working in Sioux Falls.

We will continue to employ these strategies and programs in 2023 and will continue to have success in growing our region. While these are challenging times in growing our workforce, we believe our efforts will have far-reaching effects on the future growth and sustainability of our region.

The message that Sioux Falls and South Dakota are the best place to own a business, raise a family, and be a young professional are becoming clear. In 2021, Sioux Falls welcomed 7,000 new residents. People are choosing to relocate here because of the quality of life that our community offers: great schools, parks, dining and entertainment, and economic opportunity. In 2023, we’ll be sharing that message with new prospects and potential residents.

It has been a pleasure serving as the Chair of the Board during 2022 and I leave this organization in good hands. Thanks to all of you who have made the Foundation the great economic engine that it is. The Board of Directors and leadership team appreciate your support and hope to continue serving you as members of the Foundation. THANK YOU and have a prosperous 2023.

By Steve Kolbeck, Principal Manager, Xcel Energy South Dakota

What a great honor it is to be taking the helm of the Sioux Falls Development Foundation at a time of tremendous change and challenges. As the premier economic development organization in the region, the Sioux Falls Development Foundation has positioned itself to successfully meet those challenges.

Under past leadership, the Foundation has literally paved the way for business and industrial growth in the region by creating the Foundation Park mega site, recruiting thousands of new jobs and dozens of new companies, and creating a workforce recruitment model that is second to none. Past leadership has leveraged the cooperative spirit of Sioux Falls to finance these opportunities, create an aggressive marketing plan and create an environment of success in the region.

I want to thank Kurt Loudenback, Pat Costello, Todd Ernst and Tim McCarthy for their leadership over the past six years and welcome our three new Board members – Scott Wickersham, Raquel Blount and Chris Ekstrum – to the Board. I look forward to working with all of you to continue leading this community.

So what’s ahead in 2023?

• Completion of grading and infrastructure development within Foundation Park North and Park 8 West including streets, sewers, water, power, and lot development.
• Construction of the CJ Foods facility and more projects in Foundation Park.
• Expected sales of 100 more acres in Foundation Park.
• Full scale operation of Amazon & FedEx in Foundation Park South.
• Construction of Presidio Manufacturing and the National Guard Readiness facility in Park 8 East.
• Expansion of several existing companies that are currently in the planning process.
• Implementation of the Falls Area Development Corporation and redevelopment of targeted areas for workforce housing opportunities.
• Continuation and expansion of Workforce Initiatives with our State and local partners.
• Strong marketing to site selectors, brokers, and workforce partners.
• Opening of the Startup Sioux Falls Center in downtown Sioux Falls.
• Opening of the Health Sciences Clinical Simulation Center at Southeast Technical College.
• Continuous efforts to develop a strong quality of life in the region.

The Sioux Falls Development Foundation is proud to be leading these efforts and programs and we sincerely appreciate each one of you for your talents, your business, and your involvement in our community. I look forward to serving you as your Chair. Please continue to be a part of this great organization.

Have a great 2023.