Notice I call it Falls Park and not THE FALLS. The first thing the next mayor needs to do is take down that stupid looking 1982 jacket vest colored sign and replace if with a new quartzite sign that says ‘Falls Park’. So if any future mayors try to do the same thing, it will be a little bit harder to replace. I still don’t know how a mayor can just make that decision on his own with executive authority? That should have gone thru public hearings with the naming committee, historic board, the parks board, the planning commission, the rubberstamp arts commission and a vote of the city council. Heck, the next mayor needs to do just that to get it changed back! So much corruption at city hall. When I bitched to someone about this who works at city hall they kind of said to me like ‘Who cares.’ and I was like, ‘How would you like it if he renamed Fawick Park, Sanford Park and replaced David with that goofy Happy Chef looking statue that sits on the Sanford campus.’ They had a change of heart.
LOOK HOW BEAUTIFUL WE COULD MAKE FALLS PARK WITHOUT SPENDING MUCH ON PERMANENT INFRASTRUCTURE
If you have ever been to the Butchart Gardens in Victoria, BC, Canada, you know what I am talking about. It is one of the gems of this coastal city. When I lived in the Pacific Northwest I made a couple of trips to Victoria (before 9/11 so all you needed was an ID to enter the country and empty your pockets before getting on the ferry. I saw them make an old lady cry because she couldn’t take her peaches with her. The attendant was like, ‘Mam, this is a 45 minute ride and there is a huge food court at the dock’.) Victoria is on a peninsula thingy so driving there is a pain in the ass, so peeps drive from Seattle to Port Angeles and take a 45 minute cruise in open ocean. I tell you this because we came back on high tide once and I was as green as cucumber.
Internationally renowned, the 55-acre display garden located near Victoria, British Columbia was created in 1904 by Jennie Butchart. Still privately owned and operated by family descendants, The Gardens is a National Historic Site of Canada. Open every day of the year, welcoming over one million visitors annually.
You just get lost in there. I would recommend the city fund a trip so a councilor, parks manager and parks board member can go see this in person. We could do this at Falls Park using native flowers and grasses and really turn Falls Park into a nature wonderland instead of a Six Flags.
There is also a bigger idea in all of this. If you read the Buchart website you will notice it is privately owned with volunteers. You could get corporate sponsorship’s for the garden beds at Falls Park that could pay for the little maintenance they will need or even have a team of volunteers. If the Pavilion can use volunteers to operate it’s Great Hall, then why can’t the city have volunteers maintain Falls Park?
There are so many opportunities to bring in the community on this and make it the talk of the midwest, but if contractors in this town don’t get a contract every 5 minutes to poor concrete over our parks, they get nervous and city hall folds like a cheap suit.
Any and all documents permitting the City of Sioux Falls or their contractor businesses, giving permission to modify the flow of the Big Sioux River and the falls in downtown Sioux Falls between 2015 to current.
I have been reviewing the materials received from the CORPS over the past month. The PERSONAL names of any parties involved have been redacted BUT, all other pertinent information was provided. What disappoints me the most (but not surprised) is that a constituent had to go to the Federal Government to get information about how the city is handling a local project. Since the city is working within a waterway controlled by the Feds this information really should be also provided by the city to the public, but was NOT. I don’t think it is the responsibility of the Feds to inform local constituents on projects our city is doing in concert with their pre-approvals. To get to this point took decades, and the public wasn’t really brought along on the process, as you will see in some of the docs I reviewed.
Some major concerns about the project;
• Who is funding this project? How much will it cost and what ‘fund’ is this coming out of (Ex: Jacobsen Plaza or Parks Department or Planning Department). I couldn’t figure out what city agency is handling this project. It seems to be Planning, but their is NO clear agency.
• Will it work? I find it troubling that this area has been almost the same for 100 years, and while Falls Park does flood almost yearly, you wonder if this will be a good flood control measure or will it just back water up towards the South and the East?
• How was historical and environmental mediation handled? (there was opposition to the project at first, but a solution was presented, just not sure what it was or how they came to the conclusion to proceed).
• It seems the project must still go thru final approval with the Feds once the project is completed and up until this point the only thing the city has gotten is pre-approval to proceed. In other words the Feds could institute major changes to the final project once the inspection is completed, or could have a ‘wait and see’ approach to see how it handles major floods/rains, etc.
These are images of the original ‘plans’ for the replacement that the city OR the CORPs initially called a ‘rehabilitation’ of the low head dam (it is NOT a rehab, it is a total replacement). Also notice the drawing of the dam is a straight line (this will come up later in the post).
Below is the IMPACT MAP which shows wetlands on the East Side. Before the CORPs signs off on the completion of the replacement of the dam, the city will have to create a new wetland area on the east side as requested by the CORPs.
Scope of work performed at or around Falls Park in coordination with the CORPs
As you can see from the diagram below, after the old dam was removed they made the replacement damn LOWER then the original;
As you can see below the State Historical Society (a state agency) had concerns about the adverse impacts of the dam replacement AGREEING with the CORPs, then offering to work on a solution (NOT sure what was resolved or how this recommendation got reversed) THIS IS the full SDSHS review;
Somehow the 6th Street bridge environmental review was also done before construction could be done on the bridge, and look at this wonderful soil sample they found below. As I have said in the past, almost all of the dirt and quartzite in this area of Falls Park is severely contaminated from years of chemical waste and river runoff only a few feet under the surface. It still amazes me that we continue to ‘pave over’ our beautiful Greenway instead of highlighting it’s natural beauty. I have suggested instead of all these super condos along the greenway we should put down a wide pea rock path that winds thru natural prairie flower gardens and other natural amenities, and the best part it only needs rain and sunshine to be maintained. With all the contamination under the ground in this area of DTSF you would think permanent structures would NOT be allowed by any government agency, state, local or Federal. This is why the Levitt shell is where it is, because of the massive contamination of that site, they can’t build a permanent structure on the grounds. Don’t think we have ground water issues in this area? Then why are they always tearing up the sprinkler system at the Levitt every year since it has been opened? It seems about once a month in the summer, they have some pipe torn up at the Levitt and the culprit is usually a leaky sprinkler system pipe;
Where we start running into issues is the original design of the replacement has been drastically changed. This is the original plan submitted to the CORPs;
As you can see, the replacement dam is supposed to run in a straight line from the banks of the Steel District to the old Queen Bee Mill structure, those plans have changed. Also notice the carve out around the pier below is about a foot higher then the rest of the dam on the North and South sides. I find it troubling that this was the solution concocted by the railroad, the city and the CORPs. If we get a major flood, like we do almost every Spring due to snow melt and rain, this pocket behind the pier will just fill with debris and tree trunks and I would assume rise up to cause issues with the bridge itself. Still scratching my head why the plans changed so drastically? Was this pier determined historical (built around 1900) and maybe the compromise the historical peeps were looking for? Which is also strange since other original piers were encased with concrete. Once the CORPs approves this I will be curious to see how this came about.
As you can see from the above picture they made a turn around the one pier (not sure why they didn’t just encase the Pier and put the dam up against it instead) they did encase two other piers to the east of this one;
Look at the almost ONE MILLION just to encase some Piers. While we have been ‘told’ that the Jacobsen Plaza project was $16 Million there was significant cost overruns with this dam replacement and we may never know how much it was. Apparently $16 Million wasn’t enough to install a water fountain that is level (I call it the Leaning Water Fountain of Jacobsen). The irony is if you go around to other parks in Sioux Falls that have had upgraded equipment over the past few years, much of the equipment is broken now. The electronics on the machines at Rotary Park haven’t worked for over 2 years (this park is only 3 years old). It makes you wonder if the entire parks budget was thrown at this entertainment superplex while cutting back on repairs and maintenance in other parks;
They also intend to build another observation deck over the flood gates next to the Queen Bill Mill;
The good news is it appears that the Feds only do a pre-approval so work can be done, but don’t sign off final approval until final inspection which I don’t think will be until the end of 2026 with all the extra dirt work they have to do;
I have been mystified by this project since it’s beginning and the lack of information I have gotten from the city. I have many more questions;
• Why was this called a ‘rehab’ by the city when it is a total replacement?
• Why did plans change to go around the pier instead of up against it?
• Why was only half the dam poured then an expensive coffer damn put in to complete the project (there seemed to be a long delay between the pouring of the first leg of the dam and putting in a coffer dam to complete the project)?
• What was the compromise between historical advisors and the changed plans?
• Where is the money coming from to replace this? The Railroad? The City? The Developer? The Feds?
• How are environmental concerns being mediated?
I will be curious if and when the CORPs signs off on this project. Because right now, it looks like a gigantic mess. I used to work construction, and it is common to change architectural and engineering renderings in the field so they will work with the project, but it seems this project didn’t have a clear objective from the beginning and they are making changes on the fly and this is why it is starting to look like a cobbled mess. I also found emails between private contractors, city employees and the Feds interesting. The Feds are always detailed and professional in their emails and only are interested in brass tacks, can’t say the same about the others involved with the project. I guess we will have to wait until the project is finished before we see positive results, but bringing the public along would help a lot.
In my humble opinion, I would not have handled it this way. No doubt the old dam needed to be fixed or replaced, but wouldn’t you have all the plans ready to go before putting shovels in the ground? I wonder how much all these delays are costing us? Hopefully this post will encourage the council to request a long informational on what is going on with the project, but that would require transparency 🙁
A few months back Cameraman Bruce (Danielson) and I were talking about all the missing information to the public about how the dam got approved and what process was happening to make this happen. In an ideal society that has a local government that is TRANSPARENT we would have had all that information, but not in Sioux Falls. So Bruce had the brilliant idea to do a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request from the Corp of Engineers for the project. While it took several months and 2.2 GB of information, the CORPS granted Mr. Danielson’s request. I have been sorting thru the materials for over a month and finally have them to where I can start posting about the process. There was many twists in turns in the process, including changing the direction of the design, water contamination, a refusal from the SD Historical Society (State Agency) and much more. While most of the materials are redacted of personal names, it is easy to determine who the contractors are, who the city employees are and who the CORPS are. The irony is any email or correspondence coming from the CORPS is extremely professional and detailed, city employees and especially the independent contractors NOT SO MUCH. It seemed they didn’t want to get the CORPS involved unless they ran into an issue. Which is odd since the CORPS won’t officially approve the project until it is finished, and that may not be until the end of next summer since after the dam construction is finished they have to create wetlands around the area to preserve the area AS IS.
What I have found fascinating is the city seems to be doing this by the seat of their pants and crossing their fingers it will work, which I believe has put the project over budget by at least $1 Million because of the poor planning and lack of concerted coordination with the CORPS. This city will never learn, when you do things in the OPEN you save the taxpayers money and it makes the process smoother. If they would have also made the process more open and brought the public along, there may have been members in our community who wanted to weigh in with ideas. I have often argued our city is full of smart folks who understand this stuff, if we would just ASK them. It reminds of the process when a group of citizens decided to tackle sustainability in Sux and all of the efforts and work turned into toilet paper Poops used to wipe his tight ass. We have experts in Sux, but instead we use leaders who are more concerned about selfies and jumping jacks then expert advice.
I hope to put up the materials by week’s end, it’s going to be a whopper of a post.
UPDATE: Still gathering the tea leaves on this one but what I have heard so far is that the design was done internally (even though the city usually hires that sorta thing out to you know, Poops’ former ad agency). I’m still trying to figure out which one of Poops’ marketing goons in city hall proposed this. I still think they should have named it ‘STAY OUT OF THE FOAM PARK’.
So a few weeks ago I was riding thru Falls Park (I usually do a couple rides a day thru DTSF just to see what projects are going) and I noticed the new sign at Falls Park; this ugly navy blue and orange sign that said ‘The Falls’. Didn’t think much of it because it looked like a temp sign for the Winter Wonderland. I thought one of the local liquor distributors printed it, LOL.
First off, it is called Falls Park, because the Falls are there and it is a park. This is ‘naming’ 101. So I am confused why we wanted to shorten the name, not by much, and create some kind of branding for the park.
I have worked in printing and marketing since 1993 and the best rule of thumb if something isn’t broken don’t fix it. Not sure why we need to rebrand Falls Park? It has been there thousands of years and it’s natural beauty is what makes it.
Now there are upgrades on the horizon, but instead of RE-BRANDING maybe we just need to promote the PARK!
It often cracks me up with Mayor Poops renaming things, but NOT explaining why, because he knows it is just a whim.
I have some feelers out there and hope to have the REAL reason this park was renamed.
As a former city official said to me today; ‘Where were the public meetings to let the public in on renaming the park?’ And this person makes a great point. Let the public in on changing the identity of the park, you might just find some great results. But Authoritarians know everything, just ask them.
When you run a MILITANT ANTI-OPEN GOVERNMENT REGIME, opinions are like diapers.
If I was in charge of re-branding Falls Park I would rip every single piece of concrete out of the park, I would tear down the gift shop and observatory tower and would transform the park into a naturalist site with native flowers, grasses, etc. It would truly be beautiful, and ironically if you used native flowers and grasses, the maintenance would be minimal.
Poops vision is turning the place into Disneyland. How I hate Disneyland.
Ever wonder why no one takes a picture of themselves at Falls Park with their camera pointed North?
Oink! Oink!
It seems we have another hog trough to the South of Falls Park except these pigs are gorging themselves on TIFs.
I often wonder if the architects, developers, engineers, investors and city planners behind this project ever thought about the skyline they were creating when families and tourists take photos at Falls Park? Maybe they knew exactly what this obstruction of pre-fab concrete would look like and why no mention of the future skyline.
When planning large developments around tourist attractions (our only one) the city planning office should have been more cognizant of the final skyline.
I also wonder if Experience Sioux Falls will change all of their marketing photos of Falls Park showing off the new condolicious skyline of our namesake?
I’m not sure what this ‘One Sioux Falls’ thing is all about, but it certainly isn’t about community collaboration and input.
l3wis 
