New redevelopment area could take shape on far east end of downtown

Oct. 20, 2025

Downtown could see a shift in redevelopment to the east in the next few years — specifically at Sixth Street and Weber Avenue.

One of the four corners already is on the market, and two others could become available in the next several years.

In the short term, the property at 400 N. Weber Ave. is on the market now. It has been home to Midwest Welding since 1976 and includes a 6,800-square-foot concrete building.

The .7-acre property is being sold as a turnkey operation, including the business name.

Family-owned Midwest Welding went through a planned retirement earlier this year, so the operation has been paused since July when the property went on the market for $1.7 million.

“We’ve had some interest,” said Mark Tassler of Hegg Realtors, who has it listed.

“It’s still available, but we do have interest for different types of uses other than a welding shop.”

Those have included a car lot and a conversion to a retail bakery and production space.

The listing includes the equipment in the building.

“It’s shut down, but it’s not because they went out of business. They just planned retirement,” Tassler said. “If you look at what personal property comes with it, you have a lot.”

If welding wasn’t the use for the building, a buyer could auction off the equipment, likely through a national online platform, he said.

“We can sit down and talk about this and negotiate,” he added.

As the east side of downtown has matured, redevelopment has inched toward Sixth and Weber. Later this year, Pomegranate Market will open along Sixth Street just a short walk from Tassler’s listing.

The city of Sioux Falls intends to sell remaining former rail yard land at some point, including a parcel west of the current LSS building on Sixth Street, paving the way for additional growth.

A city corridor plan developed in 2019 showed Weber Avenue as a potential gateway to Falls Park, calling for an improved streetscape and suggesting that the area could attract arts-related uses.

For Johnstone Supply, which sits on the southwest corner of Sixth and Weber, the overall momentum of downtown combined with its own future needs has captured its attention.

“We believe there should be something bigger and better on that site, and I know we are motivated to partner with the right developer,” said Alex Hofkamp, a partner in the real estate company that owns the property and the president of Johnstone Supply.

“We are so operationally inefficient right now because we’re operating out of four buildings, and we also know the city does not really want wholesale distribution on the site that we’re at.”

The property includes two of Johnstone’s four buildings in town, used as a direct-to-contractor site for the company’s wholesale HVAC distribution business.

“Us as the real estate entity that owns those buildings certainly believes there’s bigger and better opportunities in the three-to-five-year plan,” Hofkamp said.

“As far as Johnstone Supply, they’ve been a growing business for years, and we fully expect to support the community whether we’re downtown or on another site. We’re not going anywhere.”

The area also includes the city’s office headquarters and bus storage for Sioux Area Metro on the northwest corner of Sixth and Weber, which sits on more than 6 acres.

The city has identified potential relocation sites for the SAM headquarters, but plans to move were put on hold because of budgetary constraints, said Jeff Eckhoff, the city’s director of planning and development services.

The facility is more than 40 years old and “in its last quarter of useful life,” he said. “The office space has become pretty obsolete based on the growth of staff.”

Since the city took a more on-demand approach with smaller vehicles for public transit, there’s also a need to plan a storage center that reflects the type of vehicles that would be used.

“The layout (of the current facility) is probably not the layout of the future,” Eckhoff said, adding that a future site likely would be farther away from the core of downtown but not by much.

“There’s recognition of the time it takes to drive to the depot,” he said.

While the city didn’t put a timeline on a move — that would be a decision for the next mayoral administration — the opportunity to make the property available for redevelopment is recognized, Eckhoff said.

The southeast corner of Sixth and Weber is Heritage Park, offering green space adjacent to potential new places to live, work or shop.

“With three corners potentially available, it becomes an interesting conversation,” Eckhoff said. “We’re going to start  settling in on what this looks like. We want that area to redevelop.”

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