The city of Sioux Falls grew by nearly 5,7000 in 2024.
This brings the state’s largest city to a new population total of almost 220,000, according to new data released by the city.
Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken said the city’s steady growth is pushed by three groups of people.
“The first bucket is regional people. They’re from Rock Rapids, they're from Huron, they're from Worthington, they’re from Luverne, and they’re moving to Sioux Falls. For whatever reason, they want the more urban life,” TenHaken said. “The second bucket is people that they may be left here, and they boomeranged back. And then the third is just new to market people that don’t have a lot of ties or connections - but they like the tax climate and other things in South Dakota.”
The city issued over 6,000 building permits which surpassed $1 billion dollars in construction valuation. That’s the fourth year in a row the city passed the billion-dollar threshold. TenHaken said he now considers this the city’s construction baseline.
City Assistant Director of Planning and Development Services Kevin Smith said the city has annexed land to make room for that growth.
“We have growth planned out, very predictably for our development community in five, 10, and the 15 years and beyond increments so that, last year for example we annexed about 400 acres. Which doesn’t seem like a lot," Smith said. "The year before that we annexed over 700. We have an ample supply in the next five years to support growth, just with what we have panned for infrastructure and what we anticipate for annexation requests.”
Heading into 2025 TenHaken said the city has three main priorities: managing growth, public safety and crime, and providing the infrastructure to handle growth.
