The shaping of Cherapa

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) – By this time next year, downtown Sioux Falls is going to look a lot different.

That’s because construction crews have been busy for over year now building Cherapa 2, 3, and 4. We get an update on the buildings and some of the unique and sometime dangerous challenges crews have had to overcome and are still dealing with yet today.

The first big challenge happened very early on….most of us couldn’t even see it, but we definitely heard it.

Back in February of last year, crews spent days dynamiting several feet of thick quartzite below the surface in order to dig down for the start of all three buildings.

Today that area looks a lot different. “It’s pretty abnormal to have a development of this size going on on a site this small and buildings of this size especially,” superintendent Jacob Bruget said.

Journey Group, the primary contractor, gave me a tour of the three buildings. Down between the structures there’s a ton of activity taking place. At times, they say it almost feels like you’re walking around in a small city within a city.

Cherapa 2, which is the tallest building and connected to the original Cherapa building, is almost 75% complete. It’s on schedule and set to open in September.

The lower levels are already spoken for with retail space.

Up on the 10th floor is where several condominiums are being built with a price tag over $1 million dollars each and almost all of them are already sold. The view from up here is breath taking no matter what direction you look.

Cherapa 3 isn’t as tall, but will be impressive, too. It’ll have retail space on the first floor; perhaps a grocery store, they say. It’ll also have 127 apartment units on the upper five levels along with private
parking, underground. It’s about 50% finished.

“It’s going to be a great building we are topped out with all the mass timber when the building is all the way up; the roof has started and now we are starting to see some of those exterior finishes going on, windows and patio doors are pretty much all in, brick is ongoing and siding just started last week, things are going to shape up really quick,” Bruget said.

Putting that siding on has been tricky. Crews have had to battle the wind on several occasions. They say you have to have a pretty steady hand when operating these lifts so high up under windy conditions.

“Safety with the crane with as much wind as we have throughout the spring and winter there were a lot of days the cranes have to kind of weather vane themselves and be out of work for a few hours every couple of days,” project manager Brett Smid said.

Cherapa 4 is just getting started. It’ll have retail space on the first floor along with 109 apartment units above that. They say it’ll look a lot like building 3.

There’s also a huge parking ramp that’s already complete. It’ll be used both publicly and privately.

Even though the crews have been working on these buildings for over a year now, there’s one thing they are all super proud of. “The amount of buildings going in to a very small square footage,” superintendent Nate Lickteig said.

They say that is rare. Every day with this many workers in a small space, they have to be careful and coordinate with the other workers so everyone knows where everyone is at at all times to keep them safe.

Cherapa 1, Cherapa 2, Cherapa 3, and Cherapa 4….they are transforming downtown.

“In the next five years, you’re going to pull into downtown Sioux Falls and you’re not even going to recognize it,” Bruget said. “It’ll be nice, a lot better, it should make the face of downtown a little better,” Lickteig said.

“It’s a great project to be a part of it’s going to be one that’s going to be really cool to sit back once it is complete and be able to say we were a part of it,” Bruget said.

The total project price tag for all three Cherapa buildings and parking ramp is estimated to cost $160 million dollars.

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