Sioux Falls planners outline Shape Sioux Falls 2050 outreach and priorities to joint commission

City of Sioux Falls planning staff gave a presentation to the joint Lincoln County–Sioux Falls Planning Commission on the Shape Sioux Falls 2050 comprehensive-plan update and recent public-engagement results.

Fletcher Laycock, senior planner with the City of Sioux Falls, told commissioners the city completed its Phase 2 public engagement and is moving into the document-drafting phase, with a draft targeted for October 2025 and adoption later in the year. “We just finished phase 2, which are public engagement process,” Laycock said.

City staff reported more than 1,700 unique visitors to an online engagement portal and roughly 500 contributions on that platform. Staff held 18 pop-up events over the summer, community listening sessions at libraries, neighborhood visioning workshops and a statistically valid survey of residents. The engagement aimed to surface priorities for the 2050 plan and to coordinate with neighboring jurisdictions undergoing their own updates.

Key themes identified included housing and neighborhood investment (including accessible housing and small-scale neighborhood commercial), transportation and mobility (transit, pedestrian and bicycle safety, and traffic calming), conservation and resiliency (preserving prime agricultural land at the urban edge and flood planning), economic and cultural development, and community health and services. City staff noted respondents singled out biotechnology, technology and health-care sectors as desirable business growth areas and listed daycare, senior housing and grocery stores as land-use needs.

Laycock said the city’s engagement also revealed that a majority of respondents consider current zoning regulations adequate; 70 percent said regulations were sufficient, while 22 percent said they were not strict enough. City staff emphasized their intention to coordinate with Lincoln County, Minnehaha County, the city of Brandon and other local governments during plan drafting and adoption.

The next steps are to compile engagement findings into draft plan language over the coming months, present a draft to the joint commission and elected officials for consideration, and make engagement results available on the city’s website. Laycock said the process began in May 2024, the city formed an advisory committee and hired a consultant (Confluence) to assist with outreach and document preparation. Staff expect a final document in late 2025.

Commissioners thanked city staff for extensive public outreach and said they appreciated the opportunity to coordinate regional planning efforts as neighboring jurisdictions update their plans.