SIOUX FALLS S.D. (KELO) — The City of Sioux Falls Light, Traffic, and Power teams are getting ready to leave behind their old buildings in favor of a new combined center, with some of the buildings being more than a century old.
The city of Sioux Falls has announced that the Light, Traffic, and Power divisions will all be moving into a new building on the corner of 60th and Sycamore. The facility will contain about 28 people, with room to grow. The move is a few years away as construction has not yet started.
The city is hoping to break ground this spring as soon as the contracts become finalized.
Jerry Jongeling, Light, Power and Traffic Superintendent of Sioux Falls, said the No. 1 reason they are moving into this new building is to ensure efficiency.
“We’ve put together a design for a new joint building that will combine our light and power team,” Jongeling said. “the building would also combine our traffic operations, and some of our traffic engineering team into one combined building.
Jongeling added that their departments cover a wide portion of Sioux Falls, with the lights and power department providing power to more than 2,900 residential, commercial and government customers.
“We take care of all the street lights within the city, which is over 23,000 street lights, on the traffic side, we take care of all the traffic signals, the red lights, green lights,” Jongeling said. “We’re expanding intersections every year with the new South Veterans Parkway, the new 85th I-29 exchange, and just continue traffic monitoring throughout the city.”
Jongeling said their currently have three buildings for their three different teams and most of them are inadequate to house the current services they offer. He added that the current site of the light and power building at 2000 North Minnesota is over 100 years old.
“So our traffic facility down on the street campus is getting too small for growing practices, with the fiber optics expanding every year, our traffic signals and signalized intersections expanding every year, along with our traffic monitoring cameras,” Jongeling said. “That technology is really expanding rapidly, as the city is.”
Jongeling said the buildings are starting to show their age, with most of them being unable to handle more modern equipment.
“Back in the day, people climbed wood poles with their spikes and, and worked on belts,” Jongeling said. “We have tons and tons of aerial bucket trucks and skid loaders and equipment that this building wasn’t designed for.”
