September 18, 2023
As one financial services company moves downtown, another company fills its office space.
Wells Fargo & Co. By moving some of its teams to the former Bancorp space off the southeast corner of 69th Street and Western Avenue. Bancorp is moving into the building that will bear its name in the expanded Cherapa Place downtown area.
The new Wells Fargo office at 6100 S. Old Village Place will include some employees currently assigned to the downtown offices at 101 N. Phillips Ave. The bank branch, branch staff and some operations staff will remain downtown.
“As part of our multi-year effort to build a stronger, more efficient Wells Fargo, we continually evaluate our real estate portfolio to ensure we are best meeting the needs of employees and customers, responding to consumer and economic trends and managing our costs responsibly.” “We are committed to our employees living in Sioux Falls, but we have more properties than we need to support them,” Wells Fargo spokeswoman Staci Schiller said.
The new location in southwest Sioux Falls will not be a branch, but its wealth management and commercial banking teams will be among those using the space.
“Bancorp will vacate that building on October 31 and turn over ownership to Wells Fargo on November 1, and Wells will not be in that building for another nine months,” said business broker Greg Brown of NAI Sioux Falls, who brokered the deal. an agreement. “It’s going to be a complete gut and rebuild. I was happy we got a deal. It’s a great location for them.”
The future of the downtown building that Wells Fargo has long anchored is even more interesting. Broker David Shelton of Century 21 Advantage, who represents the property, said he is working on a large-scale redevelopment of the site at Ninth Street and Phillips Avenue.
The concept calls for multiple buildings, including a replacement for the Wells Fargo-anchored structure, which would bring a mix of uses, along with additional parking and yard space to the building.
“We put together a world-class team,” Shelton said. “What we hope to do for Sioux Falls is raise the bar so we can attract people who aren’t there yet with Sioux Falls being a natural fit…and that’s consistent with what the city wants downtown to be in densifying.”
In the meantime, the building is enjoying strong occupancy, Shelton said.
About half of the fifth floor is open with a deal in the works, and the other half of the floor has just been leased to an insurance adjusting company.
Shelton is not currently marketing any Wells Fargo space, he said.
“We have half of the fifth floor left and a couple thousand square feet on the third floor, and we have an engineering firm that I think is going to come in, so we have very little space available in this building,” he said.
Other tenants include two law firms, a precision risk management firm and, most recently, The Original Corn Pie Company, which rents the kitchen to support its pop-up sales operation and offers retail hours of 9am to 3pm Wednesday to Friday.
“It’s very exciting for us to help incubate businesses downtown,” Shelton said.