Source: Rapid City Journal
The site of the former Imperial Hotel will become The Elements, a multi-use four-story building combining business, apartments and parking.
The City of Rapid City announced Tuesday it had issued a $14.7 million permit for the structure at 100 St. Joseph St. The Elements is a project by Sioux Falls real estate and development firm Legacy Development & Consulting Company.
The permit was issued earlier in January by the city’s Building Services Division to Paradigm Construction LLC of Sioux Falls and construction began Jan. 11. The facility will include one floor of office and retail space, three floors containing a total of 99 apartments, an underground parking garage and an on-site parking lot. The office and retail space and the apartments at The Elements are expected to open by summer 2022. Altogether, the building has a footprint of 28,953 square feet.
The Elements will be between First and Second Streets in downtown Rapid City in the area known as the East of Fifth District. Designed for urban living, The Elements will include loft-style apartments — 21 studio units, 63 one-bedroom units and 15 two-bedroom units — on the second, third and fourth floors. The complex will also provide 75 underground parking stalls and 57 parking spaces in the surface lot.
The first level includes space for retail and commercial tenants.
“They’ll be a variety of users — retail to office. We envision a restaurant or coffee shop. To date, 8,000 of the 21,000 square feet is already committed,” Chase Wood, broker associate for Legacy Development & Consulting Company, said Tuesday.
“We think this is a great part of downtown to be developing, in part of the East of Fifth. There’s a lot of activity, especially in the technology sector. We’re excited for this project,” he said.
Combining multiple floors of housing with commercial space is becoming more common in many major cities in the United States and worldwide. Wood anticipates the housing will appeal to South Dakota Mines students as well as professionals. Anyone interested in commercial or retail space can contact Wood at legacy-developments.com.
“It’s not an affordable housing project,” said Norman Drake, president and CEO of Legacy Development & Consulting Company, LLC and Manager of The Elements, LLC. “We’re not asking for any subsidies from the city or anybody else. We haven’t established what the rents will be at this time but they’ll be comparable to market rate rents in Rapid City.”
Drake said the apartments will compare to other urban apartments in Sioux Falls that Legacy Development has built. The units will have 10-foot ceilings, upgraded appliances, flooring and some fixtures not found in typical suburban apartments. The Elements comes with several amenities — a leasing office, a fitness center, a community room and guest suites.
“This area of downtown is really exciting right now, with Ascent Innovation and several other projects with things that are going on with the South Dakota Mines and Sanford Labs as well as Ellsworth expansions and the B-21,” Drake said. “We really like this area of town and what it could mean to Rapid City and the people of Rapid City.”
Rapid City rezoned the former Imperial Hotel property as urban commercial to allow for multi-use facilities, said Darrell Shoemaker, communications coordinator for the city. He said multi-use facilities such as The Elements will fit well with other development in that part of the city, including the completion of the Ascent Innovation campus later this year and South Dakota Mines’ westward growth.
“We just see a lot of possibilities and a lot of opportunities, and I think this mixed used development … is a plus for the community. It’s going to be an attractive place for businesses to locate and for developers to work with,” Shoemaker said.
“The potential is there for opportunities for locals to participate in reinvestment as well as folks coming in from out of town. We’ve been committed to doing what we need to do to promote investment in this area of Rapid City to increase revitalization opportunities,” he said.
He said The Elements’ office and retail property would be well suited for either local businesses that want to relocate or new businesses from out of town or out of state that want to move into Rapid City.
“This is what we call a reinvestment corridor for the community of East of Fifth,” Shoemaker said. “This fits with the city’s comprehensive plan of redevelopment within city limits. … One of the priorities is we want to see that (empty lot where the Imperial Hotel was) filled in.”
“We are hoping to see more of this as that area continues to grow. We hope this will be a good poster child for us,” said Ken Young, Rapid City’s community development director.
Constructions on The Elements began shortly before the five-year anniversary of the Feb. 1, 2016 date when the old Imperial Hotel facility was leveled.
