Dacotah Bank Center changes previewed

BROOKINGS — Deputy Mayor Nick Wendell laid down several markers for the future of the Dacotah Bank Center in Brookings at last week’s City Council meeting.

The takeaways? The city is getting out of the big concert business, youth sports should get some needed space and a membership-style public rec center has been ruled out — as has a pool.

Wendell made the remarks as a preview of the official report from the group working on the future of the facility. The full presentation will happen at the Sept. 22 City Council meeting.

That group was formed as the city tries to decide whether it will renew its contract with the company that manages the building and operations for the city — and what to do with the space going forward.

The city gathered information through the spring and summer, but found the public largely evenly split on what to do with the Dacotah Bank Center, which has been an increasing debit on the city balance sheet in recent years.

That’s largely because the large concerts and events the building relied on for cash flow have largely dried up in a post-COVID 19 entertainment economy, reflecting a national trend.

“And I’ll be very frank,” Wendell said last week. “If the solution to some of the community’s challenges at the Dacotah Bank Center was easy, we likely would have arrived at it already, and we know whatever we do next will be a calculated risk.”

Wendell said the working group tried to point toward the building serving “... premier multi-purpose space, with a particular emphasis on youth sports events and conferences.”

That meant the city will not be renewing their contract with the management group and would be moving the building’s staff over to city employees. He also stressed that any events scheduled at Dacotah Bank would remain on the calendar in 2027.

Wendell also stated that there would be no community pool at the facility at this time and that the group did not envision a public facing, membership style fitness facility.

There are plans, Wendell said, for some space devoted to youth sports — both hosting events and some practice space.

The logical inference there is some indoor space for youth and Legion baseball, which has long had a need for indoor practice space.

In closing, Wendell stressed that the city was responding to forces largely outside its control when making their decisions, but underlined that the future of the building was not hosting large entertainment events.

“Phase Two of the Dacotah Bank Center likely will not include large concerts and those ticketed promoter events that I think some have associated with the Dacotah Bank Center for a long time,” Wendell said. “It’s not that we don’t love those events. We’re just living in a phase where our market is not a great place to host events like that. We don’t sell enough tickets. We don’t sell enough food and beverage. They’re not yielding hotel stays. A venue in a city the size of Brookings can’t support touring ticketed events. Lots of those performers are performing in cities like Sioux Falls or larger. A venue like the Premier Center has been phenomenal for Sioux Falls and South Dakota and the region. It hasn’t been so kind to a market our size in a facility like the Dacotah Bank Center. We don’t compete fairly in that market for live ticketing events, and it’s going to be hard for us to put the resources behind trying to continue to expand that market when it just doesn’t exist anymore.

We’re not going to recruit Riley Green or the Jonas Brothers to perform in Brookings. Those folks are going to Sioux Falls, and I wish the Oak Ridge boys would sell enough tickets and enough beer to make that a viable business model. It’s just not, and so we’re moving away from that.”