Sioux City program aims to fill downtown vacancies

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) — In a bid to recruit tenants for some of downtown Sioux City’s many vacant commercial spaces, the group Downtown Partners is offering a program of rent relief for new businesses.

Ragen Cote, executive director of Downtown Partners, said the rent relief program offers a 50 percent discount on commercial rent for a period of six months after a lease is signed.

The Sioux City Journal reports Downtown Partners foots the bill for half of that, while the other half is a discount the landlord offers in a sort of partnership. (Some restrictions apply -- for instance, the lease agreement must be at least 36 months, and the proprietor of the business cannot also be the owner of the building.)

“One of the things that we’ve found was, the best way to help a new business is, financial,” Cote said. “We already provide a lot of marketing and kind of feedback on storefront design and things like that, but at the end of the day, what a business could use is money.”

The program launched in late July and will remain available, as long as the funds hold out, on a first-come first-served basis. The ink has dried on four leases so far, Cote said, with another “five in the hopper.”

“We’ve gotten tens of calls, probably at least 30 calls” from people interested in taking part in the program, Cote said. “It’s generated a lot of interest in some downtown spaces.”

Sioux City’s downtown, once a thriving commercial district and the core of the city’s retail trade, began to empty out in the 1970s and 1980s -- particularly after the Southern Hills Mall opened in 1980 and lured retailers out there. While a few major chains still have locations downtown or downtown-adjacent (particularly in the area nearest Gordon Drive), downtown commercial tenants tend to be small...