Chamberlain’s greatest asset is the Missouri River, whose choppy, sea green waves paint picturesque scenes within walking distance of downtown and a fair share of its established homes.
Chamberlain’s also landlocked, to an extent.
The ground best suited for building was built upon decades ago, forming a teardrop-shaped thicket of urban activity along the river’s edge. A swath of hilly forested ground to the southeast separates the city core from its high school and hospital, as well as from the hotels and amenities visible from Interstate 90.
There are a handful of homes on that side of the city of 2,500, but that land nearest to the interstate has always been a challenge, according to City Administrator Clint Soulek.
Such a challenge, in fact, that a few years ago the city decided to give away land to anyone who’d build a house on it within a year.
Chamberlain city government got involved in land purchases years ago, because city officials just weren’t seeing the interest from the private sector.
“Cities don’t do a lot of development,” Soulek said. “But it’s hard to find a developer that will come out and put that kind of money into a smaller community.”
Developing over the hill
About two decades ago, the city purchased land on the eastern side of the hills for development, but it was a stop-and-start affair. The last home in that first development sold this spring.
In 2020, the city picked up more land for a new neighborhood. Initially, it held a lottery for 11 of the lots. The move drew plenty of media attention, but not as much interest from the public. More than two years after the free lots announcement, three of those lots remain unspoken for.
The gravel road situation continued to be a stumbling block. The enticement of a free lot had to be balanced against not only the logistics of finding and hiring a builder, but against the reality that a new home in the “Smokey Groves” development would sit along that road, surrounded by pushed earth and prairie grass.
That’s why the city was keen on the opportunity for infrastructure funding from the South Dakota Housing Development Authority. The $1.5 million in funding will allow the city to cover the cost of transforming the land upon which 42 total homes and one apartment complex are planned into something more akin to a neighborhood through the addition of roads, curb and gutter, street lights and water and sewer lines.
The infrastructure program has recently awarded a total of $77 million to 46 projects, after two successive legislatures passed bills to allocate $200 million in state and federal funding. The first year’s efforts were hamstrung by questions over the housing authority’s legal ability to award money to projects untethered from affordable housing guidelines. The 2023 legislature adjusted the bill to give the authority the power to award the money.
A road to home building
Spiking interest rates have cooled homeowner enthusiasm all across the state in the years between Chamberlain’s free lot enticement and today, but the cost for infrastructure — typically paid for up front by developers and then built back into the price of a home — has swollen more quickly than it has for other materials.
“Until we get that infrastructure and the roads, your curb and gutter, people are still kind of hesitant,” Soulek said.
The housing grant program took far longer to emerge than economic development officials in communities like Chamberlain had hoped. The $200 million program’s initial creation by the state Legislature in 2022 was hamstrung by legal concerns over verbiage, which lawmakers moved quickly to address in the 2023 session. A rulemaking lag time put the money out of reach for most of this year’s construction season, as well, with the first set of awards appearing in September.
Chamberlain was in line in 2022, and was among the first grant recipients in September the following year.
“It was like a 50-50 shot that we would get it,” Soulek said.
Now that the city has cash in hand for infrastructure, Chamberlain School District math teacher Alyssa Juelfs and her husband might be in line for a few new neighbors.
Juelfs and her husband were among the first to sign on for a free lot. They’d have considered a home in nearby towns like Pukwana, even as both fielded job offers in the River City.
They were moving to town from Elk Point and wanted to be in another small town, but the options were slim.
“As we were looking, we could not find anything for sale anywhere near the area,” Juelfs said.
A friend in the National Guard gave Juelfs a head’s-up about the free lot offer, which seemed “too good to be true,” in 2022.
The couple got a lot and worked with a Mitchell company to move a pre-built home onto it, a process that finished up in May. The Juelfs aren’t looking forward to winter snow on their gravel streets, but the grant funding for pavement and other infrastructure in their emergent neighborhood was welcome news.
“Hopefully the roads get done next summer,” she said.