Inquiry from Haden in Mobridge

Haden writes:

Hi Elisa,

I'm going to be talking at the Senior Center about the Wrigley Square project on Thursday, Oct. 24 and would like to give them the most up to date info on what's going on with the project and when you will next be visiting Mobridge.

Would you please send me an update I can share? Also, if you do it by tomorrow morning, I can forward it along to the paper, and they might print something in this week's edition for the public.

Thanks so much--hope it's going well!

Haden Merkel

Executive Director

Mobridge Area Chamber of Commerce

We wrote in response:

Haden:

We're finishing up how to build the thing and what it will take us to build it.

By weeks' end we should have a budget, a schedule, and drawings out to the contractor to pour the foundation footings that the project will sit on.

Then next week we'll start fabricating the parts and we'll be out as soon as the contractor is ready to pour the footings to locate the project.

The rest relies on our ability to coordinate the process of building the forms, getting them to Gage Brothers in Sioux Falls, casting them, trucking them to Mobridge, and craning and fixing them into place.

I just wrote Dave Graves of the university press relations office this text:

At Mobridge's Wrigley Square the Department of Architecture at South Dakota State University is building a new civic plaza at the new Main Street railroad crossing.  We call our project "The End of the Line".  A triangle of curb has already been built.  When it is complete there will be an events and festival stage; seating and picnic areas; and a shade wall and walkway that will mark, frame, or enable five special things about Mobridge life and history.

1)the hunting and fishing seasons

2)the beautiful landscape

3)Sitting Bull's Grave & Sacagawea monument

4)the Milwaukee Road

5)the strong culture of festivals, competitions, and events

No building has ever been built on this spot in Mobridge.  For twenty years it was the "end of the line" in western expansion.  Every passenger heading west got off the train and crossed this place to go up into the city.  The materials and tools that went into the Black Hills to establish towns like Lead and Deadwood changed from train car to horse power at this spot.  Up through the 1950s, it was the freight drop yard for the Milwaukee Road local freight office.  For years now it has been the "end of the line" turnaround at the bottom of Main Street.  Today, with Main Street open to the lake and 34 acres of waterfront development potential, this location can be a link between new development and the things that makes Mobridge special.

None of the construction inside the curbs will come from public funding.  The Precast Concrete Institute, a national organization based in Chicago and Gage Brothers Concrete Products of Sioux Falls are very generously sponsoring the building of this plaza at Wrigley Square.  The Department of Architecture is committed to working with communities all over South Dakota to provide long-term study and, after three years of study, provide the expertise for our students to learn to build by constructing a public work for the community.  The Department's founding firms--Architecture Incorporated, Koch Hazard Architects, TSP Inc., and Perspective, all of Sioux Falls, have generously supported the department to do this sort of work.  We are highly committed to learning by doing and studying our South Dakota communities across time.

Over the next two months foundations will be dug, Concrete walls and walkways will be cast in Sioux Falls and erected on site.  Frames will be set in place.  In the winter we'll build the furniture and fixtures for the plaza and, as soon as the snow melts we'll finish the plaza surface and put the fixtures in place, making the new Wrigley Square ready for a new year of events, outdoor enjoyment, festivals, classic car cruising, and the good life in Mobridge.

There's a lot to come together in the next month.  Things are getting cold and not so fun to work outside in.  We're very excited about things--cold or no cold.

There's a lot happening here on the project.  We'll have some photos of progress on parts very soon.

More up-to-date project images will follow very soon.

Brian