Big Stone City Rejected as State Prison Location

Big Stone City and the former Saputo Cheese USA factory property – along with six other sites –  have been cut from the list of potential locations for the new South Dakota state prison.  Arrington Watkins submitted their recommendations regarding the project, along with a completed feasibility report on Monday, June 2. The 22-member panel of the governor’s task force met this morning, June 3, in Pierre. 

The Phoenix-based architectural firm Arrington-Watkins was hired by Governor Rhoden’s Project Prison Reset Task Force to provide a fresh review of the state’s correctional needs and to conduct a study of potential locations. 

Although the decision that Big Stone City is no longer in the running might elicit a sigh of relief from many people in Grant County, the report leaves South Dakota almost exactly where they started.  In determining the best location for the new prison, Arrington Watkins put the original Lincoln County property right back at the top of the list.

The prison project has been floundering in several stages of development since Governor Larry Rhoden abandoned the plan he inherited from former Governor Kristi Noem, when he assumed Noem’s office in January 2025.

The initial plan to construct the new facility on a 320-acre site in Lincoln County that is already owned by South Dakota collapsed after critics and area residents pushed back over concerns about the prison’s effect on nearby land and home prices and the facility’s proximity to the largest school district in the state. 

Questions regarding infrastructure costs, financial transparency, and a pending lawsuit brought by residents of Lincoln County added to the roadblocks. In addition, landowners there had previously spent nearly two years fighting a permit application filed in February 2022 that would have allowed Summit Carbon Solutions to build a carbon dioxide pipeline that would have run through their property. 

Governor Rhoden, also did not gather sufficient support from the legislature to fund the prison project. Although the state has been setting aside funds for the new lockdown, and it has accumulated $569 million, the legislature refused to allow the governor access to the money when they rejected House Bill 1025 last February. The vote effectively brought work on the site to a standstill, but the state already has spent approximately $60 million on the design and prep work at the Lincoln County site.

Governor Rhoden switched gears by forming a task force to head his newly-named Project Prison Reset. The group was tasked with determining if a new penitentiary is necessary, and if so, what would be its ideal location. The task force in turn called on Arrington Watkins as consultants.

During their feasibility study, Arrington Watkins ranked the 13 properties competing for the project by using a point system. The study weighed what were considered the most important elements of the project such as location from Sioux Falls (ideally within 30 miles), proximity to railroads, waterways, and major interstates (potential escape routes), availability to utilities and other infrastructure, emergency vehicle access, acreage, and other aspects. Big Stone was eliminated due to its distance to Sioux Falls.

The Lincoln County site scored 2,255 points to be named the most desirable location. Huron followed at 2,220 points. The site in rural Worthing accrued 2,045 points for third place. Mitchell and the former Citibank property in northern Sioux Falls each score 2,040 points to tie for fourth place. The Kappenman site – 276-combined acres located two miles west and one half mile south of the Interstate 20 and Interstate 90 interchange –  was ranked sixth.

A special session of the legislature has been scheduled for July 22  and is reserved for voting on the task force’s recommendations.  

The vote will be a choice of monumental significance. Until recently, the guaranteed maximum price for the construction of the prison sat at $825 million. Unofficial reports circulating now suggest that total could climb to $2 billion – the most expensive publicly-funded project in South Dakota history.

South Dakota’s current state penitentiary is located in north Sioux Falls on approximately 30 acres. It was constructed as a territorial prison in 1881 before South Dakota became a state in 1889. Although it has been updated and annexed several times in its 144 years of service, it now houses some of the state’s most violent criminals and operates at 182 percent capacity.  Designed to hold 426 inmates, it currently houses 775. The facility also houses South Dakota’s death row for men and the state’s execution chamber.