"It's a very large impactful piece," Johnson, who has a hand in deciding what happens to the rest of Sioux Steel Co.'s downtown property, said of a sculpture that was still being cast at the time. She wasn't talking about anything on the official SculptureWalk map. She was talking about a commission for the Steel District, cast inside the same manufacturing floor Sioux Steel still runs on the three acres it kept after selling off the rest, a piece that has likely stood on the block for close to a year by now.
That detail changes how you should walk downtown this month. SculptureWalk has spent years training people to think the loop ends, more or less, at the Arc of Dreams and the edge of Falls Park. Past the Arc now sits a full neighborhood built out of what used to be Sioux Steel Co.'s yard, and one of the more interesting pieces standing there wasn't loaned by a touring artist for a single season. It was commissioned and cast by the very company being replaced, one building at a time, by everything now standing around it.
Eighty Pieces, One New Ending
The 2026 SculptureWalk marks the exhibit's 23rd year, and this spring's installation brought more than 80 sculptures from 54 to 56 artists spanning more than 20 states and British Columbia, with 12 of this year's artists based in South Dakota, according to Pigeon605's coverage of the installation weekend. Crews swapped last year's collection for this one over May 1 and 2. The 2026 Best of Show honor went to Alicia Jones for "Exquisite Trio," a piece the City of Sioux Falls will eventually purchase and add to its permanent collection, the way it does every year's winner.
The route itself starts at the SculptureWalk Visitor Center on the second floor of the Washington Pavilion, 301 S. Main Ave., then winds down Phillips Avenue, extends across the East Bank, passes beneath the Arc of Dreams, and continues toward Falls Park before looping back. That description hasn't really changed in years. What's changed is what sits along the second half of it. The stretch between the Arc and Falls Park now runs directly through the Steel District, a full city block that was still an active steel yard within the last decade.
The Block That Used To Be A Steel Yard
The Steel District sits on former Sioux Steel Co. land, a company that had owned and operated there since 1918 under CEO Scott Rysdon. The redevelopment claimed roughly 7 acres of that footprint, according to SiouxFalls.Business's reporting on the project, while Sioux Steel kept just over 3 acres to the south, where about 60 of its 350 employees still work.
What went up in place of the sold acreage is finished now. The Canopy by Hilton opened with 216 rooms and drew more pre-opening bookings than a 976-room Hilton in a much larger city, a sign downtown demand outran even the developer's own comparisons. The District Lofts, offering studio through two-bedroom units with polished concrete floors and views of Falls Park, brought in its first residents as the building wrapped up, and the condos there have been selling since. Office space filled in quickly too, clearing 90 percent leased not long after opening. On the ground floor, Cascata serves Italian food, Ironwood serves steak beside the river, Torrent and Brioux Falls handle the coffee shift, and Jack Rose Social Club covers late-night burgers, joined since by a second Jack Rose location. Outside, Jacobson Plaza brings a splash pad, an ice ribbon, and a dog park, while Lloyd Landing adds public art, another dog park, seating, and a photo station along the riverfront trail.
None of that is on the SculptureWalk map either. It's just the neighborhood the map now walks through.
The Art The Map Doesn't Show
Here's the part most people strolling Phillips Avenue toward the Arc won't clock. BronzeAge Art Casting, a local foundry, moved into the manufacturing side of the Sioux Steel facility to cast a large-scale commission for the Steel District, using the same floor space Sioux Steel still uses for its own remaining operations. Elsewhere in the development, an installation called "Currents," a blend of photography and light by artist Wes Eisenhauer, went up inside the district's office tower, offering its own take on the Falls Park view from a building that replaced the company that used to own that view outright.
Both pieces sit outside SculptureWalk's usual system. The annual exhibit works through a blind jury and one-year loans, a rotating show that changes every spring and sends most of its pieces home. What's forming inside the Steel District is something else: a small, permanent, privately commissioned collection, cast in part by the same manufacturer whose land it now occupies. Walk the loop this August and you're seeing two different kinds of public art layered on top of each other, one that rotates every year and one that's quietly becoming fixed, on a block that used to make pipe fittings and grain augers.
How To Actually Walk It This Month
A few practical notes for anyone doing the full loop this summer:
- People's Choice voting for the 2026 exhibit runs May through September, with ballot boxes set up along Phillips Avenue.
- The SculptureWalk Visitor Center on the second floor of the Washington Pavilion is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.
- A new Sculpture Talks series, run with The Watering Can, kicked off May 3 at the MarketBeat Theater at StartUp Sioux Falls with artists Luke Achterberg, Nathan Johansen, and Sunghee Min, according to SDPB's coverage of installation weekend. More talks are planned through the year.
- Free guided tours have expanded this year, alongside new scavenger hunts for both kids and adults.
If you've done this walk in past summers, the muscle memory says to turn back once you clear the Arc of Dreams. This year, that's the point where the walk actually gets more interesting, not less. The Steel District's own site lists the current restaurant lineup and public spaces if you want to plan a route around a meal or a coffee stop before the light gets good for photos near the river.
Twenty-three years in, SculptureWalk has trained a lot of Sioux Falls residents to think of downtown art as something that shows up every May and disappears by the following spring. What's happening a few blocks past the Arc right now doesn't follow that rhythm. It's being cast to stay.
If you're weighing what a summer like this means for the value of living close enough to walk it, that's the kind of question our team at CORE Real Estate spends its time answering for Sioux Falls buyers and sellers. Contact us when you're ready to talk about it.
