In late April 2026, the Huron City Commission approved a change order on the Dakota Avenue Improvements Project that shaved $187,251.39 off the final bill, the leftover from bid items the contractor never had to use. In the same batch of business, commissioners noted that BX Civil & Construction was slated to return that spring to close the last punch-list item on the job, an irrigation system, with roughly $90,000 still owed once it wrapped. That's the kind of line item most people skip over in a commission summary.
But sitting in the same meeting's consent agenda, easy to miss next to a compost-pile fire report and a phone-system upgrade, was something with more everyday weight: commissioners approved a measure allowing public consumption of alcoholic beverages in downtown Huron.
Those two things landing in the same stretch of spring aren't really a coincidence. After roughly two construction seasons of torn-up curb, detours onto Kansas Avenue, and a corridor lined with orange barrels, the rebuild of South Dakota Highway 37, the road everyone here just calls Dakota Avenue, is functionally finished from Market Street down through 9th Street South. The pavement went in first. The rule change for how people actually use the street followed close behind it. That pairing, not just new asphalt, is the part of downtown's story worth understanding heading into fall.
The Stretch That's Actually Done
The South Dakota Department of Transportation's own project page for the corridor confirms the work wrapped for the 2025 construction season, with all lanes open to traffic and no additional work planned on Dakota Avenue through 2026 north of 9th Street. The scope was substantial: grading, paving, storm sewer, curb and gutter, traffic signals, and lighting. Drivers and downtown regulars will notice one change more than any other, though. Parking bays on both sides of the street were rebuilt wider than the old configuration, putting parked cars farther from moving traffic than they used to sit.
BX Civil & Construction, Inc. of Dell Rapids built it in overlapping phases. Work on the section between 3rd Street and 9th Street South started in May 2024, and the last major segment, Market Street to 3rd Street North, was picked up in April 2025 as the final piece before closeout. The northbound side of downtown, in other words, has now been through a full construction cycle and come out the other side with a wider, newer street built around it.
Here's how the corridor breaks down, piece by piece:
| Segment | Scope of work | Status as of August 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Market Street to 3rd Street North | Grading, paving, curb/gutter, signals, lighting | Finished, 2025 season |
| 3rd Street to 9th Street South | Same full scope, phased across 2024–2025 | Finished; final punch-list item (irrigation) slated for close-out that spring |
| 9th Street South to 21st Street (Dakota Avenue South) | Future full reconstruction | Scheduled to begin spring 2027 |
That middle column matters because it tells you the disruption wasn't a single summer. It was closer to two years of intermittent lane closures and detour signage before the core of downtown came out the other side with new signals and wider curb-to-curb parking.
The Ordinance That Rode In With the Curbs
The public alcohol consumption measure passed as part of routine business, not as a headline item, but it changes what downtown can actually be used for. Before this, carrying a drink between a restaurant patio and a sidewalk bench, or across the street during a downtown event, wasn't something the ordinance allowed. Now it is, at least within the downtown district the commission defined.
Pair that with a street that just got new sidewalks, better lighting, and wider parking, and downtown Huron picked up two upgrades in the same season that reinforce each other. One made the physical space nicer to walk. The other loosened the rule that had kept people tethered to whichever storefront poured their drink. Neither change is dramatic on its own. Together, they're the difference between a rebuilt street and a street people actually want to spend an evening on.
Storefronts Got a Head Start, Too
The construction project didn't just reshape the road. It gave downtown building owners a reason to move on facade work they might have put off otherwise. Greater Huron Development Corporation's Downtown Façade Grant Program, which reimburses approved applicants for 50 percent of costs up to $7,500, or 100 percent of material costs up to $2,500 under the micro-grant tier, was already running before the Dakota Avenue project began. But during a May 2024 pre-construction meeting, Greater Huron's Ted Haeder specifically told business owners the grant could help cover alley entrance work if they chose to do it ahead of the construction.
Haeder has said the program has "already sparked some visual changes in the downtown area," and the timing lines up with what residents can see now: storefronts that got a facelift not on their own timeline, but because a street project forced the question of whether to fix a facade before or after the sidewalk out front got torn up.
What's Not Finished
None of this means downtown Huron is done changing. The SDDOT project page is specific on this point: reconstruction of Dakota Avenue South, between 9th and 21st streets, is scheduled to begin in spring 2027. That's a stretch further south along Dakota Avenue, past the blocks most people think of as downtown, but it means the corridor's disruption cycle isn't closed, just paused. If you've settled into the last two years of watching one end of downtown get rebuilt, the other end is next in line, and it's close enough on the calendar that it's worth keeping an eye on city commission summaries again as 2027 approaches.
For now, though, the corridor that matters most to daily downtown life, the stretch through Market Street, 3rd Street, and past 9th, is the one that's actually finished. Wider parking, new signals, better lighting, and a rule that finally lets people carry a drink from one storefront to the next. That's a different downtown than the one that existed before 2024, and it changed for reasons that had nothing to do with any single business opening or closing.
If you're spending more time downtown these days now that the construction fencing is gone, or you're weighing what a home near that corridor might be worth with the street finally finished, Elevate Real Estate knows this stretch of Huron block by block. Schedule a consultation with Molly Hopper whenever you're ready to talk through what a rebuilt downtown means for your own address.
