Plans for Copper Lounge site headed to historic preservation board

Patrick Anderson | Argus Leader

Show Caption Hide Caption Video: Early plans surface for redeveloping Copper Lounge site Sioux Falls’s historic preservation board has received early plans for rebuilding on the site of a fatal downtown building collapse.

Sioux Falls' historic preservation board is set to hear preliminary plans Wednesday for redeveloping the site of a fatal downtown building collapse.

Norm Drake, owner of the former Copper Lounge site, is scheduled to discuss plans with the board, which needs to decide whether they meet standards as part of the downtown historic district.

Documents submitted to the board show what appears to be a two-story structure with retail on the first floor and with a rooftop bar patio upstairs. The adjacent PAve bar and restaurant would expand to occupy the entire upper level, according to the plans.

The designs show a brick façade and windowed storefront facing Phillips Avenue, with an awning in front and a glass canopy over the 10th Street side.

Drake did not return a phone call Tuesday.

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The site has been vacant since December, when crews finished clearing the collapsed Copper Lounge building. A construction worker, Ethan McMahon, 24, was killed, and a woman in an upstairs apartment was trapped for in the debris for hours.

Drake hasn’t filed any of the necessary paperwork yet for construction, though he has met with city officials about the project, said Diane deKoeyer, a staff liaison for the Sioux Falls Board of Historic Preservation.

"They have to get approval first from the board of historic preservation because it is in the historic district," deKoeyer said.

The board is scheduled to decide Wednesday whether the plan meets historical design standards set by the U.S. Department of the Interior.