The following article, published in the Sioux City Journal in 2007, offers some insight as to the origins of Siouxland Friends & Neighbors.
Gateway, Dunes grew up together
DAKOTA DUNES — When Gateway 2000 moved to North Sioux City in 1990, planets in the universe of economic development began to align. Especially those of Gateway and MidAmerican Energy’s new residential community, Dakota Dunes.
The Dunes development was announced in 1988, and its first residents, Andrea and Norman Waitt Jr., (now divorced) moved into their new home there in December 1990.
“We kind of rode the wave together,” said Roger Zanarini, the Dunes’ former vice president of sales and marketing. “The Dunes was starting out. We were very fortunate Gateway was ramping up its employment at the same time.”
As Gateway grew, so did the Dunes, which began building its second planned neighborhood, The Meadows.
“It was huge,” said Rick Wegher, a home builder who lives at the Dunes. “There were people moving to town on a daily basis.”
Wegher said that with Gateway’s growth in North Sioux City, the number of homes he built in the Dunes each year jumped from five to 40, at least half of which were for Gateway clients.
“Socially speaking, it was a lot of fun,” he recalled. “There were a lot of people in their mid-30s. They all golfed.”
The new executives applied their talents within the broader community, too, volunteering with the Better Business Bureau, United Way and a plethora of other organizations and fundraising efforts.
`Gateway dorms?’
One thing the Dunes didn’t have was apartments for Gateway’s new young hires, who at one time were being added at a pace of 25 a week or more.
Dennis Melstad, president of Dakota Dunes Development, said the company couldn’t find anyone who would take the risk of building apartments.
It finally convinced Sioux Falls developer Steve Haight to build the 192-unit Wellington Apartments. They filled up quickly.
“At one time they called the Wellington Apartments the Gateway dorms,” said Chris Bogenrief who, right out of college himself at the time, built a successful career in marketing at the Dunes. “It was a lot of single young people who would get a two-bedroom apartment and share the living area. It was almost like college dorms, kind of a fun, young atmosphere.”
Zanarini said older, newly hired executives lived at Wellington, too. “They could come to town, see if they liked the area, then decide where they wanted to live,” he said. “The apartments were incubators.”
Bloom where?
Not everything was rosy for everyone, however. Many of the wives who came along with their Gateway executive husbands suffered isolation and culture shock.
“I know of several cases,” Zanarini said, “where people came home from work at Gateway. The note was there, the wife was gone.
“We formed a group called Siouxland Friends and Neighbors because a lot of times the husband was working all the time and the woman was left at home. There wasn’t a lot going on for a stay-at-home mom.”
The social club is still thriving today and has more than 10 interest groups, which further connect newcomers. It made all the difference for its current historian, Carol Jacobson. She said the club helped improve her attitude in 1998 when she moved to the area from Omaha with her Gateway-employed husband, David.
She was home with their sons, ages 2 and 4, and was used to having a grocery store down the street and more retail choices. Now the Jacobsons have a daughter, too. “We’re hoping we get to stay here because we like it here,” she said. “It’s a great place to raise kids.”
And, after all, the original Friends and Neighbors tagline remains, “Bloom where you are planted.”
`A big step backward’
“When Gateway left, we really thought it was going to be a body blow,” Zanarini said of the headquarters’ 1998 move to San Diego. “We took a big step backward when Gateway left, the executives especially. It really flattened us out.”
Melstad called the departure “a downturn” but said the impact was less than expected. By 1993, he said, IBP chairman Bob Peterson and about 20 executives were already working in the Beef Products Inc. building at the Dunes’ Two Rivers Business Center, foreshadowing the showplace headquarters IBP, now Tyson Fresh Meats, would build there a few years later.
That move eventually brought more than 1,000 executives and support personnel to the Dunes. At the same time, the new Siouxland Surgery Center had opened, and many medical offices were beginning to relocate to the Dunes, too.
“It didn’t take long to fill in,” Melstad said of the Dunes residential areas. “In six months to a year we had brought the numbers down to what they usually are,” which is about 35 houses on the market at any time.
“We kind of blundered our way through,” Zanarini, now retired, recalled. “Time heals a lot of wounds. As Siouxland continued to grow, so did the Dunes.”
