Yankton’s strip along the river has become a destination, and now the mall is re-opening. Is the town big enough for both?
By Bernie Hunhoff
Cathy Clatworthy remembers overhearing a customer who answered the phone while at the counter of her home décor shop in downtown Yankton.
“We’re doing The Strip!” laughed the customer.
Clatworthy says the customer explained, after ending the call with her husband, that it’s what she and her friends call a six-block stretch of stores and shops that parallel the Missouri River on the south edge of the old city.
“They love to walk from one end to the other and back,” she says. That would have been a short walk until the last few years because it seemed that mall shopping, big box stores, the COVID-19 pandemic and online shopping would end independent retailing forever. Forever, however, is short in today’s fast-changing economy.
A decade ago, Yankton still had JC Penney, K-Mart and other chain stores; most were in the Yankton Mall, 19 blocks north of the river. The riverfront seemed destined to become a financial district with a scattering of bars and antique shops.
“When the mall was really active, all the downtown retailers were just trying to get people to stop by the downtown stores when they were finished at the mall,” recalls Clatworthy. “I remember that we wanted to rent some display space in the mall to invite the shoppers to come downtown, but Dial Enterprises in Omaha, who then owned the mall, wouldn’t let us.”
Today, most of the retail giants are gone and small shops — including a big selection of clothing stores and a half-dozen stylish home furnishing shops — have opened in their wake. Every time a big box store closed, a few small shops popped up — mostly along Second and Third streets near the Missouri.
Clatworthy traces the downtown district’s most recent resurgence to a community brainstorming session in 2017. Onward Yankton, a local nonprofit, recruited the state’s architectural community and Dakota Resources staff to meet with more than 100 Yankton activists. Together, they shared ideas and even made drawings of how the downtown area might look.
Locals agreed with the guest architects and designers that the town needed more downtown apartments, a sharper focus on historic preservation, better public gathering places and more shopping. Nothing happened overnight, but Clatworthy says all the goals are slowly being addressed.
Apartments and lofts above the storefronts are now home to hundreds of renters, and a new four-story apartment complex with 104 units called Gurney Flats just opened on the riverbank. Construction began in May on a seven-story loft that will alter the Yankton skyline.
Even the city’s once-sleepy bars have picked up the pace. Rock and country music bands entertain on weekend evenings in the variety of establishments, from the historic O’Malley’s and the Walnut (also dubbed the Dead Animal Bar because taxidermy mounts are the main décor) to newer places like Ben’s Brewing Company (a few blocks north of downtown) and the Boat House, a fun establishment with axe-throwing, music, darts and pizzas.
Onward Yankton members are raising money to restore the 1902 Dakota Theater. They even plan to reattach the theater’s unique, yellow 1940s Art Deco façade.
The Black Steer, one of South Dakota’s oldest steakhouses, still serves filets and ribs, while several new eating establishments have opened — again, mostly within a block or two of the Missouri.
Today’s downtown entrepreneurs are scrappy. Clatworthy once had 20 antique vendors in her store. “Today’s generation doesn’t even want their own family heirlooms,” she laughs, so she refocused on picture framing, art and home furnishings. “I still keep a few antiques because they fit my building.”
Drew Delvaux and Zeke Matthews started an online furniture restoration business in 2017 and soon moved into a brick-and-mortar store called River City Relics, with a big selection of home décor, art and clothing. Sales were modest until they persuaded officials at lululemon, a fashionable apparel company, to join forces with them. “That’s a big brand that you won’t usually find in small towns and small stores,” Delvaux says. “But we kept working with them until it happened and it has been life-changing for us.”
Rita Houska stared selling jewelry and purses from the back of her father’s antique shop in 2007; she had her own store a year later. Today, she and her daughter Mandi stock two floors of surprises into one of Yankton’s many historic buildings. The basement ceiling is only 6 feet, 6 inches high, and the floor is wood planks, but no one minds because the inventory is one-of-a-kind, a blend of country and chic. You can buy everything from fine art and funky t-shirts to bread mixes that call for a can of beer and stylish cowhides ($275 for the biggest).
Carla Mueller runs Ninth Street Clothing on Second Street, near the scenic Riverside Field at Bob Tereshinski Stadium and its river view. She started the business in 2017 on Ninth Street at the edge of town (thus the name) and moved downtown in 2023 when she and her husband built a new building.
Mueller’s original location was an old, quaint building — like most of the independent stores in the neighborhood. She tried to incorporate some of that aura in the new store, with a vaulted ceiling and big windows that look out on the ballpark.
She loves the vibrancy of the downtown. “I can’t believe the number of young people who are going into business,” Mueller says. “They are invested in our community, and they are making it work. It’s a team thing. I love that it’s not a competition but a collaboration. If they can’t find something here, we point them to the other clothing stores, and I know they do the same.”
Ninth Street is the newest building and newest business downtown. The oldest is Boston Shoes to Boots, founded in 1915 and operated today by Mandi Gause and Brennan Ewald. The sisters bought the shoe store eight years ago. “Our dad pushed us into going in business for ourselves because he and Mom had worked demanding jobs, and always worked for ‘the man,’” says Mandi.
Their dad must be proud. Five years ago, they also bought a home décor store called Monta’s, renamed it Forte and have become young leaders of the loosely knit strip.
The downtown district also includes a small soap factory, an apothecary for holistic health, wedding venues, medicinal marijuana dispensaries, a ReStore shop run by local Habitat for Humanity volunteers and a new coffee shop called Muddy Mo’s, named for the ever-present river that flows a block away. (The coffee shop is operated by South Dakota Magazine.)
As downtown redevelopment happened, the Yankton Mall dwindled to near emptiness until 2023 when, ironically, a local entrepreneur named Matt Evans bought it from the giant Dial Enterprises of Omaha. Evans cleaned and aired out the cavernous mall, unlocked the doors and reopened the movie theater to much applause because it had been closed since the 2020 pandemic.
Evans has welcomed local shops, but he has 200,000 square feet to fill, so he is also recruiting chain stores. Thanks to support from the city commission — which has now voted twice to provide a sales tax rebate to assist with remodeling — Hobby Lobby, Five Below and Marshall’s plan to open before Christmas of 2025 and other announcements are expected.
In the 1980s, before the age of online shopping, there were more than 25,000 malls in the United States. Today there are only 1,000, and Capital One Research projects that the number could drop to 150 by 2032.
The Yankton Mall, and shopping centers like it, are now the underdogs of retailing. Meanwhile, Clatworthy and the other independent store owners are anxious to see whether a mall and a downtown can co-exist in a town of 15,000.
“It’s all unpredictable, we’ve learned that through the years,” she says. “There are fears based on past experiences and fear is dangerous. It’s natural but you don’t want to act on it. The chains are coming here because we have a market. Hopefully they do attract some new shoppers and if so then the market will grow for all of us.”
Carla Mueller of Ninth Street Clothing agrees. “We are all going to feel it initially when the big stores open, but then I think it’ll die down. In the end, they’ll bring new people to town and there will be two kinds of customers,” she says. “We are selling service as much as anything, and the bigger you get the harder it is to take care of the customer.”
Plus, Mueller says, it’s hard for a chain store or big box store to compete with the architecture, history and natural beauty of the river district.
Mandi Gause, the shoe store owner, agrees. “I believe we have one of the most beautiful backdrops a downtown could have, and it does make us unique.”
She’s also wondering about the return of the chain stores. “Early in our ownership, the previous owner told me there used to be several shoe stores downtown. I told him I was thankful that wasn’t the case anymore. His reply was blunt. ‘It’s better if there’s more competition because that means more people are in town looking for shoes.’”
That’s the very same optimistic and independent spirit that prompted Matt Evans to rehab an empty mall — and that shoppers seem to appreciate when they walk “The Strip” along the river. Yankton leaders are hoping that this time, everyone can coexist and grow together.
Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2025 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.