BOX ELDER, S.D. (KELO) — For years, the town of Box Elder has been preparing for the B-21 mission.

That includes new homes, new businesses and a lot more residents in the western South Dakota town. 

Many of the people moving to Box Elder will be living off the base.

“Several of the developers in the area are working at adding single family, multi-family, as well as more of the apartment style, mixed use residential housing that’s going along with our industrial,” Public Information Officer Derek Wingfield said.

The city also has a master park plan. The goal is to connect all of the local parks.

“We did our best to make sure to identify how we take advantage of what we have here and strategically develop on that for a better quality of life and outdoor use,” Wingfield said.

To many, Box Elder is a welcome into the Black Hills and has new event centers like The Box to host multiple sports tournaments, as well as weddings and other venues. As well as the other additions right inside Box Elder and outside of Ellsworth, with the new addition coming in with the B-21 very soon.

“We’ve got three basketball courts, four volleyball courts, three indoor soccer courts, we can run twelve pickleball games at a time and the very next day we can do a wedding here,” The Box GM Adam Patton said.

This multi-use event center is one of the reasons Box Elder continues to grow.

“We’ve done corporate conferences, we’ve done leadership summits, we’ve done trunk or treat with the city of Box Elder, you name it we can do it. The city of Box Elder has been a great partner on this project and the more we can do to help them grow the better off we’re going to be as a company as well,” Patton said.

Box Elder has several more groundbreakings in the works. Together, they’ll all provide more for their growing city.

Since 2010, Box Elder’s population has grown more than 38 percent. The community expects to double that in the next 10 years.