"South Dakota's Economic Renaissance"

From a New York Times article entitled "Hopes Soar After Record Hospital Gift of $400 Million":

SIOUX FALLS, S.D., Feb. 3 — South Dakota’s economic renaissance has gone largely unnoticed, eclipsed by things like the state’s strong opposition to same-sex marriage, its raucous debates over abortion and the stroke suffered by one of its senators, Tim Johnson, that could tip control of the Senate back to the Republicans.

But in the 1990s, its long stagnant population began to grow, especially here and in Rapid City, and its economy began to diversify. Its lack of personal and corporate income taxes made it attractive to companies and their employees, and while other states tightened their usury laws, South Dakota relaxed its, attracting numerous credit card companies. Citibank continues to be one of the state’s largest employers, with 3,200 employees, and call centers line the highways around Sioux Falls.

Now, T. Denny Sanford, a low-key billionaire who made his home and fortune here, will help sustain the state’s economic boom with a $400 million gift to the Sioux Valley Hospitals and Health System, the state’s largest employer. Hospital officials hope the gift — the largest ever to a hospital, according to the Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University — will help transform Sioux Valley Hospitals, which will change its name to Sanford Health, into a national institution that will eclipse Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic.

“He told me he doesn’t want this to be just another Mayo,” said Kelby K. Krabbenhoft, Sioux Valley’s chief executive.

It has four stated goals: to build five pediatric clinics around the country; to expand research, especially in pediatrics; to build a health care campus with more than 20 separate facilities, and to identify a promising line of medical research and follow it to a cure, much the same way John D. Rockefeller’s money found a cure for yellow fever and Bill Gates is searching for a cure for H.I.V./AIDS.

“If I could put my name on a project in my lifetime and see a major medical breakthrough because of it, that’s what I would love to do,” said Mr. Sanford in an interview from Scottsdale, Ariz.

“The idea that we could really put Sioux Falls and South Dakota so much more on the map, that we could create additional employment and attract people from around the country and around the world, that was really a hot button for me,” Mr. Sanford said.

The whole article is really good, so be sure to give it a read.