Drive Ridgedale Drive this August and you'll hit a single southbound lane somewhere between Wayzata Boulevard and the I-394 ramps, orange barrels marching along both sides. Slow down enough to look past the fencing, though, and you'll see something that has nothing to do with the detour: rows of newly planted white pines, each about 25 feet tall, standing in a two-acre lot where a parking apron used to be. Crews poured the footings for a park building there this summer. That combination, a lane squeeze on one side of the fence and a young forest going into the ground on the other, is the whole story of what's happening to Ridgedale right now.
For more than a decade, Minnetonka's own planning studies said the same thing about this stretch of the city. A 2012 visioning process concluded that Ridgedale was well known and well visited, but had no green space, no community gathering spot, and almost no way to move through it except by car. A follow-up round of neighborhood meetings in 2015 reached the same conclusion. The city's 2017 public realm guidelines set out to fix exactly that: turn the retail center into something closer to a mixed-use neighborhood, rebuild Ridgedale Drive as a parkway rather than a feeder road, and give people on foot a real way to get around.
None of that happened fast. What's different about 2026 is that three separate pieces of that old diagnosis are finally under construction at the same time, in the same stretch of the Ridgedale area. That's worth understanding if you live nearby, because it explains both the traffic headache you're driving through now and what you'll actually be able to walk to once the cones come down.
The park that answers the "no gathering spot" complaint
The new park is called Ridgedale Commons, and it's the most direct answer to the oldest complaint on record. Beyond the white pines already planted, the finished park is set to include:
- A building with restrooms, a warming house, and rentable indoor space
- A plaza and grassy lawn designed to double as event space
- Room for a seasonal ice skating rink
- A garden room built around pollinator-focused plantings
- An interactive fountain and a wooded lounge area
- A picnic shelter with benches and bike racks
Right next door, Crane Lake Preserve is getting its own upgrade as part of the same project: better sightlines to the lake, improved trails, and stormwater gardens worked into the landscaping. It's a small piece of habitat sitting inside a commercial district that, by the city's own admission, never had one.
None of this required tearing anything down. It's built on space that used to be parking, which is its own quiet statement about how much car-only infrastructure the area had to spare.
Two different agencies are tearing up the same road at once
The lane reduction you're driving through has a specific cause, and it isn't the park. It's actually two separate projects stacked on top of each other.
The first is a Minnesota Department of Transportation job at the Plymouth Road and Ridgedale Drive interchange with I-394. MnDOT crews started work there on July 13, replacing traffic signals and rebuilding sidewalks to improve pedestrian access, with the whole job scheduled to wrap by October. The specific southbound lane reduction on Ridgedale Drive was slated to run through late August, which means the tightest part of that particular squeeze should be easing right about now, even as signal and sidewalk work continues into the fall at Plymouth Road itself.
The second project belongs to the city, not the state. Minnetonka approved plans this year to resurface Ridgedale Drive between Cartway Lane and Plymouth Road, along with Cartway Lane itself, fixing damaged curbs, pedestrian ramps, and traffic signals. The city held an open house on that project in mid-August at the Minnetonka Community Center. It's a different agency, a different contract, and a slightly different stretch of pavement, but it's happening in the same construction season as the MnDOT work a few hundred feet away.
That's the actual reason this year's disruption feels heavier than a normal repaving season. It isn't one long project. It's a state highway job and a city street job running concurrently on adjoining segments of the same road, both explicitly aimed at the same old complaint: that you can't get around Ridgedale on foot. Knowing that helps explain why the cones seem to move around instead of clearing out all at once, and why the pedestrian upgrades won't all be finished on the same day even after the lane count goes back to normal.
The mall wing is losing a tenant, and where it's going tells you something
While the road work continues, the retail side of Ridgedale has its own reshuffling in progress. Marshall's is relocating out of its longtime two-story space inside Bonaventure Shopping Center, the older enclosed complex that's also home to Bacio, DXL, Pearle Vision, Top Ten Liquor, and Fork'd. Its new home is a 26,210-square-foot suite inside Ridgehaven Marketplace, in a lineup that includes Lunds & Byerlys, Five Below, Ulta Beauty, and Crumbl. Pinnacle Construction has been handling the build-out, with the store expected to open sometime in 2026.
What makes the move worth noting isn't the square footage. It's the format. Ridgehaven Marketplace gives Marshall's direct street visibility instead of a shared mall entrance buried inside a two-story interior corridor. That's a small, concrete example of the shift the city's 2017 guidelines called for on paper: retail that faces the street instead of turning its back to it. One tenant relocating doesn't remake a district, but it's the kind of decision private landlords only make when they think street-facing space will perform better than enclosed space, which is itself a read on where they think foot traffic in the corridor is headed.
A chain that has nothing to do with any of this planning is betting on the same trade area
Not everything new at Ridgedale is connected to the park or the road work. Dave's Hot Chicken opened its first Minnesota location near Ridgedale this summer, run by a family franchise group that includes former NBA player Kris Humphries alongside his parents and sibling. The family picked the site specifically because of the Ridgedale trade area's reach and its position close to I-494, I-394, and Highway 169, the same highway access that made this corridor a commercial center in the first place back when it opened in 1973.
It's a useful data point on its own terms. A national quick-service chain choosing its first Minnesota store here, independent of any city planning process, is a sign that Ridgedale's draw as a place people already drive to hasn't weakened even while the public realm around it is under construction. The park and the sidewalks are trying to give people a reason to linger. The restaurant openings suggest people were already showing up in enough numbers that a first-in-state location made sense without waiting for any of that to finish.
What this actually means if you live here
None of this changes how far it is to Trader Joe's or how long the lights take at rush hour today. What it does mean is that a place city planners spent over a decade describing as functional but forgettable is now getting the two things that diagnosis kept pointing to: a park you could actually spend a Saturday in, and sidewalks that don't dead-end at a parking lot. Expect the construction friction to keep moving around the corridor into October rather than clearing out all at once, since the state and city projects aren't on identical timelines. And when the white pines at Ridgedale Commons fill in, that patch of ground that used to be asphalt will be the first real answer Minnetonka has given to a complaint about its own busiest commercial district that's been on the books since 2012.
If you're weighing how a changing corridor like this affects home values nearby, or you're curious what a property near Ridgedale is actually worth given everything in motion this year, The Steadman Team can walk you through it. Request a private consultation and valuation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
