If you have tried to get onto southbound Ridgedale Drive since mid-July, you already know the drill: one lane, a flagger some mornings, and a detour that adds five minutes to a drive that used to take ninety seconds. The instinct is to read that as decline, another sign that the corridor around Ridgedale Center is fraying at the edges. It is not. Look at what is happening on either side of those orange cones and a different story shows up: this is the busiest season of investment the Ridgedale area has seen since the roundabout went in back in 2020, and the construction is one piece of it, not a symptom.
The $37.5 million reason your commute got worse
The Minnesota Department of Transportation started work on July 13 at the intersection of Plymouth Road, Ridgedale Drive and I-394, and it is not a small job. MnDOT's own release describes new traffic signals and upgraded pedestrian accessibility at one of the busiest interchanges in the west metro, and the Sun Sailor's follow-up put a number on it: a $37.5 million project scheduled to run through October.
The sequencing explains the headache. Southbound Ridgedale Drive drops to one lane through late August while crews rebuild that stretch first. Once that phase wraps, the work shifts to the Plymouth Road ramps and continues into October, including a full sidewalk rebuild on the west side of Plymouth Road running from the north frontage road down past the I-394 bridge. If you have also noticed lane shifts further east on I-394 near the EZ-Pass lanes, that is part of the same regional push, MnDOT is in the middle of repairing and restoring more than thirty bridges across I-94 and I-394 as part of that same broader rebuild, and Ridgedale sits right in the middle of that map.
Here is the part that matters if you live nearby: this specific project is billed as a pedestrian safety and accessibility upgrade, not just a signal swap. That is a deliberate choice, and it lines up with something else happening two hundred yards away.
The retail is turning over while the road is torn up
Marshall's is relocating, but not out of the neighborhood. The store is moving into a 26,210-square-foot suite inside Ridgehaven Marketplace, the same shopping center it already anchors, with Pinnacle Construction leading a build-out that gutted the interior down to the studs and has continued through 2026. That single move is dragging a chain reaction with it. Ridgehaven's tenant roster includes Lunds & Byerlys, Relive Health, Five Below, Ulta Beauty, Crumbl and Target, and as of last winter one 3,809-square-foot space in the center was still listed as available, a sign the turnover in that shopping center was not finished even before Marshall's move was announced.
Put plainly: a shopping center does not gut and rebuild a 26,000-square-foot anchor space in the same year a state agency rebuilds the pedestrian crossings out front by accident. Both bets are on the same intersection getting more foot traffic, not less.
The road work and the retail work are pointed at the same outcome: making it possible to park once at Ridgehaven and walk to four or five stores instead of driving between each one.
The food scene around Ridgedale has leveled up too
The corridor's dining options were mostly drive-through and casual for years. That has been shifting. Dave's Hot Chicken opened near Ridgedale as the fried chicken chain's first Minnesota location, run by a family franchise group, and it drew lines around the building from its opening weeks. That kind of demand does not go unnoticed by other operators looking at the same trade area.
More recently, Restaurant Aubergine has become one of the names locals bring up when the conversation turns to what is new in Minnetonka dining, showing up on Yelp's spring 2026 roundup of the area's hottest tables alongside Copper & Rye, another repeat name across both the April and May 2026 rankings. Neither is a Ridgedale mall tenant in the traditional sense. Both are evidence that the food scene feeding off Ridgedale's foot traffic has gotten more ambitious, not less, in the same stretch of months the roads out front have been under construction.
The construction timeline, at a glance
| Phase | Location | Status as of mid-August 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Southbound lane reduction | Ridgedale Drive, Plymouth Road to I-394 | Underway since July 13, running through late August |
| Signal and ramp work | Plymouth Road at westbound I-394 ramps | Begins after the Ridgedale Drive phase, continues through October |
| Sidewalk reconstruction | West side of Plymouth Road, frontage road to I-394 bridge | Included in the same project scope |
| Broader I-394/I-94 bridge work | Highway 100 to downtown Minneapolis | Ongoing through November, includes EZ-Pass lane shifts |
The summer calendar hasn't skipped a beat
None of this has slowed down the parts of Minnetonka that have nothing to do with retail leases or traffic signals. Civic Center Park's Entertainment in the Park series has kept its Tuesday, 6:30 to 8 p.m. schedule at the amphitheater since June 23 and runs through August 26, free and family-friendly the way it has been for years. The summer market at the same park has been running since June 2 and continues through September 29, 2 to 6 p.m. Night to Unite brought neighbors out for block parties across the city on August 4, the annual reminder that construction detours are a summer inconvenience, not a reason to skip the season.
That combination, disruptive road work, a shopping center mid-renovation, and a civic calendar running exactly on schedule, is what a corridor actually modernizing looks like from the inside. It is messier than a press release and a lot more useful to understand if you are the one driving through it every day.
How to use the corridor for the next six weeks
A few practical notes if you live in range of Ridgedale and want to get ahead of the worst of it:
- Southbound Ridgedale Drive is the pinch point through late August. If you are headed to Ridgehaven Marketplace or Target, cutting over via Plymouth Road before the ramp work shifts there in the fall will save you the most time right now.
- The Marshall's build-out inside Ridgehaven Marketplace means parts of that lot may see construction traffic of their own. Give yourself a few extra minutes if you are picking up an order or making a return.
- If you want to catch the last few Tuesday concerts at Civic Center Park before the August 26 close, come early. Foot traffic tends to spike as the market winds down for the evening.
- Once the Plymouth Road ramp work wraps in October, the payoff is a corridor built for people walking between storefronts and restaurants, not just cars passing through. Worth remembering the next time the detour feels like it's dragging on.
None of this changes what Minnetonka is at its core, a place with a genuinely good park system, a civic calendar that shows up rain or shine, and a business district that keeps reinvesting in itself even when the reinvestment looks like a lane closure. The corridor is loud right now. It is loud because people are betting on it.
If you are watching all this change and wondering what it means for your own address, whether that's a renovation worth timing around the retail refresh or a sense of where values are headed as the corridor finishes its rebuild, Jesse James Forsell has been tracking Minnetonka and the surrounding west metro suburbs closely enough to talk specifics, not generalities. Schedule a free consultation whenever you're ready to talk through it.
