Uptown businesses relieved Hennepin Avenue is reopening after ‘devastating’ construction

Cars, trucks, buses, bicyclists, scooter riders and pedestrians will return to Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis’ Uptown area on Friday, and business owners are ecstatic to have them back.

They’ve been gone for much of the past two years as Minneapolis spent more than $30 million to give the heavily traveled thoroughfare its first major upgrade in more than 65 years.

Businesses have struggled and some even closed as parking disappeared and cones, barrels and mounds of dirt made it tricky for customers to reach their front doors.

“We will have traffic going in both directions,” said Judy Longbottom, who runs the UPS store on W. 28th Street and Hennepin Avenue. “This will be beneficial to the area. It will be impactful to have the corridor back open.”

The corridor connecting downtown to Uptown is one of the busiest streets in Minneapolis, carrying between 22,000 and 25,000 vehicles a day before the highly contentious construction project began. More than 6,600 transit riders and 220 to 280 bicyclists a day also used the street, according to city data from 2022.

Mayor Jacob Frey and other leaders and dignitaries will hold a ribbon cutting Friday to declare the dramatically remade street between Douglas Avenue and Lake Street open, though some mop-up work will continue for the next month, said project manager Adam Hayow.

Since the project began in the spring of 2024, “quite a few” businesses on or near Hennepin have closed, said Andrea Corbin with the nonprofit Uptown Association.

The Uptown Association felt the pain of construction as it moved the beloved Uptown Art Fair to Bachman’s in south Minneapolis. The event is now called the SoMi Art Fair.

As construction comes to an end, Corbin said there have been signs that business is picking up. Plywood is coming off boarded-up buildings and a holiday market is planned for Seven Points, formerly known as Calhoun Square.

From Black Friday to New Year’s, stores will decorate as part of “Holidays on Hennepin” and guests can pick up passports and have them stamped as they visit establishments. Prizes will be awarded.

The Lowry Hill Neighborhood Association received a $30,000 grant from the city to stage the month-long, holiday event aimed at supporting local business and reestablishing Uptown as a vibrant commercial hub.

Corbin said there’s also talk of a spring music festival and, perhaps, bringing the Uptown Art Fair back to Hennepin Avenue and Lake Street.

“These are the businesses we need to be supporting,” Frey said in a video celebrating Hennepin’s Halloween reopening. “Whether that’s grabbing a drink after work or having an Uptown breakfast sandwich, getting a gift or some coffee, going to the bank, getting your dry cleaning, this is the place to do it ... not just once but over and over again.”

To those who come back, Hennepin will look vastly different. The street now has just one traffic lane in each direction with left turn lanes at key intersections. It also has wider sidewalks, but less parking. There are two-way protected bike lanes, new traffic signals, better street lighting and lanes dedicated to buses only at certain hours of the day. Under the street, utilities dating to when Dwight Eisenhower was president were replaced.

On Friday afternoon, Metro Transit buses detoured off Hennepin Avenue during construction will return to the street. In December, Metro Transit will open the new E Line, a rapid bus route running on Hennepin Avenue connecting the University of Minnesota with downtown and Edina.

“I like it better than I thought,” said Longbottom, who like others was concerned that a loss of curbside parking would drive customers away. “It’s a fresh clean street. Psychologically, it is helpful to have that. It feels like heading into spring.”

Mumtaz Osman, who has run Osman Cleaners at W. 25th Street and Hennepin Avenue for 35 years, isn’t quite as thrilled as others. Business dropped of significantly when construction started, and since then “it’s been very slow,” Osman said.

Osman still laments the loss of parking and fears the new Hennepin Avenue configuration will lead to more traffic jams.