Minnetonka Boulevard Just Filled Back In. The County Already Has A Date To Rebuild It.

The stretch of Minnetonka Boulevard that runs through the Texa-Tonka area has spent most of the last two decades as the kind of place people describe by what used to be there. That changed faster than the road itself will stay in one piece. In the same year that a nearly sixty-year-old butcher shop passed to new owners and a shopping center that spent decades half-empty finally filled in, Hennepin County confirmed a date to tear the whole boulevard up and rebuild it. If you live along this corridor, the next two years are the version of it you get before the construction cones arrive.

The counter that changed hands, not the neighborhood

Nelson's Meats, Bakery and Deli started in Hopkins in 1965 and moved to 6318 Minnetonka Boulevard in 2013, which means it spent the better part of six decades as the kind of business people mention when they're trying to explain what a neighborhood used to feel like. This spring, the space passed to Sweet Lou's Craft Sausage & Butchery, run by Louisa Farhat and Tim Dubay, who spent years building a following with farmers market stalls and a food truck that made regular stops at Twin Cities breweries before they went looking for a permanent address.

The transition mattered enough to the previous owner that, according to Farhat, he told her he wanted to "pass on the legacy" of the space rather than simply sell it off. What that legacy looks like now is a butcher shop and deli open Tuesday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., serving breakfast, lunch and coffee until 3 p.m., with Farhat butchering whole animals in house and sourcing from farms including Peterson Craft Meats, Blooming Prairie, The Lamb Shoppe and the Swanson Reserve Collective. The point isn't that a new sandwich shop opened. It's that a business people had trusted for sixty years didn't close, it changed hands, on the same block, doing roughly the same thing for the next generation of regulars.

The corner that took the longest to turn

A few blocks away, the Texa-Tonka Shopping Center is finishing a longer and more complicated version of the same story. Built in 1951 by St. Louis Park developer Adolph "Bob" Fine, it was reportedly the first major suburban shopping center in the area to be built, owned and staffed entirely by local people, and for a stretch in the 1950s and 60s it was the kind of place residents organized their Saturdays around. Decades of underinvestment by its longtime ownership group left about half the storefronts vacant by the time Paster Properties reached a purchase agreement to take over the center.

The renovation that followed demolished roughly 4,000 square feet of interior space to create an exterior courtyard, added pedestrian and cyclist-friendly site design, and brought in solar site lighting, a deliberate attempt to turn a strip mall into a gathering spot rather than just a parking lot with storefronts attached. Best of India, the center's longtime restaurant tenant since 2006, stuck around through the whole process. Next door, the city used roughly $2.6 million in tax-increment financing to help fund the $26.4 million Volo at Texa-Tonka project, a 101-unit apartment building and 11-unit townhome development at the corner of Texas Avenue and Minnetonka Boulevard that's now complete and includes a public trail connection linking the neighborhood to the shopping center and the Cedar Lake Trail. A shopping center that spent years as a cautionary tale is now stitched into the surrounding blocks by an actual footpath.

The same pattern, a few blocks over

This isn't isolated to one intersection. Near Knollwood, a Chipotle was under construction this spring at the corner of Highway 7 and Aquila Avenue South, with the city anticipating a mid-July 2026 opening on a corner that had sat as unused right-of-way. Over on Excelsior Boulevard, the space that used to be Honey & Rye's Bakehouse became The Candy Shop on August 1, a pick-and-mix confectionery stocked with imported Swedish candy and a modern take on princess cake, run by owner Anne Andrus. None of these openings are connected to each other in any formal sense. Taken together, they describe a city where long-vacant or aging commercial space is turning over at a pace it hasn't seen in years.

Why the window on Minnetonka Boulevard specifically is short

Here's the detail that separates this from a routine local business roundup. Hennepin County has scheduled a full reconstruction of Minnetonka Boulevard between Highway 100 and Xylon Avenue for 2028 and 2029, and the city has been engaging the public on the project since 2025. A public hearing on phase two of the project was held at St. Louis Park City Hall on May 4, 2026, with the city council slated to vote on a recommended design shortly after. That means the corridor currently filling back in with new tenants, from Sweet Lou's to the reopened storefronts at Texa-Tonka, has a defined shelf life before it becomes a construction zone.

A few things worth knowing if you live along or near this stretch:

• The reconstruction covers Minnetonka Boulevard between Highway 100 and Xylon Avenue, the same general segment that runs past Texa-Tonka.
• The county has been gathering public feedback since 2025, and the city held a hearing on phase two design in May 2026.
• Construction is scheduled for 2028 and 2029, which puts roughly two years between now and the start of any disruption.
• Design details, timelines and ways to comment are tracked on Hennepin County's project page for the reconstruction.

None of this is a reason for alarm. Road reconstructions in this part of the metro tend to improve the corridors they touch, often with better pedestrian crossings, updated utilities and repaved surfaces that outlast the disruption by decades. What it does mean is that the current stretch of Minnetonka Boulevard, the one with a new butcher counter in a sixty-year-old storefront and a shopping center finally living up to its original promise, is worth using and enjoying now rather than assuming it will look identical in three years.

What this actually changes about how you'd use the corridor

If you've been putting off a visit to Sweet Lou's because the old Nelson's sign is still muscle memory, this is the year the new owners are settling in and the menu is at its most complete. If you've written off Texa-Tonka because you remember it half-vacant, the courtyard and the walking connection to the Cedar Lake Trail are finished, not still under construction. And if your daily route runs through the Highway 100 to Xylon Avenue stretch of Minnetonka Boulevard, it's worth paying attention to the county's design hearings now, because the road you drive today is not the road you'll be driving in 2028.

None of this changes what your home is worth or whether now is the right time to sell it. It does mean that the character of this part of St. Louis Park is genuinely different than it was even eighteen months ago, and that difference is worth knowing whether you're grabbing a sandwich, planning a walk, or just trying to understand why the corner you drive past every day suddenly looks occupied again.

If you're a homeowner along this corridor and you've found yourself wondering what any of this local momentum means for your property's value, that's a conversation worth having with someone who tracks this market closely. Morgan Real Estate Group works these west metro neighborhoods every day and can walk you through what local changes like these actually mean for your home. Request your home valuation whenever you're ready to talk.