The Construction Outside Minnetonka's Farmers Market Isn't What It Looks Like

Drive Minnetonka Boulevard past The Marsh on a Tuesday afternoon this month and you'll pass orange cones, a lane shift, and a utility crew working the shoulder near 15000 Minnetonka Blvd. Most people read that as summer road work, the kind that shows up every year and disappears by October. It isn't. The crews working that stretch right now are laying groundwork for something the city has had on its books since at least 2024: a new paved trail connecting The Marsh to Tonkawood Road.

That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should, because it changes how you should read the next few weeks. The farmers market at The Marsh is winding down its 2026 season. The cones next to it aren't a temporary inconvenience layered on top of a familiar Tuesday. They're the first visible step of a permanent connection that will outlast this season by years.

Four Tuesdays Left, Not Five

The Minnetonka Farmers Market runs Tuesdays from 2 to 6 p.m. at The Marsh parking lot, 15000 Minnetonka Blvd, through September 29. With today's date landing after the first Tuesday of the month, that leaves four market days on the calendar: September 8, 15, 22, and 29.

A few things worth knowing if you haven't been out yet this year:

• The Power of Produce Club, a partnership with South Lake Pediatrics and Lakewinds Food Co-Op, gives kids ages 4 to 17 a $2 voucher each week to spend on fresh produce. Those vouchers expire September 29, the same day the market closes for the season.
• The market accepts credit, debit, and EBT, converting purchases into tokens at an information table. EBT and SNAP shoppers can match their first $10 in tokens with up to $10 in Market Bucks and another $10 in Produce Market Bucks.
• Live music and community booths run most weeks, though the city's weather hotline at 952-939-8355 is the fastest way to confirm a market is happening if the forecast looks rough.

None of that is new information if you've been going for years. What's new is the reason to plan around the utility work rather than around it.

The Cones Aren't About This Season

The city's own notice about the market this year includes a line easy to skim past: utility work is happening this summer along Minnetonka Boulevard and may affect access to The Marsh. Read on its own, that sounds like routine maintenance. Read next to Minnetonka's 2025-2029 trail capital improvement plan, it reads differently.

That plan, presented to the Minnetonka Park Board, lists a specific project for 2026: a 0.8-mile trail segment along Minnetonka Boulevard running from The Marsh to Tonkawood Road. The same document notes that funding for utility burial is built into trail projects that require it, paid through the city's electric franchise fund. In plain terms, before a new stretch of trail goes in, the utilities underneath it often have to move first. The crews on Minnetonka Boulevard this month aren't a separate summer project running in parallel with the farmers market. They're the early stage of the trail project the city already budgeted for this year.

If you've found parking tighter or the shoulder narrower on a recent Tuesday, that's why. It's also why the disruption has a natural end point rather than an open-ended one. Utility relocation ahead of a scheduled paved trail segment is a finite phase, not a recurring seasonal headache.

What 0.8 Miles Actually Connects

Eight tenths of a mile doesn't sound like much until you place it. This segment links the market site directly to Tonkawood Road, giving anyone walking, biking, or pushing a stroller from that corridor a paved route straight to The Marsh without cutting through unmarked shoulder or crossing back and forth over Minnetonka Boulevard traffic. For a market that already draws people on foot from nearby neighborhoods, that's the difference between an informal desire path and an actual sidewalk-grade connection built to the same standard as the rest of the city's trail system.

It's a small piece of a much larger network. Minnetonka's trail system already covers more than 33 miles across the city, and the five-year plan schedules segments almost every year through 2029, including work along Excelsior Boulevard and Hopkins Crossroad in the years just after this one. The Marsh-to-Tonkawood piece is this year's installment, not a one-off.

Further Down the Boulevard, Big Willow Is Also Mid-Overhaul

The same corridor is seeing more than one kind of change this year. Big Willow Community Preserve, the 95-acre park along Minnehaha Creek elsewhere on Minnetonka Boulevard, has been in active master planning since early 2026. At a February 4 Park Board meeting, staff presented a draft plan that drew enough feedback to send the team back for revisions, including relocating the off-leash dog area to a different section of the park and removing an aging bridge on the western side. An updated version of that plan went back to the Park Board on June 3.

Big Willow isn't part of the same construction project as the Marsh trail segment, but it's evidence of the same pattern: the city is putting real planning hours into this stretch of Minnetonka Boulevard this year, not just patching potholes. If you walk or bike the corridor regularly, expect more visible change at Big Willow before the year is out, on top of whatever finishes near The Marsh.

Where to Land After Market Day

If the market's last Tuesdays this month have you looking for somewhere to go afterward, there's a genuinely new option close by. Chef Heather Asbury, who built a following at her original cafe on Chicago Avenue in south Minneapolis, quietly opened a second location of Heather's at 5445 Eden Prairie Road in Minnetonka, in the space that most recently held Kazoku and Copper Cow.

The Minnetonka location serves breakfast through dinner seven days a week. The menu runs from an acai bowl with housemade granola and lemon-blueberry French toast in the morning to a French dip, a curried turkey burger, and a salad built around golden beets later in the day, with entrees priced between $12 and $22. Cocktails come from The Libation Project, including a rye and bourbon blended old fashioned and a lavender-sage non-alcoholic Negroni for anyone driving home. The interior leans into greenery and a green color palette that carries over from the original Minneapolis spot.

It's an easy stop on the way back from a market run, and one more sign that this part of Minnetonka Boulevard is getting more attention this year, not less.

A Season Ending Into Something Better

Put the pieces together and the picture isn't a market quietly closing for the winter. It's a corridor in the middle of a transition: a trail connection nearing completion, a park a few miles down the same road working through its own master plan, and a new place to eat that opened without much fanfare in between. By the time the market reopens next June, the walk to it may look different than it did this September, and better for it.

If you're weighing what a neighborhood like this is actually like to live in day to day, not just what a listing photo shows, Ulrich Real Estate Group spends a lot of time paying attention to exactly this kind of detail across Minnetonka and the rest of the west metro. You can browse more about the area on our Minnetonka neighborhood page, or reach out any time you have a question about what's changing close to home.