The Corner of Minnetonka Growing Fastest This Fall Isn't Inside Ridgedale. It's the Trailhead Next to It.

Why is Marshall's spending a year mid-construction to move a few hundred feet down Ridgedale Drive instead of just staying put or leaving the area for a strip mall somewhere cheaper?

The answer says something about how this part of Minnetonka actually works right now, and it isn't the story most people assume when they picture a suburban mall district in 2026. Ridgedale Center itself is still doing fine. It carries JCPenney, Nordstrom, Macy's and Dick's House of Sport as anchors and remains a fully enclosed, functioning regional mall off I-394. But the interesting growth this year isn't happening under that roof. It's happening in the strip of land around it, in a corridor bounded by Ridgedale Drive on one side and Plymouth Road on the other, and it happens to be the same corridor that a well-used neighborhood walking trail already reaches on foot.

The Move That Isn't Really About Marshall's

Marshall's current store sits near Ridgedale, and instead of closing or relocating out of the district entirely, the TJX-owned retailer is moving into a 26,210-square-foot suite inside Ridgehaven Marketplace, a shopping center along Ridgedale Drive that already carries Lunds & Byerlys, Ulta Beauty, Five Below, Crumbl and Target. Pinnacle Construction has the interior fully gutted as part of an active build-out, and the project is expected to wrap sometime in 2026. One detail matters more than the square footage: a 3,809-square-foot space in that same center is still listed as available for lease. That's not a filled-up shopping center. It's a shopping center with room left to add one more tenant, right as Marshall's finishes moving in next door.

That single open suite is worth sitting with. It means the retail growth around Ridgedale this year isn't a one-off swap of one store for another. It's an active corridor with at least one more chapter still unwritten.

Across the Other Border, the Food Scene Picked the Same Spot

If Ridgedale Drive is one edge of this corridor, Plymouth Road is the other, and it's where Minnesota's first Dave's Hot Chicken opened, directly across from the mall. The location is run by a family franchisee group, Alex Humphries along with his parents Debra and William, and Alex's brother is former NBA player Kris Humphries. When Alex talked about why the group picked this exact spot in Minnetonka over anywhere else in the state, he pointed to the intersection itself:

"The bustling trade area of Ridgedale, and close proximity to I-494, I-394, and 169 made this location a synaptic connection point for Minnesotans near and far to have easy access to Dave's Hot Chicken."

That's a franchisee describing a real estate decision, not a marketing line. The lines that wrapped around the building after opening back that decision up.

The rest of the food scene near that same stretch has followed a similar logic without anyone coordinating it. Sweet Lou's Craft Sausage & Butchery opened this year at 6318 Minnetonka Blvd, a few minutes from the Ridgedale corridor. Bad Rooster and Northern Taphouse have both shown up on local "new and notable" lists this year alongside Copper & Rye, all within the same general pocket of the city rather than scattered across Minnetonka's full footprint. None of these are food hall concepts or single big openings that made regional news. They're smaller, independently run spots that add up to something only visible if you're paying attention to where, not just what.

The Trail That Was Already Walking Toward All of This

Here's the part that turns a retail story into something a current resident can actually use this weekend. Big Willow Community Preserve, a 95-acre park with about 2.3 miles of trail along Minnehaha Creek, has a west spur that crosses the creek and dead-ends at Plymouth Road, 0.4 mile from the trailhead. That's the same Plymouth Road where Dave's Hot Chicken sits across from Ridgedale. A second spur off that same trail heads south to Bridge Street, which connects to the Minnetonka Mills area and the historic Burwell House, and from there to the Regional LRT Trail.

In practical terms, someone parking at the small Big Willow lot on Minnetonka Boulevard to walk the dog on a Saturday morning is a half-mile spur away from the same corridor where the new restaurants and the relocated Marshall's are landing. The trail isn't a separate piece of Minnetonka life running parallel to the shopping and dining news. It's the same geography, connected by a path most residents were already using for something else.

Big Willow carries its own layered history along that route. The park sits on land that held St. Albans Mill in the 1880s, later became the home Adam Hannah built in 1913 for his family, and stayed in the Hannah family until 1967 before the city acquired the rest of the property. Dogs are welcome on a six-foot leash, with Mutt Mitt dispensers along the trail, and the wooded northern section is currently being restored by the city's natural resource division, which has been clearing buckthorn to protect native species. None of that has anything to do with retail, but it's the reason the trail reads as an established, cared-for piece of the city rather than a leftover green space between parking lots.

Where the Loop Points Next

The Burwell House connection matters for one more reason this time of year. The City of Minnetonka's own community calendar lists a free, Halloween-themed family gathering held at the historic Burwell House each October, reachable by the same south spur off Big Willow. It's a small, low-key detail, but it means the trail that quietly connects this year's commercial growth to Plymouth Road is the same trail that connects residents to one of the city's oldest buildings and an annual event tied to it.

None of these pieces, the Marshall's move, the Dave's Hot Chicken location, the smaller restaurant openings, the Big Willow trail spur, or the Burwell House gathering, would make much of a headline standing alone. Put together, they describe a specific, walkable pocket of Minnetonka that's absorbing most of this year's visible change, bordered by two streets and reachable on foot from a trailhead a lot of residents already use for something else entirely. If you've been wondering where all the new openings keep showing up, the map answer is simpler than a list of names: check what's within a half-mile of where Ridgedale Drive meets Plymouth Road, then follow the creek.

If you're weighing what a specific block or corridor like this means for property values or timing a move in this part of Minnetonka, Blake Halverson tracks this kind of neighborhood-level change closely and is glad to walk through what it means for your own plans, no pressure, just a straight answer from someone who pays attention to the same details you do.