"After nearly seven years of construction, Minneapolis' Bike Freeway reconnects the city," is how Hill & Lake Press treasurer Andy Schwarm described the reopening of the Kenilworth and Cedar Lake trails this year. He's not exaggerating for effect. If you've lived near Lake of the Isles, Kenwood, or Lowry Hill any time since 2019, you've spent seven summers rerouting around construction fencing to get downtown on two wheels. That ended in November 2025.
What's easy to miss is that the trail wasn't the only thing that came back to this stretch of parkway this year. The Uptown Art Fair, dormant for two years, returned this past weekend to a lakeside setting the 60-plus-year-old fair has never had before. Two separate closures, two separate reopenings, landing on the same stretch of parkway in the same year. That's not a coincidence worth shrugging off. It's the clearest signal yet that this corridor is carrying more of the neighborhood's daily and seasonal life than it has in years.
Seven Years, Then One November
The numbers on what the closure actually cost are worth sitting with. Before construction began in May 2019, the Kenilworth Trail alone carried an estimated 2,100 cyclist trips and 400 pedestrian trips every day, part of what Minneapolis officials have called the most intensely used trail corridor in the city's park system. For nearly seven years, that traffic got pushed onto slower, less direct streets while crews built the Southwest LRT tunnel beneath Cedar Lake Parkway.
The full trail reopened in November 2025. As of July 2026, construction on the broader Southwest LRT line is largely complete and testing is underway, with the Green Line Extension itself expected to open in 2027. The bikes and walkers didn't wait for the trains. They got their loop back first.
| 2019 to 2025 | Since November 2025 | |
|---|---|---|
| Kenilworth Trail | Closed for tunnel construction | Fully reopened |
| Cedar Lake Trail | Partial closures and detours | Reopened, with fencing narrowing the path near Target Field |
| Daily commute | Rerouted onto surface streets | Direct route restored from downtown to Cedar Lake Parkway |
It isn't a completely clean return. Crews are still working near Target Field, where fencing narrows the Cedar Lake Trail, and a zigzag detour remains where the Midtown Greenway meets the Kenilworth connection south of Cedar Lake. If you haven't ridden the full loop since before the pandemic, expect one or two moments where you'll dismount rather than glide through.
The Fair Finally Found the Lake
The Uptown Art Fair has spent most of its more than 60-year history anchored to Uptown's commercial core. This year, after a two-year absence, it moved to Lake of the Isles Parkway, a lakeside setting the fair has never had before, held Friday, August 7 through Sunday, August 9. Organizers gave it an unofficial new name, Art on the Isles, and built an expanded footprint that stretched along both the lake and The Mall, drawing roughly 200 juried artists.
The location shift matters more than a change of scenery. Half of the fair's proceeds are being reinvested directly into Uptown through a dedicated community initiative, which means the event still considers itself an Uptown institution even as its physical footprint moved onto the same parkway that just spent seven years behind construction fencing. For Kenwood residents, that meant the crowds, the booths, and the food vendors set up within walking distance instead of requiring a walk south into the commercial core.
Put the two stories together and the pattern gets sharper. The parkway that reopened to cyclists in November hosted one of the city's signature summer events by August. That's a fast turnaround for a corridor that spent the better part of a decade defined by what wasn't accessible on it.
Lowry Hill's Own Summer Doesn't Need the Fair to Borrow From
Just up the parkway in Lowry Hill, the Walker Art Center is running its own summer calendar, and it doesn't need the art fair's foot traffic to stay busy. The exhibition Olalekan Jeyifous: Hydricosmic Litanies opened August 6 and runs through January 3, 2027, built around water infrastructure and the Mississippi River. On the rooftop, Skyline Mini Golf is back for the season with a new hole designed by Ifrah Mansour.
The rest of the month is worth putting on a calendar. Summer Art Lounge runs August 13. WACTAC@30, marking the Teen Arts Council's thirtieth anniversary, is a free event on August 15. Sound for Silents closes out the season on August 20 with newly commissioned live scores by Bizhiki performed on the Walker hillside. Admission to the galleries is free every Thursday from 5 to 9pm and on the first Saturday of each month, which makes it one of the few genuinely no-cost ways to spend an August evening in the neighborhood.
What's Actually Within Walking Distance
None of this requires leaving the immediate area. Kenwood's own amenities have been quietly running all summer regardless of what's happening with trails or art fairs. Cedar Lake, just west of the Isles, has three sandy beaches: Cedar Point, Cedar South, and East Cedar. The neighborhood's park system also includes six tennis courts, the largest bank in the entire Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board system, rebuilt in 2007 and still first-come, first-served with an informal one-hour courtesy limit when others are waiting. The dog park on the south side of Lake of the Isles runs year-round for license holders, and Kenwood Park itself has a play feature locals call the "Choo Choo" park, with enough room for a family gathering without feeling crowded.
Two blocks in, Birchbark Books & Native Arts sits across the street from Kenwood Elementary, next door to the Kenwood restaurant. Louise Erdrich, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, opened it in 2001 and still stocks it with Indigenous-authored fiction, history, and art. A short walk along the parkway lawn puts you at the neighborhood's odder landmark: a giant pencil carved from a 180-year-old bur oak that came down in a storm, sharpened every first Saturday in June while the community watches. Peavey Fountain, at West Lake of the Isles Parkway and Kenwood Parkway, has stood since 1891, originally a drinking fountain for horses and later rededicated as a memorial to the horses of the 151st Field Artillery Minnesota National Guard. Sebastian Joe's, technically a few blocks outside Kenwood's boundary but close enough to count, has been scooping since 1984 and rotates flavors by season.
The Rest of August, If You're Keeping Track
A few things worth building the next few weeks around:
- Walker Art Center: Summer Art Lounge (Aug 13), WACTAC@30 (Aug 15), Sound for Silents with Bizhiki (Aug 20)
- Uptown Farmers Market at Lagoon and Girard Plaza, Thursdays 4 to 8pm through September 24
- The Cedar Lake Trail detour near Target Field and the zigzag at the Kenilworth and Midtown Greenway junction, both still active
Two comebacks landing on the same corridor in the same year isn't something you'll find written about anywhere else, mostly because the trail story and the art fair story got covered separately by people tracking one or the other. Live here long enough and you start to notice how often the neighborhood's infrastructure and its culture move on the same clock, even when nobody planned it that way.
If you're already living the loop, you already know this. If someone in your circle is asking what it's actually like to be here day to day, not just what a listing photo shows, that's the kind of texture McKevitt Perez Real Estate spends its time on. Find the lifestyle you want.
