Drive past the water tower on a Sunday morning this July and the sidewalk behind City Hall looks like it always has: canopies, coolers, a line for kettle corn. Cross Highway 55 a few blocks east, though, and something has shifted. The freestanding brick building that sat dark for almost four years, the one everybody still calls Mort's, is full again. Cars in the lot at lunch. A pastrami sandwich on the menu that was invented specifically to earn the space.
That single reopening is doing more work than a single reopening should. It is the reason the summer you already know how to spend, the concerts and the market and the Luce Line loops, suddenly connects into a route instead of a list.
The Building That Went Quiet in 2022 Is Loud Again
Mort's Deli closed in 2022. The Golden Valley Shopping Center it anchored is a 1950s-era strip on Highway 55 that a lot of residents had written off as a place to grab a prescription and leave. That changed last summer. Paster Properties took over the 70-year-old strip mall in June 2025, and the plan they brought is not cosmetic in the usual sense. It is the same firm behind Texa-Tonka in St. Louis Park, which turned into a food destination once Angel Food Bakery, Rosalia, and Westside Wine & Spirits landed there.
The first tenant they signed to Golden Valley opened this winter. Kitchen and Rail opened its Golden Valley location on Monday, February 23, marking the second restaurant for the locally owned concept that first opened in Eagan in 2022. The original earned the title of Best New Restaurant in the Twin Cities in the 2023 Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine Readers' Poll. Founder Victor Salamone and co-owner Joe Newhouse courted Paster with a sandwich they invented on the spot: the MORT, a half-pound of caraway-rye pastrami built as a nod to the deli that used to live in the walls. It is on the menu here now, alongside the Famous Filet Mignon Sandwich, Nana's Meatballs, the restaurant's full cocktail program, and its proprietary wine label, Victorio's.
The detail that matters for residents is not the sandwich, though. It is the schedule. Golden Valley will also introduce something new for the brand: weekday lunch service, offering with a full lunch menu designed for business meetings, quick bites, or long lunches, as well as a beautiful private event space available for reservations. Eagan does not get lunch. Golden Valley does. For a suburb that has spent years being described as underserved on the sit-down side, that is the first weekday change to the daily rhythm in a long time.
Salamone told the Star Tribune what he was betting on: "Golden Valley is slightly underserved with the restaurants in that area, and yet it's almost double the residents of Eagan." The rest of the center is next. Paster has been in talks with additional tenants through the spring, using Kitchen and Rail as the anchor to draw them in.
Monday Nights, Ceiling of One Hour
If you have lived here a while, you know the pattern at Brookview Park. Monday, 7 pm, June through the first Monday in August. Blanket, lawn chair, done by 8. What is worth knowing in July of 2026 is which nights remain and which stage each act is on, because the Gazebo and the Large Pavilion draw different crowds and different sight lines.
Here is what is left of the 2026 series after this weekend, according to the schedule published by the city and echoed by Westopolis:
- July 20 — Women's Drum Center at the Large Pavilion. World music featuring West African, Brazilian and Japanese Taiko.
- July 27 — The Walker Brothers Band at the Gazebo. Folk, R&B, gospel, funk, soul and world rhythms.
- August 3 — Capri Big Band at the Large Pavilion. Big band swing, and the closer for the season.
The July 6 Ice Cream Social has already come and gone this year, with the 1st John Philip Sousa Memorial Band playing the Large Pavilion. If you missed it, that is the date to circle for 2027; it is the one Monday of the summer where the city puts free ice cream on the lawn next to the music.
One practical note that the parks department publishes but nobody talks about: performances are scheduled Monday evenings during June, July, and August. Concerts begin at 7 pm and are typically 1 hour in length with no break. All content must be appropriate for all ages. Brookview Park has electricity but no sound/audio equipment is available at the site. The one-hour ceiling is a real one. Plan dinner before, not after, or you will be eating at 8:30.
Sundays, Under the Water Tower
Market in the Valley takes place behind City Hall, under the water tower, every Sunday from 9 am to 1 pm, from June 21 through October 11. That is the fact. Here is the interpretation: this is the shortest four-hour window in the neighborhood, and it stacks against Kitchen and Rail's new lunch service in a way that gives you an actual Sunday plan for the first time.
Old Golden Valley Sunday: market at 9, home by 11, done. New Golden Valley Sunday: market at 9, walk the six-tenths of a mile down Golden Valley Road to the shopping center, sit down for lunch. The two anchors are within a comfortable stroller push of each other, and neither existed at their current strength this time last year.
The market itself has kept its character. Locally grown produce and food products, cheese, honey, arts and crafts, music, community groups, children's activities are the categories, and the market accepts SNAP/EBT. Free yoga at 9:30 with Hand Heart Yoga is the recent addition worth knowing about, especially on cooler mornings when standing around waiting for bread to sell out is less appealing than moving.
The Nine Paved Miles That Tie It Together
The Luce Line is the piece most residents underuse. Not because they do not know about it, but because they think of it as a Plymouth thing. It is not. The Luce Line Regional Trail is an 8.8-mile long paved pathway for bike riding, running and walking that spans between Plymouth and Golden Valley on the western edge of Minneapolis. The eastern end drops you at Theodore Wirth Park, which is the seam between suburb and city.
The Golden Valley touchpoint on the trail is Schaper Park at Ottawa Avenue North. It is worth stopping at even if you are only out for a short loop. The park includes an all-inclusive play area and a fitness challenge course with obstacles to navigate over, under, around and through as you race against the clock. A permanent "selfie wall" allows participants to take photos of their accomplishment to share on social media. That is not standard neighborhood park programming. It reads more like a small event venue that happens to be free and open Tuesday morning at 9.
For visitors or a family without a second bike, The Trailhead at Theodore Wirth Regional Park in Golden Valley will rent you a bike. In the summer, you can rent city/hybrid bikes or mountain bikes. Striders are available free of charge for children ages 1 to 6 years old. The eastbound ride from Schaper into Wirth is the one to try if you have never done it: mostly shaded, mostly flat, and the payoff is skyline views once you clear the park.
If you want to keep going west, the trail does. For ambitious trail users, the Luce Line State Trail continues West of Vicksburg Lane on crushed limestone through Minnesota Prairie for more than 60 miles, nearly to Hutchinson. Most residents will never do that stretch, and that is fine. The point is that the nine paved miles are the connective tissue for the summer here, not a niche recreational amenity.
What Is Actually New on the Fall Calendar
Two more dates to hold, because they close the loop on the season you are living through now.
The Winter Market moves indoors to Brookview Community Center starting in November, second Sunday of each month, 10 am to 1 pm. That is the continuation of the Sunday habit past frost.
Before that, the last big public day of the year: the art festival will take place on September 19, 2026 from 10:00am to 6:00pm. GVCF's Golden Valley Festival, held under the water tower on the same lawn the Sunday market uses, layers on bands, food trucks, community groups, and a morning yoga class taught by a local certified instructor. It is a full-day version of what the market does in four-hour bites.
Why This Summer Is Different Than Last Summer
A summer roundup usually reads like a list of unconnected things. This one is not. The reason to write it now, in July 2026, is that the pieces finally connect. Kitchen and Rail turned the Mort's building back on. Paster is bringing in the tenants who will follow. The market and the concerts and the trail were already here, but they were competing for attention with a dark shopping center. They are not competing with it anymore. They are all pointing at the same corner of Highway 55, and that corner is finally open on a Monday afternoon.
If you are already at home here, that is the shift worth noticing. If you are thinking about what your version of Sunday looks like on this side of the metro, our team at Elizabeth McKevitt Perez writes and walks these neighborhoods every week. When you are ready to find the lifestyle you want, we would love to help you find it here.
