The Detour Is Over. Here's What Edina's September Actually Looks Like Now.

For fourteen months, if you needed to get from Vernon Avenue to West 50th Street, you didn't. You went around. Eden Avenue became the default east-west route through Grandview, the kind of habit that gets baked into a phone's memory before it gets baked into a driver's. That habit is now wrong. Vernon Avenue reopened to traffic on June 26, and the ramps that connect it to Highway 100 have been back since mid-November. If your mental map of Grandview still routes around the district instead of through it, this is the month to update it, because September just stacked three named events and a wave of new restaurants right on top of the corridor that spent over a year closed.

What actually reopened, and why it mattered more than one bridge

The Vernon Avenue and Highway 100 Interchange project was never just a bridge repair. It was a joint effort between the City of Edina, Hennepin County, and the Minnesota Department of Transportation to replace two aging structures, the bridge over Highway 100 and the Vernon Avenue bridge over the Canadian Pacific Kansas City railroad, while also untangling what had been six separate access ramps feeding four different streets in Grandview. The project broke ground in April 2025. The Highway 100 bridge and its ramps came back online in mid-November 2025, restoring the ability to enter and exit the highway at Vernon Avenue and West 50th Street. The harder piece, the railroad bridge, ran into a buried Xcel Energy power line that needed relocating inside the railroad right-of-way, which pushed the timeline into 2026.

That delay is why last September looked nothing like this one. Stage 3B of construction closed nearly every remaining Highway 100 ramp at Vernon and West 50th starting in mid-September 2025, right as Grandview and 50th & France businesses were heading into their busiest fall stretch. City Engineer Chad Millner called it bluntly at the time: a very difficult phase for anyone trying to drive through the area. The full reopening didn't arrive until this June, with a ribbon-cutting on the new bridge that drew Mayor Jim Hovland, four City Council members, a Hennepin County commissioner, and a state representative. Hovland's framing at the ceremony was that the bridges make it easier to reach commercial districts and strengthen connections across the city, not just within Grandview. That's worth taking literally. The interchange sits at the shared access point for both Grandview and 50th & France, which means the ramp closures that made last fall miserable for one district made it miserable for both.

The project ran past $28 million once you count the full scope: new sidewalks, ADA-compliant pedestrian ramps, audible crosswalks, a standard tight diamond interchange replacing the old redundant ramp system, and a noise wall for the Sunnyslope neighborhood. None of that shows up as a dramatic change if you're just passing through. What you'll notice is simpler: the shortcut works again.

A restaurant wave that arrived while the detour was still up

Here's the part that makes the timing interesting. While Vernon Avenue was closed, 50th & France kept building. Chef Daniel del Prado opened Thérèse, a French brasserie named for his mother, serving French onion soup and classic brasserie fare in a space he's described as feeling like a Paris apartment. It's the first of three concepts del Prado has planned for the district. Just down the block, the former Cooks | Bellecour space got a redesign and a simpler name: Bellecour, now serving the same pastry case and French onion soup that built the original Wayzata café's reputation, in a lighter room done up in bamboo and tan tones.

The bigger addition landed in August. The Side Door at Dexter's, a small food hall next to del Prado's Dexter's sports bar, opened its first tenant on August 6: Lucia's, serving New York City-inspired sourdough pizza. Two more concepts are still filling in behind it, a Korean fried chicken spot called Daq Daq and a sushi counter called Rose Sushi, both expected later this year. A few doors over, General Sports Bar has been hiring toward a summer opening in the former Salut space, from the team behind Nolo's, with more than two dozen televisions planned. Smith Coffee & Cafe is opening a second Minnesota location in the former D'Amico & Sons spot. And later this year, Americana is expected to take over the former Cocina del Barrio space with a glass-enclosed rooftop patio, del Prado's third partnership with restaurateur Ryan Burnett.

That's six new food and drink concepts opening or expanding in the same district that spent over a year harder to reach by car. The restaurants didn't wait for the road to reopen. The road just caught up to them.

Three weekends, three events, one corridor

September compounds the timing. Three named events land back to back, and each one sits directly on the corridor that just reopened.

Band Together kicks off the run on September 5, a Saturday evening of music paired with dinner at any of the district's restaurants old or new. The Fall Into the Arts Festival follows the next weekend at Centennial Lakes Park, organized by the Edina Chamber of Commerce and Explore Edina in support of the Edina Crime Prevention Fund, a fixture on the second weekend of September for years. The stretch closes with the Edina Car Show on September 20, when 50th & France shuts down to regular traffic for four hours so Bentleys, Ferraris, and Aston Martins can park where cars usually just pass through, with Lund's & Byerly's running the food court and proceeds going to the Edina Rotary Foundation.

Stack the map against the calendar and the pattern is straightforward. All three events sit inside or adjacent to the same district that spent fourteen months harder to reach by car. This is the first September since the project started where getting to any of them doesn't mean rerouting through Eden Avenue first.

What to actually do with the next three weeks

If you haven't driven through Grandview since last year, the detour habit is worth breaking on purpose. Vernon Avenue between Interlachen Boulevard and West 50th Street is a direct route again, not a workaround. If you're planning around any of the three September events, that's also a reasonable excuse to try one of the newer restaurants beforehand or after. Thérèse and Bellecour both do weekend service if you want to make a morning of the Fall Into the Arts Festival. The Side Door's Lucia's is a reasonable stop before or after the car show, four doors down from where the classic cars will actually be parked.

None of this requires planning around construction anymore. That's the actual news here, more than any single restaurant or event on its own: this is the first fall since spring 2025 where Edina's two commercial districts are fully open at the same time the neighborhood's calendar is fullest. Worth noticing, and worth using while the weather still cooperates.

If you're curious about how a neighborhood's rhythm like this shows up in what a home is actually worth, that's the kind of local detail we track every day. Reach out to the Cooking Real Estate Team whenever you're ready to talk through it, or get a free home valuation to see where your Edina property stands in today's market.