Crews kept working on Hennepin Avenue South after its late-October reopening, finishing punch-list items and underground utility work that outlast the ribbon-cutting.

Hennepin Avenue South reopened in late October 2025 after about 18 months of reconstruction, but the project was not finished the day traffic returned. Punch-list items, final inspections and underground utility work continued on the corridor for weeks afterward, the normal tail end of a $36 million rebuild.
There is a difference between a street being open and a project being complete. Open means the roadway, sidewalks and crossings are usable and traffic is flowing in the new configuration. Complete means every specification has been met and inspected, the contractor is formally released, and warranties and final payment are triggered. That formal acceptance typically comes weeks or months after reopening.
A punch list is the catalog of smaller items a contractor must finish or correct before close-out: a misaligned panel, a sign not yet installed, a crossing marking to complete, landscaping to plant, a final inspection to pass. None of it stops the street from working, but all of it has to be done for the city to accept the work.
Underground utility work can also continue after the surface reopens because it does not require full street closures. Crews can reach the system through manholes and limited work zones while traffic moves above.
For Wedge and Lowry Hill residents, the practical message is that occasional lane restrictions, crews and equipment may appear on the reopened corridor for a while. The redesigned street includes a two-way protected bikeway, transit lanes and three new METRO E Line stations — at Hennepin/Franklin, Hennepin/25th and the Uptown Transit Station — which opened with E Line service on Dec. 6, 2025.
Residents can report lingering problems on the corridor — a missing sign, a pooling puddle, a crossing that does not feel right — through the city's 311 service, and can follow close-out updates on the city's Hennepin Avenue South project page.

Hennepin County is expected to bring its final design for rebuilding Lyndale Avenue South to the Minneapolis City Council this month, after a June 1 public meeting where Uptown business owners and cyclists clashed over a plan that adds a bikeway and cuts about a quarter of on-street parking.

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The Lowry Hill Neighborhood Association board meets the first Tuesday of each month, 7 to 9 p.m., at the Searle Mansion, 1915 Logan Ave. S., where parks requests, traffic concerns and land-use notices get aired.

For the first time in years, the Hennepin Avenue corridor through Uptown heads into summer without an active construction zone, the rebuilt street now served by the METRO E Line that began carrying riders in December.