A Summer of Street Work: Loring Park Resurfacing, a Grant Street Bikeway and Gas-Line Upgrades

The city's reconstruction replaces the avenue's pavement, sidewalks, drainage and utilities and swaps the existing two-way protected bike lane for an All Ages and Abilities bikeway, the separated design Minneapolis has favored on busier streets. Work began around March 26 and is scheduled to run through 2026, with the city holding weekly stakeholder meetings on Microsoft Teams on Fridays from 10 to 11 a.m.. The project runs through the Loring Park and Stevens Square-Loring Heights neighborhoods.

The street work is paired with utility upgrades. CenterPoint Energy began replacing natural gas lines along 1st Avenue between Franklin Avenue and 17th Street on the same March 26 start date, and the city is bundling underground work with the repaving so a street that has to be opened anyway is not torn up twice.

A short distance north, the city is also moving on the aging Loring Greenway, the pedestrian and bike path that links Nicollet Mall to Loring Park, with a project to repair and upgrade the deteriorating trail.

CenterPoint's gas program extends into Lowry Hill as well, the kind of utility-driven work that runs on its own timeline rather than the city's paving schedule, which is part of why a single neighborhood can feel under construction from several directions at once. The common thread across the season is sequencing: stacking gas, pavement and bikeway work into single windows where possible, and attaching a public meeting to each project so residents can weigh in before the cones go down.