Uptown Isn't Dying, Boosters Argue — It's Morphing

The losses are real and recent. The Lowry closed in 2025, citing changing consumer behavior, city mandates and "disruptive Hennepin Avenue construction." Red Cow's Uptown location is also closing, with the owner telling the Star Tribune that the construction project's effects lingered and dragged down sales. From 2023 to 2025, 36 businesses along Hennepin were served through the city's Business Technical Assistance Program as they weathered the disruption.

Those closings make Uptown's obituary easy to write. But the same stretch is drawing investment that a genuinely failing district would not. Last summer the city approved Doran Companies' plan to redevelop the southern portion of the Seven Points shopping center, replacing the former CB2, Kitchen Window and Famous Dave's buildings with a five-story, 228-unit apartment building; demolition was scheduled to begin in April.

The street itself was rebuilt for a different future. Minneapolis celebrated the reopening of Hennepin Avenue South in October 2025 after the two-year project, which widened space for walking, transit and biking and built enhanced stations for the METRO E Line, the upgraded bus rapid transit route that began frequent service along the corridor in December.

Whether that adds up to recovery is not settled. The vacancies are visible, and the construction years did lasting damage to the businesses that gave the district its character. The case for optimism depends on the pieces connecting: new apartment residents patronizing the surviving shops, filled storefronts drawing more tenants, and the rebuilt street delivering the foot traffic it was designed to carry. The closings are facts. What they add up to will be written over the next few years, in leases signed and storefronts filled.