Tuesday evenings at The Marsh parking lot fall into a rhythm most Minnetonka households know without thinking about it. Park near the east end, walk past the egg stand, catch whatever the live music slot is that week, load up on produce before the good tomatoes are gone. That rhythm has run every June through September for years at 15000 Minnetonka Boulevard, and the 2026 season kept the same shape: Tuesdays from June 2 through September 29, 2 to 6 p.m.
What's different this year is everything happening around that parking lot, and a few minutes down the same road at Big Willow Community Preserve. Neither project set out to change the other. Residents driving Minnetonka Boulevard this summer are going to run into both, often in the same week, and treating them as two unrelated stories misses that they're playing out on the same stretch of road in the same twelve months.
The trail that's finally catching up to itself
Minnetonka finished a stretch of paved trail along the north side of Minnetonka Boulevard from Woodlawn Avenue to Tonkawood Road back in 2023. It was built to eventually connect to something. That something is the segment from Tonkawood Road to The Marsh, and 2026 is the year it's catching up.
The sequence took three years to unfold. Private utility companies spent 2025 burying overhead power and communication lines along the corridor, work that had to wrap before trail crews could move in. Gas main replacement ran on a similar timeline. The city's own trail project page lists construction as tentatively set for 2026, with work expected to run into fall once it starts, and traffic control that can include lane shifts and flagging even as the city maintains residential and business access throughout.
None of that is dramatic on its own. What makes it worth knowing if you shop the market is that the city flagged, in its own farmers market materials, that utility work along Minnetonka Boulevard could affect access to The Marsh this summer. That's the same city department managing both the market and the trail telling residents the two overlap on the ground.
A few blocks over, Big Willow is being redrawn on paper
Big Willow Community Preserve sits between Minnetonka Boulevard and Cedar Lake Road, its south parking lot opening right off the boulevard near the city's public works facility. At 95 acres it's one of the larger pieces of the city's park system, with views along Minnehaha Creek, an athletic complex used by long-running local sports groups, and 2.3 miles of trail connecting north to Mayflower, Hilloway, and Meadow parks.
The park is also mid-renovation, on a track that runs almost exactly parallel to the trail project a few streets away. A draft master plan went to the Park Board on February 4, 2026. Feedback from that meeting sent staff back to revise it, and an updated version came back to the board on June 3, 2026. Two changes matter if you actually use the park. The off-leash dog area is shifting from what planners call Area 4 to Area 3. And the western bridge in the original concept is gone from the plan entirely, along with a steep slope near the old crossing point.
The city's 2026 capital budget backs this with real money on the ground this year: $120,000 set aside to remodel the Big Willow concessions building, covering roofing, siding, windows, doors, electrical and plumbing.
Same road, same year, two different departments
Here's the part that's easy to miss. The trail project runs through public works. The Big Willow redesign runs through the parks division and the Park Board. Nobody scheduled these to land in the same construction season on purpose. But if you live in Minnetonka and use Minnetonka Boulevard to reach the market, to reach Big Willow, or just to get through the neighborhood on the way somewhere else, you're going to encounter both.
| When | What happened | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | First trail segment built, Woodlawn Avenue to Tonkawood Road | Minnetonka Boulevard |
| 2025 | Private utilities buried, gas main replaced | Minnetonka Boulevard, Tonkawood Rd to The Marsh |
| Feb. 4, 2026 | Draft Big Willow master plan presented to Park Board | Big Willow Community Preserve |
| 2026 | Final trail segment under construction, expected to run into fall | Minnetonka Boulevard, Tonkawood Rd to The Marsh |
| June 3, 2026 | Updated Big Willow plan presented, off-leash area moved, western bridge dropped | Big Willow Community Preserve |
| 2026 | $120,000 concessions building remodel funded | Big Willow Community Preserve |
| June 2 to Sept. 29, 2026 | Farmers Market season, Tuesdays 2 to 6 p.m. | The Marsh, 15000 Minnetonka Blvd |
That convergence changes what a normal Tuesday looks like for two different groups of residents at once. Market regulars might hit lane shifts or flagging on the boulevard on the way to buy tomatoes. Big Willow regulars, especially the ones who let their dogs off leash on the far side of the creek, are going to find the informal boundary they've used for years has moved to a different section of the park, with a bridge they used to cross no longer part of the plan.
What this actually changes on the ground
If you're headed to the market, build in a few extra minutes this year, especially on weeks when the boulevard shows active work. The market itself isn't moving. Its hours and dates for 2026 are set. The friction, where it exists, is about the drive there, not the market.
If Big Willow is part of your regular walk, don't assume the layout you learned last summer still applies. The off-leash zone that used to sit in Area 4 is shifting to Area 3 under the plan the Park Board reviewed in June, and the bridge some walkers used to loop back over the creek isn't in the final concept. The full master plan and the concessions remodel are still working through 2026, so expect incremental changes as the year continues rather than one clean cutover date.
Neither of these is a story about disruption for its own sake. A trail segment that's been on the drawing board since at least 2023 is finally getting built. A 95-acre park that's served Minnetonka for decades is getting real investment and a genuine planning process, down to Park Board members debating exactly where an off-leash area should sit relative to a creek crossing. That's the kind of slow, granular civic work that rarely makes headlines but shapes how a neighborhood actually feels to live in, one Tuesday at a time.
For the primary details straight from the source, the city's farmers market page carries the full 2026 schedule, the Minnetonka Boulevard Trail project page tracks construction updates as they happen, and the Big Willow Park restoration page has the Park Board's meeting notes and the evolving master plan documents.
If you've been weighing how Minnetonka's neighborhoods line up for a Minneapolis commute, or how a townhome here compares to a single-family lot, we've walked through both in earlier posts.
Minnetonka keeps changing in ways that rarely show up on a for sale sign, and knowing a corridor this well is part of how The Hancock Group works with buyers and sellers across the southwest metro. If you're weighing a move in Minnetonka or want a clearer read on what a specific block or park view is actually worth right now, request a Free Home Evaluation and we'll walk you through it with the same local detail we just spent this whole post on.
