"After nearly seven years of construction, Minneapolis' Bike Freeway reconnects the city." That line ran in the Hill & Lake Press this spring, written by Andy Schwarm, a Lowry Hill resident and the paper's treasurer, and it read like a period at the end of a very long sentence. The trail was back. Case closed.
Except it wasn't, quite. If you've walked or biked the Cedar Lake Trail along the western edge of Kenwood lately, you've probably noticed the same thing Schwarm's neighbors have: the path feels whole again, but the project it sits next to is still very much in progress. And this Saturday, September 26, the Metropolitan Council is holding a public event to announce something that sounds like a finish line but isn't one: the year the trains actually start running.
If you live near this corridor, it's worth understanding what already happened, what's happening this week, and why the two are easy to confuse.
A trail that closed once and reopened in stages
The story most people remember is simple: the trail closed for light rail construction in 2019 and reopened this year. The actual sequence had a lot more chapters.
- Spring 2019: The Metropolitan Council closed large sections of the Kenilworth and Cedar Lake trails to build the Green Line Extension, with reopening expected by 2021 or 2022.
- August 2024: A partial return. Met Council President Charlie Zelle and project director Jim Alexander led a public bike ride to reopen the western stretch of the Cedar Lake Trail between Minneapolis and Hopkins, but at the time, Kenilworth remained closed between the Midtown Greenway and West 21st Street, and near Bryn Mawr Station.
- Winter into early 2026: The remaining sections finally reopened, closing the loop for the first time in nearly seven years.
- March 2026: Local coverage caught up, but reporting still flagged a narrowed, fenced stretch near Target Field and a zigzag detour at the Midtown Greenway junction, with a full celebration planned once that last work wrapped up.
- July 2026: The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board confirmed construction on the overall Green Line Extension project was largely complete, with testing on the rail line underway and an opening still projected for 2027.
Five years turned into nearly seven, and "reopened" turned out to mean something different depending on which month you asked.
What this actually cost the neighborhood
Before 2019, this wasn't a minor amenity. Reporting from the Hill & Lake Press pegged pre-closure use at close to a million visits a year across the corridor, with the Kenilworth stretch alone carrying an average of roughly 2,100 cyclist trips and 400 pedestrian trips a day. A separate count cited this month by Eden Prairie Local News put Kenilworth's annual traffic closer to 746,000 users in the years before the shutdown.
However you slice the count, this was the most heavily used piece of trail infrastructure in the city's park system, and for the better part of six years large sections of it weren't usable at all. Walkers and cyclists who used to cut through the woods along Cedar Lake got rerouted onto Kenwood Parkway, or gave up on the direct path downtown altogether.
That matters here specifically because the trail doesn't run near Kenwood, it runs along it. The Kenilworth stretch tracks the eastern edge of the neighborhood closely enough that riders passing through catch glimpses of the same stately homes that give the area its character. For years, that view came with fencing and construction noise instead of tree cover.
The neighbors who built this trail the first time
There's a detail in the trail's history that makes the current moment land differently if you know it. The Cedar Lake Trail didn't start as a government project handed down to the neighborhood. It started because residents organized to make it happen.
In 1989, the volunteer-led Cedar Lake Park Association rallied local support and raised more than $500,000 to buy abandoned railroad land from the railroad itself, working alongside the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board and Minneapolis Public Works to turn old rail yards into what became Cedar Lake Park and its trail. When the trail opened in 1995, it was the first federally funded rail-to-trail conversion in the country, and the Rails to Trails Conservancy later nicknamed it "America's first bike freeway" for its two dedicated bike lanes and separate pedestrian path, built for commuting volume rather than casual strolls.
The neighborhood turned a discarded rail corridor into an asset once already. What's happening now is a version of that same story playing out a second time, except this time the corridor isn't being abandoned. It's being shared with an active train line instead.
What Saturday actually announces
That's the part worth being precise about. The event on September 26 is not a ribbon-cutting for train service. It's the Metropolitan Council publicly announcing the specific 2027 date when the Green Line Extension will open to riders, alongside remarks marking how far construction has come.
There's a reason that date is still a year out rather than a done deal. As of this summer, testing on the line was underway but not finished, with more than 4,000 federally mandated safety and systems tests required before trains can carry passengers. That testing runs through the rest of 2026. So while the trail beneath your feet or your bike tires is functionally whole again, the rail line running alongside it is still in the middle of the most technical phase of the entire project.
For residents, that's the practical translation of "largely complete." The path is open. The corridor as a whole is not finished, and won't be until sometime next year.
What to actually expect this fall
If you're routing a walk or a ride through this corridor, a few things are worth knowing right now rather than assuming based on secondhand news.
The loop connecting Bde Maka Ska and the rest of the Chain of Lakes, the Midtown Greenway, and downtown near Target Field is passable again for the first time in years. But as of this spring's reporting, a section near Target Field was still narrowed by construction fencing, and the junction where the Kenilworth Trail meets the Midtown Greenway still required a zigzag detour rather than a clean crossing. Neither of those was a full closure, but neither was the seamless connection the trail offered before 2019.
The crowds are also back, and that's its own adjustment. Coverage published just this week described the Greenway and connecting trails as busy enough on weekends to cause real friction between cyclists and pedestrians, a sharp contrast to the quiet, half-empty paths that existed while sections were still fenced off. If you got used to having this corridor mostly to yourself over the past couple of years, this fall is the season that changes.
A neighborhood used to paying attention
Lowry Hill and Kenwood residents have had a lot of practice tracking this project's timeline, mostly because the timeline kept moving. The trail's reopening in stages, rather than all at once, is a fitting match for a neighborhood that reads its own community paper closely enough to know who's writing it.
Saturday's announcement won't change what's outside your door this week. But it's the clearest signal yet of when the rest of this multi-year story finally wraps, and residents who've watched every earlier milestone come and go will likely want to know the actual date once the Met Council makes it official.
Local knowledge like this, the kind that comes from tracking a neighborhood closely rather than glancing at it once, is the same instinct that matters when it's time to think about your own address here. If you're weighing a move in Lowry Hill or Kenwood, or just curious what your home might be worth in a neighborhood that's had this much change happen around it, Massad Real Estate is a good local resource to start that conversation, and a free home valuation is a straightforward first step whenever you're ready.
