If you've noticed more cyclists on Minnetonka Boulevard this year, or a longer line of cars at the Rowland Road trailhead on a Saturday morning, you're not imagining it. Four separate things happened in Minnetonka in 2026, none of them coordinated with each other, and together they've turned a city known for its parks into a city people are actively driving to for a ride.
None of this started as a plan. It's the accidental result of a mountain bike trail that outgrew expectations, a paving project finally closing a gap that's sat unfinished since 2023, a bike shop betting on foot traffic it didn't have in its old location, and a light rail project next door throwing a party for a line that won't even open for another year. Put those four things on the same calendar and you get a city that feels different to move through right now than it did three years ago.
The trail nobody expected to need a waiting list
Lone Lake Park's mountain bike trail is not new. It opened in 2021, a five-mile single-track loop cut through the Big Woods remnant forest in the park's southeast corner, built and still maintained by the volunteer club Minnesota Off-Road Cyclists rather than city crews. What's changed is how many people know it's there. According to the city's own count, the trail has drawn more than 12,000 riders across an estimated 92,000 visits since it opened, a volume nobody was projecting for a trail tucked behind a picnic shelter.
Part of the draw is the terrain itself. City parks staff describe the trail's steep sections as delivering more vertical gain per mile than any other trail in the western metro, a claim that matches what riders say when they talk about it. Trish Gardiner, who rides it regularly, put it simply when the city profiled the trail this spring: it doesn't feel engineered or intimidating the way some built trails can, and the setting makes you forget you're in the middle of the metro at all.
Two trailheads give you access, one off Rowland Road on the park's southwest side, the other off Shady Oak Road to the east. Both fill a mountain bike trail category that most western suburbs simply don't have, which may explain why riders are driving in from outside city limits to use it. On May 30, the city hosted a community group ride departing from the Lone Lake Park picnic shelter at 5624 Shady Oak Road, the kind of low-key event that only makes sense if there's already a crowd showing up on their own most weekends.
The gap that's finally getting paved
A trail deep in a park is one thing. Getting to and from it on two wheels without merging into traffic is another, and that's the piece Minnetonka has been building out street by street.
The Minnetonka Boulevard Trail project is currently under construction, adding an eight-foot paved, multi-use path along the north side of the boulevard between Tonkawood Road and The Marsh. It's a short segment, under a mile, but it closes what the city has identified as the only missing link in that corridor between County Road 101 and Shady Oak Road. The city council approved a construction contract of just over $1.4 million for the work this spring, part of a project the Capital Improvement Program has budgeted at roughly $3.8 million overall once utility burial and other site work are factored in. Construction began this summer and is on track to wrap this fall, continuing a segment the city already built from Woodlawn Avenue to Tonkawood Road back in 2023.
None of that sounds dramatic on its own. But it means a rider who's been able to get partway across town on protected trail since 2023 can now do the whole stretch without dropping into a road shoulder, and it's one more reason Minnetonka's total local trail mileage now runs past 110 miles connecting neighborhoods, schools, parks, and job centers, according to the city's own summer newsletter.
A bike shop moved because of all this
Retail doesn't relocate on a hunch. When a business owner decides discoverability is worth the disruption of a move, it's usually because the math has already shifted.
Trailhead Cycling made that move this year, leaving its Plymouth location for a spot in the Country Village Shopping Center at the corner of Highway 7 and Hopkins Crossroads. Owner Pam Sayler, whose flagship shop has operated in Champlin since 2003, told the city's business newsletter that Minnetonka is considered a hub for biking, pointing to the combination of the city's trail investment and its commitment to preserving open space as the reason the move made sense. It's a small data point, one shop's lease decision, but it's the kind of signal that's hard to fake. Retailers don't chase discoverability in a market that isn't already showing up.
The light rail line that isn't open yet, but already threw a party
The most surprising entry on this list is one that technically hasn't happened. The METRO Green Line Extension, which will eventually connect Minnetonka to Minneapolis and St. Paul via a station near Bren Road in the Opus area, isn't scheduled to open until 2027. As of this January, the project was reported over 90 percent complete, with all 16 stations under construction or nearly finished.
That didn't stop the region from celebrating anyway. On May 9, Hopkins served as the hub for a trails and transit celebration tied to the line, with Minnetonka city leaders joining a community bike ride that departed downtown Hopkins, stopped at the Louisiana Avenue Station in St. Louis Park to pick up more riders, and continued on to West Lake Street Station. The Depot Coffee House stayed open from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. that day, the Minnesota Food Truck Festival set up along Historic Mainstreet, and riders got a chance to board a light rail train at Downtown Hopkins Station and try the onboard bike racks months before the trains will carry paying passengers. It was a preview, not a launch, but it demonstrated something real about how these projects are meant to fit together. The Opus Station itself is being built with a small park-and-ride lot and direct trail connections, which means when the line does open, it will plug straight into the same trail network riders are already using to get to Lone Lake Park and along Minnetonka Boulevard.
What this adds up to this fall
Here's the thing about four unrelated projects landing in the same year: they don't just coexist, they start reinforcing each other. A trail that draws 12,000 riders justifies a paving project to connect it to the rest of the city. A paving project makes a relocated bike shop's bet look smart. A transit line under construction nearby throws a regional spotlight on the whole corridor, even a year before it's operational. None of it was planned as a single initiative. It's just what happens when a city with 110 miles of trail, two Three Rivers Park District regional trail connections, and a decade of park investment finally has enough pieces on the board to notice they fit together.
If you're heading out this fall, a few practical notes. Lone Lake Park's mountain bike trail rewards intermediate to advanced riders more than casual ones, given the terrain, so budget extra time if you're new to it. The Minnesota River Bluffs LRT Regional Trail and the Lake Minnetonka LRT Regional Trail both connect through the city and are maintained by Three Rivers Park District, which is worth knowing if you're stitching together a longer ride. And if you're in the market for gear, Trailhead Cycling's new Highway 7 location puts it closer to the boulevard trail than its old Plymouth spot ever was.
None of this changes what Minnetonka has always been, a city that leads with its parks and its water. It just means there's a new way to experience it this year, and the timing of these four projects landing together isn't something you'll see again for a while.
Whether you're already settled into a home near the trailhead or thinking about what a move within these western suburbs might look like next, the Greg Winegarden Group knows this stretch of Lake Minnetonka country from the ground up. Reach out anytime to request your free home valuation and talk through what's next.
