Where Lake Street Is Actually Filling Back In This Year

For most of the past few summers, the Historic Coliseum Building at 27th and Lake has been the kind of storefront you stop noticing. The windows papered over, the awning faded, a building that used to hold Lagniappe and the Du Nord Cocktail Room sitting dark since both closed. If you bike or walk the Midtown Greenway regularly, you've passed it without a second look more times than you can count. This August, that changes. Square Roots, a new Afro-Creole Southern restaurant from chef Jared Brewington, is set to open in that exact storefront, and the building is only one entry in a run of openings that's reshaping a very specific stretch of East Lake Street.

Here's the part that's easy to miss if you're only half paying attention to the neighborhood's restaurant news: these openings aren't scattered evenly across Lake Street's several miles. They're clustering, almost block by block, along the same run of the corridor that sits closest to the Midtown Greenway itself, the trail beneath the street that most of the eaters walking into these new spots probably used to get there.

The stretch doing the actual work

Start at Nicollet Avenue, where Lake Street begins its eastward run, and walk east. Within roughly a mile and a half, you pass three of this year's most talked-about openings. At Lake and Nicollet, inside the new mixed-use building called Opportunity Crossing, Martiya is opening this August. It's the first sit-down restaurant from Abdirahman Kahi, the owner of Afro Deli, and it's built around an upscale take on East African cooking, a different register than the fast-casual format that made his name.

Keep walking east and you reach 920 E. Lake St., the Midtown Global Market. Trio Plant-Based, Minneapolis's first Black-owned 100% vegan soul food restaurant, relocated here this year from its former West Lake Street storefront. The move matters for a practical reason: the market sits right at the Lake Street/Midtown light rail station and directly across the Greenway from the Midtown Bike Center, which means the restaurant picked up transit and trail traffic it didn't have before.

Continue another mile or so and you land at the Coliseum Building, 27th and Lake, where Square Roots is filling the space Lagniappe and Du Nord left empty for more than a year. Brewington, known locally for Official Fried Chicken and Funky Grits, is running it as a nonprofit with an all-Black management team and a paid apprenticeship program for aspiring restaurateurs. It's not a small detail. A restaurant built with 501(c)(3) status and an education arm is a different kind of commitment to a corridor than a typical lease.

Three openings, three very different cuisines, all landing within walking distance of each other and all within a few minutes of a Greenway access point. That's not a coincidence born of cheap rent alone. It's a signal about where operators think the foot traffic and bike traffic are actually going to be this year.

Why the timing lines up with the trail, not just the street

The reason this matters right now is that the Greenway is still riding the momentum of a change that landed just last year. In 2025, the Metropolitan Council approved the Midtown Greenway Master Plan, and the trail became an official Regional Trail, which means it's now eligible for the kind of capital funding that pays for benches, tables, and better signage along its 5.5-mile length. That's a meaningfully different position than the Greenway held for most of its history, when it ran almost entirely on advocacy and volunteer fundraising through the Midtown Greenway Coalition.

This year is when that shift starts showing up as visible work. The city is currently rebuilding the 10th Avenue S bridge that carries traffic over the Greenway near the Global Market, a structure that dates back to 1913 and was pulled down earlier this year after inspectors found it in poor condition. The bridge and the trail beneath it have stayed open through construction, and the project is one piece of a $323 million construction season the city outlined for 2026. The work is expected to wrap by December, which will close out one of the more visible disruptions along the corridor in recent memory.

None of this is happening in isolation. A trail that recently secured regional funding status, a bridge finishing construction, and three new restaurants opening within blocks of its access points, all in the same year, is the kind of overlap that tells you something about where investment, public and private, is actually landing on this side of the city.

What's already happened this season, and what's still ahead

Some of this year's Greenway momentum has already come and gone. Earlier this month, the Coalition ran Greenway PollaPalooza, its pollinator festival, at Parque Monarca along the trail. Fifteen newly planted pollinator gardens were the centerpiece, alongside DJ sets from KRSM Radio, a guided Pollinator Pathway garden bike tour, and a parade featuring alebrijes, the Mexican folk art figures, and stilt walkers. If you missed it, the gardens themselves aren't going anywhere. They're part of a longer-term planting effort along the corridor.

What's still ahead is bigger for anyone who wants an excuse to sample the new restaurant lineup in one trip. The Greenway Glow Bike Ride and Arts Festival is confirmed for Saturday, September 12, from 4 to 10 p.m. The event starts near the Midtown Bike Center at 10th Avenue, directly across the trail from the Global Market, which puts Trio Plant-Based within easy reach before or after. A group bike ride departs at 7 p.m. to visit murals and the pollinator gardens along the route, and the Main Stage Beer Garden at the Ivy Arts Building will pour from Arbeiter Brewing. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, which keeps the event accessible to anyone who just wants to see the trail lit up at night without committing to a fundraising team.

If you've never made the connection between the Greenway's programming calendar and the restaurant openings happening a few blocks up on Lake Street, September 12 is a reasonable night to test it. Ride the trail, stop at the Global Market for Trio, and you'll understand the geography this piece is describing better than any list of addresses can explain it.

The version of this story that isn't about decline anymore

For years, the story of East Lake Street was told through what had closed. That's still part of the record. But the restaurants opening this August aren't reoccupying scattered, random vacancies. They're filling in a specific run of the corridor that sits closest to a trail that gained regional funding status last year and is on track to finish rebuilding one of its key crossings by the end of this one. Martiya, Trio Plant-Based, and Square Roots didn't pick that stretch by accident, and the timing with the Greenway's own changes this year isn't incidental either.

If you already live near this part of South Minneapolis, you've probably felt this shift without naming it. The walk or ride down the Greenway that used to end at a handful of familiar options now has three more reasons to get off the trail. That's worth knowing this season, whether you're planning a ride to the Glow festival in September or just deciding where to eat after a Tuesday evening bike commute.

If you're weighing what a home near this stretch of South Minneapolis actually offers day to day, beyond what a listing photo can show, that's the kind of neighborhood-level read Gary L Bredeson puts together for buyers and sellers across the east metro. Let's Connect — Call or Email Gary Today.