Walk from Washington Avenue north to Third Street any weekend in August and you can inventory almost every meaningful change in the North Loop without crossing more than four intersections. The neighborhood is in one of its busiest turnover cycles in years, and the striking part is the geography. Storefront swaps, new concepts, and one very large industrial sale are clustered inside a tight radius rather than spread across the district.
For residents, that means the "what's new" list this year is unusually walkable. It also means the character of a specific two-block stretch, plus the river-facing industrial edge, will look different by winter than it did in June.
The Third Avenue stretch, storefront by storefront
Most of the retail activity this summer sits on Third Avenue North and its cross streets, between the Sable building and the block that already holds Bellecour, Solidcore, The Ten Spot, and Red Cow. Four openings are in motion inside that footprint:
107 Third Avenue — PopUp Bagels. The Connecticut-based bagel chain is targeting a late September or early October debut for its first Twin Cities location, sitting between Solidcore and Bellecour. The Minnesota entrepreneur bringing the brand in, Dan D'Aquisto, is currently in the approval process with the city and told the North Loop Planning & Zoning Committee that if all goes well, PopUp Bagels could be open here by late September or early October. The operator has signaled interest in as many as ten metro locations over the coming years, with this address positioned as the flagship.
Former D.NOLO space, Third Avenue — Clinic Ellena. The former D.NOLO space is being converted into a new clinic for Ellena Aesthetics, which will be moving here from the St. Anthony Main area of Northeast Minneapolis. The relocation matters as a signal: D.NOLO helped popularize the "Nolo" nickname for the neighborhood in the 2010s, and its old address is now moving from retail into wellness use.
North 2nd Street, in the Ten Spot / Red Cow building — The NOW. A new massage boutique has just begun construction in the same building as The Ten Spot and Red Cow on North 2nd Street, the former Queen Anna space. The NOW hopes to open in August, positioned as a membership-model alternative to full-service spa pricing.
Sable building, Third Street — Flower Bar. Luxury floral boutique Flower Bar is opening a second Twin Cities location this summer on the ground floor of the Sable building on Third Street.
Four openings inside roughly a two-block square is unusual for a neighborhood this small. The tenant mix also tells you something about who is walking these blocks in 2026: a bagel counter, a medical aesthetics clinic, a membership massage studio, and a florist. That is a daily-services cluster, not a destination-restaurant cluster. Residents are getting the kind of retail that only pencils out when there are enough people living on the block to sustain it Monday through Thursday.
D'Aquisto's own read on the neighborhood is worth reading in full:
"It's taking off, a viral brand nationally, fits in well with a lot of the other existing concepts. It will bring a nice exciting sort of energy, kind of New York City feel to the best neighborhood in Minneapolis as our flagship location."
Operator confidence like that tends to show up in leases before it shows up in listing prices.
One block over, on Washington
The other cluster sits along Washington Avenue and the immediate blocks north of it. Two changes are worth flagging.
At 730 N. Washington, the former Borough space is changing hands. Revival, the acclaimed fried chicken restaurant that abruptly ended operations last year, is now under new ownership and will take over the Borough space sometime this fall. Borough ended its 13-year run in the North Loop on June 27. The revival of Revival, this time under Jester Concepts, is one of the more consequential restaurant restarts of the year, and it lands inside a room residents already know well.
A short walk east across the Hennepin Avenue Bridge, 117 SE Main Street in the St. Anthony Main building brought back a neighborhood corner that had been dark for a decade. The doors are open again at the historic St. Anthony Main building that once housed Minneapolis' oldest bar, Praca on Main, until its final pour in 2015. As of its opening, prices at the new Lonely's Bar were all $12 or less. Not technically North Loop, but the pedestrian bridge makes it a working extension for anyone who lives on the river-facing side of the neighborhood.
There is one addition on the northeast side of the river worth naming too, because it draws North Loop residents across the bridge on foot. Dangerous Man Brewing reopened its taproom this summer. After nearly three years without a taproom, local favorite Dangerous Man returned to northeast Minneapolis this month.
The industrial edge is quietly converting
The bigger story is not on Third Avenue at all. It sits at the north end of the neighborhood, on the 13-acre block that used to print the paper.
A Virginia-based data center developer signed a purchase agreement for the Minnesota Star Tribune's former printing plant, one of the last remaining large industrial sites in Minneapolis' North Loop. The firm is Legacy Investing, which transformed part of downtown's Sleep Number Building into a data center for artificial intelligence and cloud computing. A similar data center is at the heart of Legacy's plans for the Star Tribune's 13 acres, located at 800 N. 1st St.
The reason this is happening in the North Loop, and not somewhere farther out, comes down to a specific piece of city policy. The Minneapolis City Council put a pause on new data centers back in May, but exempted those in the downtown core that are less than 350,000 square feet. The Star Tribune parcel sits inside that exemption zone. In practical terms, the last stretch of true industrial fabric on the river edge of the neighborhood is being repurposed into infrastructure that runs quietly and employs a modest on-site staff rather than being converted into another mixed-use residential tower.
For a homeowner, the takeaway is not the data center itself. It is that the northern boundary of the residential North Loop just got a hard edge. There will not be a new 300-unit apartment building at 800 N. 1st Street. That has implications for sightlines, traffic patterns on 1st Street and Plymouth, and the way listings north of Washington describe their views over the next few years.
What the pattern tells you
Three things about this summer are unusual enough to name:
The retail turnover is concentrated, not distributed. The four Third Avenue openings sit inside a walking radius most residents cover in ten minutes. That kind of density change moves foot traffic and rewrites which blocks feel "central" to daily life.
The new tenants skew toward services, not destinations. A bagel shop, a clinic, a massage studio, and a florist do not draw suburban weekend traffic the way a Spoon and Stable or Smack Shack does. They serve people who live within a five-minute walk. That is a shift in what the neighborhood is optimizing for.
The industrial edge is closing. With the Star Tribune site heading to Legacy Investing and the city's data center pause protecting the boundary at 350,000 square feet, the North Loop's residential footprint on the north end is effectively fixed for the foreseeable future.
A Saturday walk that didn't exist last summer
Start on Third Street at the Sable building for a coffee and a stop at Flower Bar's new location. Cut two blocks to Third Avenue, past Bellecour and the future PopUp Bagels storefront at 107, and continue to the old D.NOLO space now under conversion for Clinic Ellena. Loop back onto North 2nd Street to see the construction fencing at the former Queen Anna space where The NOW is finishing out. From there it is a five-minute walk to 730 N. Washington to peek at the Borough space in transition to Revival. If the afternoon is still open, cross the Hennepin Avenue Bridge to Lonely's Bar or Dangerous Man's returned taproom.
That itinerary was not possible in July 2025. It will be routine by November.
If you own a home in the North Loop and are curious how a tighter retail spine and a fixed northern edge are shaping current pricing, or if you are thinking about selling into this cycle rather than waiting through it, the team at Ian Petersen is happy to sit down and walk through what the last six months of activity actually mean for your block. Request a home valuation when you are ready.
