Walk down Grand Avenue toward Snelling this week and you will hit orange barrels before you hit the intersection. The street between Macalester and Snelling has been closed since July 20, and if you assumed this is a rerun of last year's mess, you would be wrong. This year's project is smaller, shorter, and built around keeping the sidewalks open. The neighborhood just hasn't caught up to that yet.
That gap between what people expect and what is actually happening is worth closing, because it changes how you plan your next six weeks on the avenue.
The Short Version
- Grand Avenue is closed to through traffic between Macalester Street and Snelling Avenue, a closure that started July 20 and is scheduled to run through mid-September, according to the City of St. Paul's project page.
- The east side of the Grand and Snelling intersection closed July 23.
- The city's original target was to wrap the whole intersection project by the end of August 2026. The block-level closures on the city's own updates now stretch into mid-September, and the page itself notes the schedule is weather and schedule dependent.
- Unlike last year, business access and parking on Grand itself are being maintained throughout. This is an intersection fix, not a corridor teardown.
This Isn't Last Year's Closure
Grand Avenue between Fairview and Snelling spent most of 2025 torn up for a full reconstruction: new underground utilities, new sidewalks, new street. That project ran roughly six months, from April to a reopening around October 21, and the toll on businesses was real. Osterberg's saw customer flow drop by as much as half during the work, according to the Star Tribune's coverage of the reopening. Baking Betty's took a steep hit too. At least one storefront on the avenue did not make it to reopening day.
That was a $6.69 million project, and everyone on Grand Avenue remembers it, including Hugo Bruggeman, who chairs the Macalester-Groveland Community Council's transportation committee. Ahead of that construction season, he put the stakes plainly:
"The local businesses are most in need of our support."
This year's project is a different animal. It is the Grand and Snelling intersection specifically, a joint effort with MnDOT to shorten pedestrian crossings, update the traffic signals, and handle some underlying sewer and water work. The footprint is the intersection and the immediate block, not a half-mile stretch of the avenue. Access to storefronts, alleys, and driveways is being maintained the entire time. That distinction matters if you have been avoiding the whole corridor out of habit built from last summer.
Where to Detour Around It
If you live west of Snelling or you're headed to a shop between Fairview and Macalester, here's what's actually true right now:
- To reach businesses on Grand between Fairview and Snelling, use Fairview Avenue or Summit Avenue down to Macalester Street or Cambridge Street.
- As of July 23, if your destination is between Snelling and Hamline, cut over on Hamline Avenue or take Summit Avenue to Pascal Street.
- Vehicle through-traffic on Grand at Snelling is detouring via Hamline, St. Clair, and Fairview avenues.
- Parking and deliveries are being routed through alleys and side streets near the work zone, and there's a no-parking stretch on Grand just east of Snelling.
- Pedestrian crossings are being maintained at the raised crossings between Macalester and Snelling, so walking across is still an option even when driving through isn't.
None of this is a detour around Grand Avenue. It's a detour around one intersection, for a few more weeks.
Who's Betting on St. Paul Anyway
Here's the part that tells you how St. Paul's food and coffee people actually feel about this construction season: nobody with money on the line waited for the cones to move before signing a lease.
Meg and Bjorn Jacobse opened Restaurant Aubergine this spring in the former Revival space on Selby Avenue, over in Cathedral Hill. It's the first fine-dining restaurant to open inside the 651 area code since Karyn Tomlinson's Myriel debuted in July 2021, according to Minnesota Monthly's first look. Meg ran the front of house at Meritage. Bjorn cooked at Bellecour before a stint at Joe Beef in Montreal. They spent years testing the concept as pop-ups around town before committing to a permanent address, and reservations for prime evening slots are already gone as soon as they're released on the first of each month. If you want the nightly limited-run burger, eight are made, and people start showing up by 4:30 in the afternoon to have a shot.
A few miles away on Marshall Avenue, Take Care opened this year, a coffee shop from Five Watt co-founder Lee Carter built around a slower, community-first idea of what a café can be, doubling as a home base for a coaching program aimed at helping other small operators run sustainable businesses.
Neither owner needed the Grand and Snelling intersection finished before committing to St. Paul this year. That's the tell. People who study foot traffic for a living, which is what opening a restaurant or a coffee shop actually requires, are reading this construction season as temporary friction somewhere else in the city, not a reason to hold off on their own corner of it.
What's on the Calendar Once the Cones Move
The stretch between now and mid-September isn't just about waiting out barricades. It's the run-up to two events that mark the actual close of construction season on this side of the river.
The Great River Race returns to Hidden Falls Regional Park on August 29, a family-friendly paddling event on the Mississippi that supports youth education programs, according to the city's Saint Paul Regional Water Services events page. It's the kind of morning that has nothing to do with Grand Avenue traffic and everything to do with what people who live here actually do on a Saturday in late summer.
Then on September 12, the Selby Avenue JazzFest hits its 25th year at the intersection of Selby and Milton avenues, not far from the Aubergine crowd, with a full day of regional live music according to Visit Saint Paul's summer music guide. Twenty-five years means this festival predates most of the construction cycles Grand Avenue has been through and will outlast this one too.
The Actual Takeaway
The instinct after a summer like last year's is to assume every orange barrel means another six months of lost sidewalk seating and detoured buses. That's not what's happening on Grand Avenue right now. The city scoped this project to the intersection on purpose, and access to storefronts has held throughout. Meanwhile, elsewhere in St. Paul, a restaurant that's been called the most anticipated opening in the Twin Cities this year chose this exact construction season to open its doors rather than wait for a quieter one.
If you've been steering clear of the whole corridor since July, it might be worth reconsidering the route. The detour is real, but it's a lot smaller than the one everyone's still remembering.
If you're weighing what a home near this corridor is actually worth, or you're curious how neighborhood momentum like this shows up in local listings, the team at MOVE knows this stretch of St. Paul block by block. Let's Connect. Cover Photo Credit: Visit St Paul
