Blaine Is Building a $750 Million Downtown From Scratch
Blaine is Minnesota’s 10th largest city, with about 75,000 people, and it has never had a real walkable downtown: no town square, no historic main street. That’s about to change. The city broke ground on a $750 million project to build a downtown from scratch. Here’s the timeline, what’s coming, and where it could affect home values.
Details are as of my video above (June 2026).
Why Blaine never had a downtown
Blaine grew as a bedroom community. People moved there for space, big yards and lower prices, and drove elsewhere for everything else. Shopping meant Northtown Mall or big-box strips along the highways, and dining was mostly chains.
Meanwhile, the National Sports Center (opened 1990) draws more than 4 million visitors a year for soccer, hockey and football. For 30-plus years, those visitors played their games, then drove to Maple Grove or Minneapolis to eat and sleep. Blaine got almost nothing from them.
What’s being built
The 69-acre site sits near 105th Avenue NE, Naples Street and Radisson Road, next to the National Sports Center. Ground broke in November 2024. The developers were chosen through a public process, and no general city tax money is being used; Blaine is using tax increment financing, tax abatement and bonds.
Phase one:
- A full-service hotel, a restaurant and a food hall
- A 5,000-seat stadium and event center for baseball, soccer and concerts
- A golf entertainment complex and a pickleball facility
- Parking and outdoor gathering spaces (the turf fields are already done)
Phase two (about 2027 to 2028): a Scheels megastore, more hotels, hundreds of housing units, more restaurants and offices.
Phase three: more homes and mixed-use growth.
The Scheels effect
Scheels isn’t a normal sporting goods store. Picture about 250,000 square feet (bigger than most Targets) with a 75-foot Ferris wheel, a 16,000-gallon saltwater aquarium, sports simulators, an arcade, candy shops and cafés. People drive to these on purpose. It’ll be the only Scheels in the northern Twin Cities suburbs, with work starting in 2026 and a spring 2028 opening, and more than 500 permanent jobs. 2028 is when Blaine goes from a construction zone to a destination.
Where home values could feel it most
My take: the closer to the 105th Avenue corridor, the bigger the potential bump.
- Within about a mile of Town Center (around Radisson Road, Naples Street and 105th Avenue): the strongest effect.
- One to two miles out, toward Northtown and east along Main Street: still close enough for a ripple effect.
- Two to three miles out: a short drive, but less direct lift.
- Three-plus miles: mostly moves with the regular market, though you’re still near the Sports Center and Scheels.
Has this worked elsewhere?
Not always. The from-scratch downtowns that work tend to combine jobs, housing and shopping. Reston Town Center in Virginia, built in the 1990s near Dulles Airport with later Metro access, now commands a big premium over the rest of Reston, and Troy, Michigan’s downtown core has helped its homes outperform the broader market. Blaine has all three ingredients, plus traffic most suburbs can only dream about.
A reality check: it’s still a suburb where you’ll need a car, and the town center will be a few walkable blocks, not a city grid. Other metro cities have tried this with mixed results, and some took longer to click. There’s always risk with something this big, but Blaine’s foundation is stronger than most.
Timing
Blaine homes were mostly in the high $300,000s to low $400,000s, with ZIP code 55449, closest to Town Center, trending in the high $400,000s to low $500,000s and moving faster than the rest of the city. In my view, the best window is before phase one wraps up and before Scheels opens in 2028; by 2029, the market will likely have caught up. Note, too, that Highway 65 through Blaine is being rebuilt from 2026 to 2029 (more in choosing the right suburb).
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