Is North Minneapolis the Next North Loop? The $350M Upper Harbor Riverfront

Picture an old industrial corner of Minneapolis: empty warehouses, boarded-up buildings and nobody around at night. Over 25 years, it becomes one of the most wanted neighborhoods in the city. That already happened here: the North Loop. Now the same setup is taking shape on the north side, right on the Mississippi.

Details are as of my video above (summer 2026).

How the North Loop happened

For most of the 1900s, the North Loop was the Warehouse District, with big industrial buildings that were mostly empty at night, and by the 1980s much of it was left to decay. Then artists found cheap space in the warehouses, developers followed in the mid-2000s, and restaurants, shops and condos came after. Today it’s one of the most wanted parts of the city, with condos from the high $300,000s and up and some of the best food in town. It all started when someone decided old industrial land could be something else.

The Upper Harbor Terminal: before

This stretch of north Minneapolis riverfront has been industrial since the late 1800s, starting with lumber yards. A barge shipping terminal arrived in 1968, and a freeway and a wall of industry cut people off from the river; the south side got parks and trails while the north side got industry. Barge operations ended in late 2014, just before the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock closed for good, and 48 acres of prime riverfront sat empty for more than a decade. The city owned the land the whole time and spent years planning it with residents and developers.

What’s being built

Ground broke on May 4, 2026:

• An 8,000-seat outdoor amphitheater, the Community Performing Arts Center, run jointly by First Avenue and the Minnesota Orchestra, with about 50 ticketed events a year. It opens in summer 2027.
• A 20-acre public park running about a mile along the river, with separate bike and walking trails, opening in summer 2026.
• About 520 homes and 45,000 square feet of commercial space, with a projected 300 living-wage jobs, plus a health and wellness hub.
• Ground lease revenue from private development flows into a community fund for 99 years.

Why it matters

The amphitheater means a steady stream of people, and just like in the North Loop, restaurants and shops tend to follow, then more housing. The site is in north Minneapolis’s McKinley neighborhood, and the city calls the project a “once in a generation opportunity” for north Minneapolis, language it doesn’t use lightly.

This is a long-term play, and nobody can promise how it will turn out. But the North Loop’s window closed long ago; its prices reflect what it became. Around Upper Harbor, that window is open now. It’s also part of a bigger wave of projects, covered in 9 megaprojects changing the Twin Cities.

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