Something changed in northwest Plymouth between March and June of 2026, and if you live in Ferndale North you have probably felt it without naming it. Bass Lake Road runs busier at 6 p.m. The stretch of trail behind the neighborhood suddenly loops back on itself. And on a Tuesday you can pick up groceries, a burger from a Minneapolis chef, and a scoop of ice cream in the same building, which was not a sentence anyone would have written about this corner of the city a year ago.
This is not a coincidence of timing. It is a neighborhood center coming online in phases, and it is close enough to your front door to change how a weeknight actually goes.
The Corner That Wasn't There Last Summer
The 75-acre parcel at Interstate 494 and Bass Lake Road held the Prudential campus for decades. The 450,000-square-foot office building was leveled in the summer of 2024 to make way for a phased mixed-use redevelopment, and Roers Companies and Scannell Properties are now redeveloping it as The Boulevard, with building demolition complete and initial construction activity underway.
The first tenant residents will care about opened this spring. Coborn's Market & Table debuted near the intersection of I-494 and Bass Lake Road, where it's anchoring the 75-acre Boulevard development on the former Prudential Financial campus site, and the store opened to the public beginning March 12. It is Coborn's first Twin Cities store, and the format is not the one you know from Sartell or Ramsey.
Inside the same building sit four distinct dining rooms, all opened at once:
| Concept | Operator | What it serves |
|---|---|---|
| Basta Pasta | Chef David Fhima | Italian-inspired dishes |
| Abuela's Mexican Kitchen | Chef David Fhima | Mexican cuisine |
| Brother's Burgers | Chef David Fhima | Handcrafted burgers |
| The Buttered Tin | Chef Alicia Hinze | Scratch pastries, breakfast, lunch |
The concept includes a fast-casual dining experience called The Global Table, courtesy of David Fhima, a family friend of the Coborn family, with three distinct dining options: Basta Pasta, Abuela's Mexican Kitchen, and Brother's Burgers. The Plymouth Coborn's also features the third location of The Buttered Tin, operated by Chef Alicia Hinze, serving scratch-made pastries as well as breakfast and lunch items. The Buttered Tin's other two rooms are in northeast Minneapolis and St. Paul, which is worth stating plainly: a restaurant whose fans previously drove into the city is now a five-minute errand.
There is also a fifth counter most previews have missed. The store debuted Penny Horse Parlor, a retro ice cream shop concept featuring ice cream from Minnesota brand Kemp's, with food-court-style seating and outdoor seating during warmer months. For a household in Ferndale North with kids or grandkids visiting, that is the ending to a summer evening you did not have in walking-slash-driving distance last July.
The Sandwich Shop On 101 That Nobody Talked About
While the Boulevard opening pulled attention, a quieter arrival landed at the end of May. A new Plymouth location of the Centro Restaurant Group's pressed pocket sandwich shop, Hippo Pockets, opened at 1400 County Road 101 at the end of May, with expanded breakfast pocket offerings and longer operating hours. If The Boulevard is the destination trip, Hippo Pockets is the utility play, the ten-minute lunch pickup on a work-from-home day when nobody wants to think about it.
The two openings do different jobs. Together they close a gap Ferndale North residents have quietly worked around for years, which was that decent counter service between fast food and full sit-down basically required a drive into Wayzata, Maple Grove, or Minneapolis proper.
The Trail Finally Loops
The other change is not commercial. It is asphalt and wood, and it happened just before the ground froze last fall. An outdoor project in Plymouth that was two decades in the making is finally complete: city leaders cut the ribbon on the final segment of the Northwest Greenway trail, which has 7.7 miles of total trail extending across wetlands and nature from Lake Camelot on the east to the Northwest Greenway Pavilion on the west.
The final segment connected a remaining trail gap between Juneau Lane and 57th Avenue, and includes a rest stop with a bench and a bike rack for trail users. The segment cost $800,000 and was paid for by city park dedication funds. For anyone who has ridden or walked out from the neighborhood and had to turn back at that break, this is the piece that turns a fragmented corridor into a continuous one.
A few practical anchors worth knowing this summer:
- Northwest Greenway Pavilion, 5250 Peony Lane. Nearby boardwalks overlook the Elm Creek wetlands, and the pavilion provides parking and serves as an access point for the greenway's looping trails, adjacent to the Challenge Course.
- The Challenge Course. A park amenity for ages 13 and older, offering activity challenges involving netting, climbing, balancing, and agility. A better answer than "the backyard" when a visiting teenager needs to burn off a plane ride.
- The new Juneau Lane boardwalks. The completion closed the remaining trail gap west of Juneau Lane to 57th Avenue with two boardwalks, a rest stop with a bench, and a bike rack.
- The greater network. The Northwest Greenway spans more than 300 acres from Lake Camelot on the east to Wayzata High School on the west, and connects to the Medicine Lake Regional Trail, which links French and Elm Creek regional parks.
That last connection is the one that quietly matters. Ferndale North has always been close to open space. What it did not have, until October, was a continuous route through it.
What Comes Next, Close Enough To Watch
If the store and the trail feel like the whole story, they are not. The Boulevard is still filling in. Summit Orthopedics is constructing a comprehensive care facility on the site, which will include an ambulatory surgery center, physical therapy, urgent care, imaging services, and more. Two apartment buildings are moving through construction on the same 75 acres. Belterra will include 207 apartments, with 20 percent of the units reserved for households earning up to 60% of area median income, and floorplans ranging from studios to three-bedroom layouts. Melrose Apartments, at 5905 Sycamore Lane N., includes 212 units ranging from one to four bedrooms.
There is also parkland baked into the plan. The development features Summit Orthopedics, Coborn's Market & Table which opened in March, plans for a new 13-acre public park and public plaza, walking trails, and public art. A 13-acre park inside a mixed-use build is not a green square on a rendering. It is a place your dog will know by fall of 2027.
Why The Small Changes Read Bigger Here
The reason all of this lands harder in Ferndale North than it would in a denser neighborhood is that the baseline was different. In a walk-up neighborhood, another counter-service concept is a rounding error. Here it is a shift in what a Tuesday looks like. The Coborn's opening is the same square footage it would be anywhere. What is not the same is that a resident can, in one loop, drop off dry cleaning, since Coborn's has teamed with Mulberry's Garment Care to provide dry-cleaning drop-off and pickup, order dinner from a chef whose Minneapolis rooms have been reviewed for years, and take the long way home along a boardwalk that did not exist last fall.
That is the thesis, and it is the reason the summer feels different even if you cannot quite say why. The errand and the outing have collapsed into the same trip. In a neighborhood built around the car and the cul-de-sac, that collapse is what a center feels like when it finally shows up.
If you are weighing what this shift means for the home you already own here, or for one you are watching go up on Sycamore Lane, the team at Roost Real Estate is tracking these openings, closings, and completions block by block. Request a Private Consultation and we will walk the neighborhood with you, in person or on paper.
