What Changed On A Plymouth Weeknight After The Boulevard Opened

For years the northwest corner of Plymouth at I-494 and Bass Lake Road was a 450,000-square-foot Prudential office building surrounded by parking, then a leveled lot, then a construction fence. On March 12, 2026, the fence came down on the first finished piece. What sits there now is not a strip center. It is closer to a small downtown that Plymouth did not previously have, and it has already rearranged how a lot of residents think about a Tuesday evening.

The claim of this post is narrow. The Boulevard has moved the practical center of gravity for weeknight dinner, coffee, and errands in northwest Plymouth to a single 75-acre parcel, and the next twelve to eighteen months will deepen that shift rather than dilute it.

The tenants that actually opened

The anchor is Coborn's Market & Table, which debuted near the intersection of I-494 and Bass Lake Road in Plymouth, anchoring the 75-acre Boulevard development on the former Prudential Financial campus site. It is the Minnesota grocer's closest location yet to Minneapolis. The store combines a full market with five food-and-drink concepts under one roof, plus a wine and spirits store next door.

Here is what a resident actually finds inside on opening day and after:

• Basta Pasta, Abuela's Mexican Kitchen, and Brother's Burgers, three fast-casual concepts grouped as The Global Table by Minneapolis chef David Fhima. Brother's Burgers features grass-fed beef from Thousand Hills in Becker.
• The Buttered Tin, the third location of the bakery and breakfast-and-lunch spot founded by Alicia Hinze, a James Beard-recognized chef and Food Network "Cupcake Wars" winner, following its northeast Minneapolis and St. Paul locations.
• Penny Horse Parlor, an in-store ice cream counter with hand-scooped ice cream, dirty sodas, and frozen treats made in partnership with Minnesota-based Kemps.
• Coborn's Wine & Spirits, a separate storefront spanning approximately 8,600 square feet, offering a comprehensive selection of classic brands, local favorites, and specialty items across wine, beer, spirits, THC products, and non-alcoholic options.
• A Mulberry's Garment Care drop-off, on-site fuel, plus flexible seating areas, salad bars, a hot bar with Minnesota classics, sushi stations, and ready-to-eat meals.

Guests find indoor seating by a cozy fireplace, outdoor seating featuring a local mural and performance stage, and a small playground for kids. Kitchen service runs 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., and the bakery, coffee bar, and beer and wine bar are open daily from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Why this changes the weeknight math

Before March 12, a Plymouth household that wanted a chef-driven meal without cooking generally had three options: drive to Wayzata or downtown Minneapolis, order delivery, or work through the usual rotation of strip-mall favorites. The grocery run and the dinner decision were separate trips.

The Boulevard collapses them. A parent picking up produce for later in the week can hand a kid a cone at Penny Horse Parlor while a Basta Pasta order is being fired to the counter. Shoppers can dine in-store year-round and outdoors during warmer months, which matters in a metro where four to five months of the calendar are patio months. That is the specific mechanism worth naming. It is not that Plymouth was short on restaurants. It is that Plymouth did not have a place where the weekly grocery list, a bakery breakfast, a fast-casual dinner from a named chef, and a bottle of wine were all one stop with seating around a performance stage.

Two more details reinforce the point. The Buttered Tin's Plymouth location is the third for the beloved Minnesota bakery founded by James Beard–recognized chef Alicia Hinze, known for scratch-made pastries and comforting breakfast and lunch showstoppers. That is a chef whose previous outposts pulled Minneapolis and St. Paul residents across town. Plymouth now has that on a commute route. And Fhima's Global Table packages Basta Pasta, Abuela's Mexican Kitchen, and Brother's Burgers so a table of four can order three different cuisines without a group compromise, which is a small logistical unlock that people who feed families will recognize immediately.

The rest of the site, in order of arrival

Coborn's is one piece of a phased plan. Here is the sequence residents can expect on the same parcel:

To support infrastructure and affordability components within the district, the City of Plymouth approved a $25.35 million tax increment financing district in early 2025. That is the public commitment behind the timeline, and it is why the site's later phases are not speculative in the usual sense.

Belterra is worth a closer look because it will determine how the site feels day to day. Community amenities include a business center with work-from-home spaces, a community room with a kitchen, a fitness center with a yoga room and kids' activity room, a golf simulator, a sauna, a frost locker, a speakeasy, a dog run, a dog wash, an outdoor pool, grilling and lounging areas, a skylounge, and a skydeck overlooking the future city pond and park. Ground-floor retail of roughly 4,000 square feet fronts the building. In practical terms that means the walk from apartment lobby to grocery cart to bakery counter is a single connected sidewalk, not a parking-lot crossing.

The park is the tell

The piece of this project that will most change how Plymouth residents use the site is the one still on paper. Plymouth Mayor Jeff Wosje described the intent at the October 2024 groundbreaking:

"There's going to be a 13-acre park, and the vision is that we'll have a couple of restaurants right on top of the water. It's going to be designed so there's a lot of walking paths in there. People surrounding this community will be able to walk and enjoy the restaurants."

A 13-acre park in the middle of a mixed-use district is the difference between a shopping destination and a place people walk to for its own sake. Wayzata's lakewalk did this on a smaller footprint. Excelsior's Commons does it on the lakeshore. The Boulevard's version is inland and wetland-anchored, but the mechanic is the same: the park is what makes the retail and the housing borrow value from each other rather than compete.

For a resident whose current weekly walk is a loop of a residential cul-de-sac, that is a genuinely new option a mile or two from home. It does not exist yet. It is scheduled to break ground in 2027. The point of naming it now is that the value of Coborn's, Belterra, and the eventual waterfront restaurant pads is written into a plan that has already cleared council approval and financing.

How to actually use it this month

A short field guide for residents who have driven past the site and not yet stopped in:

1. Morning coffee and a pastry. The bakery and coffee bar open at 6 a.m. The Buttered Tin's croissants and cupcakes are the draw. Park on the north side and enter through the market, not the restaurant entrance, if you want to grab groceries on the way out.
2. Weeknight dinner with kids. Order Brother's Burgers with the Thousand Hills beef and let the kids choose Basta Pasta or Abuela's. Seat at the food-court tables inside or the mural patio outside. Finish at Penny Horse Parlor.
3. A grown-up errand run. Wine and spirits next door, dry cleaning drop-off at the Mulberry's counter, then a sit-down espresso at the coffee bar. All three used to be three separate trips.
4. A Sunday walk. Not yet. The park comes in 2027. Until then, the sidewalk loop around the site is short but growing.

What this means for the neighborhood

Plymouth already had the ingredients of a good suburban life. What it did not have was a single place where a weeknight could compress into one stop without sacrificing the quality of any part of it. The Boulevard is not finished, and the most interesting phase is still two years out. Even in its opening form it has done something specific: it has given the north end of the city a small, walkable, chef-anchored center that a resident can use two or three times a week without repeating themselves.

For homeowners along Bass Lake Road, in the Bass Lake and Pike Lake neighborhoods, and in the corridors that feed I-494 from the north, this is the sort of change that reshapes daily life quietly before it shows up in any market report. It is worth stopping in before the park lands and the next 600 units of housing arrive.

If you are weighing what a change like this means for your own property or for a move within Plymouth, Jim Schwarz at Lakes Sotheby's International Realty is available for a private consultation. Schedule a conversation to discuss what the next phase of The Boulevard could mean for your plans.