Ask someone who has lived near Hennepin and Lake for the past decade where to find the Uptown Art Fair this October, and most will still point toward that old intersection. The habit is understandable. For years that corner was the address. But the event that used to fill that fall weekend has since moved twice, changed its name, and now sets up eight blocks west, on the shore of Bde Maka Ska. That relocation lines up almost exactly with where the neighborhood's most significant new restaurant opening also chose to land this summer.
That overlap is worth more than a passing note if you live in the Wedge, CARAG, or East Isles and have spent the past few months watching familiar storefronts change hands while wondering where the foot traffic actually went.
Where the Art Fair Actually Went
The event most people still call the Uptown Art Fair does not run in Uptown anymore. After construction forced a temporary relocation, the Uptown Association rebranded it as the SoMi Art Fair and moved it permanently to Bachman's on Lyndale, a location outside the neighborhood it was named for.
Into that calendar gap stepped a different organizer entirely. Homespun Events, the group behind the long-running Edina Art Fair, launched the City of Lakes Art Fair on the northwest shore of Bde Maka Ska in October 2025, drawing more than 140 artists in its debut year. The fair returns for its second installment this year on Saturday, October 10 and Sunday, October 11, running 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days, with more than 170 artists set up along the lake between West Lake Street and West 32nd Street. Jill Hayes, co-director of Homespun Events, described the goal plainly when the fair was announced: to launch a brand new tradition at Bde Maka Ska.
So the neighborhood's fall art fair still exists. It just no longer happens anywhere near where people assume it does.
The Restaurant Map Redrew Itself This Summer
Around the same stretch of months, a separate but connected shift was happening along the neighborhood's restaurant row. Here is what changed between June and July of this year:
| Address | What Happened | When |
|---|---|---|
| 2626 Hennepin Ave | Red Cow's Uptown location closed, with staff relocated to other Twin Cities locations | June 1 |
| 2901 Lyndale Ave S | Aurelia's Mexican, which had replaced Lagos Tacos, closed and is reopening rebranded as an American restaurant called Even Keel | 2026 |
| 1601 W Lake St | Tom's Thai opened in the former Amore and Pinoli space | 2026 |
| 3001 Hennepin Ave | Arizona Taco Co. opened its second location, inside the former Arts & Rec and Libertine space | July |
| 3100 Excelsior Blvd | Bussin Birria Tacos opened its first-ever standalone restaurant, directly across from Bde Maka Ska | July 1 |
Read as a list, this looks like ordinary churn. A burger chain closes a location, a taco chain opens one, a Thai restaurant slides into a vacated storefront. Restaurants along any commercial strip in a growing city turn over at roughly this pace, and Hennepin Avenue in particular has absorbed closures and openings for years without any single one of them meaning much.
But look at where the actual new investment landed, as opposed to where a business simply swapped into an empty box someone else vacated.
Why a Food-Court Chain's First Storefront Matters Here
Bussin Birria Tacos had operated exclusively as a Mall of America food court concept before this year. Opening a standalone restaurant, on its own lot, with a full patio, indoor seating, late-night hours, and expanded catering capacity, is a different kind of commitment than a restaurant simply changing addresses. It is the kind of decision a business makes after watching foot traffic patterns for a while and deciding a specific block is worth building on rather than renting into.
That block sits on Excelsior Boulevard, directly across from Bde Maka Ska. It is not a coincidence of geography that this happens to be the same shoreline where Homespun Events chose to plant a fall art fair the year before. Both decisions, made by two unrelated organizations roughly a year apart, point at the same stretch of water rather than at the historic Hennepin and Lake core.
Meanwhile, the Hennepin corridor itself saw a wash. It lost a longtime anchor in Red Cow and gained a second location of an existing regional chain in Arizona Taco Co. That is turnover, not growth. The Lyndale strip lost a restaurant to a rebrand. The only genuinely new bet, the one representing a business's first-ever move into a full sit-down format, chose the lake.
If You're Headed to the Fair on October 10 or 11
For residents planning around the art fair weekend, the geography actually works in your favor now that both the event and a strong new option sit on the same side of the neighborhood:
- Bussin Birria Tacos at 3100 Excelsior Blvd is close enough to walk to from the fair entrance, with patio seating if the October weather cooperates.
- Tom's Thai at 1601 W. Lake St. is a reasonable stop if you're coming from the east side of the neighborhood and want something more substantial than a food truck plate.
- Arizona Taco Co. at 3001 Hennepin Ave works if you're arriving from the Hennepin side and want a meal before making the walk over to the lake.
None of these require driving between stops. The distances that used to separate a Hennepin Avenue evening from a Bde Maka Ska afternoon have gotten shorter simply because the newer businesses opened closer to the water than the older ones ever needed to.
The Bigger Pattern
None of this shows up in a listing description or a market report. It shows up only if you track two separate threads, an events calendar and a restaurant beat, and notice they are describing the same shift in different language. The neighborhood's fall gathering point moved to the lake. Within a year, the most committed new restaurant investment moved there too. The old core at Hennepin and Lake did not disappear, but it stopped being where the newest money was willing to bet.
If you have lived here long enough to remember when the art fair really was on Hennepin, this is the kind of change that happens gradually enough to miss until you compare a June map to an October one side by side.
We pay attention to shifts like this at The DesMarais Team, because a neighborhood's businesses usually notice where momentum is heading before any pricing data catches up to it. If you are curious about how a specific block or corridor near Bde Maka Ska is actually behaving, whether you're weighing a move sometime down the road or just want to understand what you're seeing on your own street, reach out. We are happy to walk through what we're tracking, no transaction required.
