If you follow local park news even loosely, you already know the Mississippi has been the star of the show. Erosion along the riverbank near Coon Rapids Dam Regional Park forced a multi-year rebuild of the Coon Creek bridge and culvert system, work that wrapped up this spring with only minor punch-list items left, while the broader corridor restoration around it continues into this year. It's the kind of dramatic, water-and-erosion story that makes headlines. But if you actually use the trail system on a normal Tuesday, walking a dog before work or pushing a stroller after dinner, the obstacle you've been running into for years hasn't been the river at all. It's been Coon Rapids Boulevard.
For anyone trying to move between the neighborhoods south of the Boulevard and the trail network that leads into Bunker Hills Regional Park, that stretch of road has functioned as a wall. No grade-separated crossing, just a busy arterial that splits the Coon Creek Regional Trail into two disconnected halves. That's the piece finally getting fixed in 2026, and the way it's getting fixed says something about how this city actually builds things.
The crossing nobody could avoid
The Coon Creek Regional Trail is one of the connective threads of the city's park system, linking Bunker Hills Regional Park on the north end to Coon Rapids Dam Regional Park along the river. For years, getting from one segment to the other meant crossing Coon Rapids Boulevard at street level, timing it against traffic on a road the city itself has flagged as a key barrier to pedestrian and bicycle movement.
The fix is the Port Riverwalk pedestrian bridge, a $6.5 million project funded through a mix of federal Regional Solicitation dollars, state grants, and contributions from both the city and Anoka County. Once open, it will provide a true grade-separated crossing, meaning no more waiting for a light or dodging traffic to get from one side of the trail to the other. The bridge is also doing double duty as the connective spine of the Port Riverwalk redevelopment, a new residential project the city is building around the idea of a more walkable corridor.
What the bridge actually connects:
- The north and south segments of the Coon Creek Regional Trail, which currently function as two separate trails rather than one continuous route
- Bunker Hills Regional Park to the north and Coon Rapids Dam Regional Park to the south
- Access to the Mississippi River Trail corridor, located less than a mile south of the crossing
None of that is glamorous. It's the kind of infrastructure that only matters to the people who actually use it, which is exactly why it's worth knowing about if you're one of them.
The project that almost didn't survive its own delivery truck
Here's the part that didn't make it into most of the polished city updates. In October 2025, the prefabricated bridge truss, essentially the entire steel skeleton of the crossing, was damaged in transit when it struck an overpass along Highway 65. That's not a minor hiccup. It sent the structure back for repairs and engineering review before it could go anywhere near the site.
The truss was eventually repaired and installed during an overnight closure of Coon Rapids Boulevard in December 2025, the kind of after-midnight construction window that most residents never notice unless they happen to drive past at 2 a.m. and wonder why the road is cordoned off. As of this spring, the project was still on schedule for a June 2026 public opening. If that held, the crossing has been open for a couple of months now, so if you haven't tried it yet, this is your reminder.
During that final stretch of work this spring, crews scheduled periodic daytime lane closures along Coon Rapids Boulevard to finish deck work and install lighting and safety systems. It was a small price for a crossing that's been missing for as long as most current residents have lived here.
A separate story upriver, and why it's easy to mix up
While the Boulevard bridge has been the quiet, unglamorous fix, the more visible river drama has been happening at the dam itself. The 12-foot-wide walkway that spans Coon Rapids Dam closed for scheduled repairs from February 16 through February 27, 2026, a temporary shutdown handled jointly by Three Rivers Park District and Anoka County Parks. That walkway is a different piece of infrastructure entirely. It connects Mississippi Gateway Regional Park in Brooklyn Park to Coon Rapids Dam Regional Park on the Coon Rapids side, and it links the Mississippi River Regional Trail on the west bank with the North Hennepin Regional Trail on the east.
It's easy to lump these two projects together because they're both bridges, both trail-related, and both happened in roughly the same stretch of 2025 into 2026. But they're run by different agencies, funded through different channels, and serve different purposes. The dam walkway is a river crossing that connects two counties. The Port Riverwalk bridge is a boulevard crossing that connects two halves of the same city's trail system. If you're trying to plan a route this fall, knowing the difference actually matters, because the dam closure was a two-week blip back in February that's long since resolved, while the boulevard bridge was a longer build that has been wrapping up over the course of this summer.
What else changed while everyone was watching the bridges
The bridge projects are the headline items, but they're part of a broader push the city has been making. Coon Rapids opened its first public splash pad at Boulevard Plaza, added dedicated pickleball courts at Riverwind Park, and extended the 85th Avenue Trail to link neighborhoods directly to Springbrook Nature Center. None of these are river-adjacent or as expensive as the bridge work, but they're the kind of additions that quietly change a weekend routine once they're in place.
All of it is feeding into the city's 2026 to 2036 Park and Recreation System Master Plan, a longer-range planning effort developed with consulting firm ISG Inc. that's meant to answer a different question than the last decade of construction did. Instead of asking what to build next, city planners are asking how to maintain and program what's already been built. Residents can weigh in through an online survey and an interactive project map on the Social Pinpoint platform, which is worth a look if you have opinions about which trail segment deserves attention next.
Coon Rapids has spent roughly ten years in near-constant construction mode across its park system. What comes next isn't more concrete, it's a plan for taking care of what's already poured.
What this actually means for your Saturday loop
If your usual route has involved crossing Coon Rapids Boulevard at street level to link up segments of the Coon Creek Trail, that's the piece changing this year. With the Port Riverwalk bridge open or nearly there, that crossing becomes grade-separated, which should make the route faster and considerably less stressful if you're managing a bike, a stroller, or a dog that doesn't understand traffic signals.
The city's paved trail system runs more than 15 miles total, stitching together the Mississippi Regional Trail Corridor, the Sand Creek and Coon Creek Trail System, and smaller connector paths like the one now reaching Springbrook Nature Center. It's a system that's been built in pieces over a long stretch of time, and this year happens to be when two of the more stubborn gaps, one at the boulevard and one at the dam, both got addressed within months of each other. That's not a coincidence so much as it's what a decade of steady public investment looks like when it finally starts closing loops instead of opening new ones.
If you're the kind of resident who tracks this stuff because it changes how you get around your own neighborhood, you already know the value of paying attention to the small print in city updates. That's the same instinct The Paul E Team brings to watching Coon Rapids and the rest of Anoka County, not because every trail bridge matters to a real estate transaction, but because knowing a place well means knowing what's actually changing in it. If you ever want to talk about what's happening in this corner of the north metro, Contact Us.
