3M Open Week Is Here, And Blaine Looks Different Than It Did Last July

If you drove past TPC Twin Cities this weekend you saw the tents going up. If you drove past Northtown Mall, you noticed the parking lot is full on a Tuesday for the first time in years. Those two things are connected, and residents who have lived here through a few tournament cycles are the ones best positioned to see it.

The 3M Open has been a July fixture in Blaine since 2019. What is new is everything happening around it: a food hall that opened six weeks ago inside a former department store, a health-focused restaurant filling in the block by the National Sports Center, and a redevelopment plan that will eventually turn 105th Avenue into something more like a downtown than a strip road. Tournament week is the loudest week of the year in Blaine. It is also the clearest snapshot of where the city is heading.

The Week At TPC Twin Cities

TPC Twin Cities hosts the 2026 3M Open from July 23 through 26, with practice and pro-am rounds running Tuesday and Wednesday before the tournament proper. The event is an annual PGA Tour stop that brings 156 professional golfers to Blaine and has an estimated $50 million per year economic impact for the region. Roughly 150,000 spectators pass through over the week.

The par-71 course sits on the site of a former sod farm 15 miles north of Minneapolis, designed by Arnold Palmer to work with the natural rolling terrain. That history matters when you are watching the broadcast and wondering why the fairways look flatter than most PGA venues. They are.

For residents who live inside the tournament perimeter, the practical stuff:

Residents living inside the secure perimeter will need proper credential or identification to enter into the neighborhood. Credentials are distributed by the 3M Open, and anyone wishing to go through a secure access point will need a resident pass. Residents who live on the course will not be able to access the course during tournament play. The Blaine Police Department is the lead agency for the planning and implementation of public safety activity related to the 3M Open.

If you are attending rather than living behind the gate, general and corporate parking is at the Anoka County Airport KeyAir entrance, with parking and shuttle service free of charge. Ford drivers can park for free without a pass in the Northland Ford Dealers General Parking Lot; all other vehicles are subject to a parking fee. Children 15 and under are admitted free with a daily fan pass sponsored by Cub.

The credential piece is the part that catches new homeowners in the TPC neighborhoods off guard. If you closed on a house near Tournament Players Parkway in the last twelve months, this is your first year sorting it out. Call the 3M Open office at 763-783-9000 rather than assuming your address is on the list.

105th Avenue Is Turning Into Something Else

Drive west from the National Sports Center this summer and the shift is visible. Fast-casual ProteinHouse opened at the corner of 105th Avenue and Radisson Road in the National Sports Village retail complex in April 2026, the chain's first Minnesota location, aimed at the athletes and families who use the neighboring sports facilities. The Blaine outpost is locally owned by Joylynn Auderieth, who also operates a ProteinHouse in Hudson, Wisconsin.

That opening is a data point, not the story. The story is the plan behind it. The city's 105th Avenue Redevelopment District will eventually include Scheels Sporting Goods, a full-service hotel with restaurant, food hall, golf entertainment, a year-round pickleball facility with a restaurant, a multi-function stadium, housing, professional office space, and public gathering spaces. The overall design creates a downtown feel with consolidated parking, urban building design, and pedestrian-friendly amenities, and a pedestrian bridge over 105th Avenue is under consideration.

On the sports side, the National Sports Center is installing 10 new lighted turf fields on the east side of campus adjacent to the new development. If you have a kid in a soccer or lacrosse club that uses the NSC, you have already noticed the effect on tournament traffic.

The takeaway for residents: the strip of 105th between Radisson and Highway 65 is being deliberately reshaped into the second anchor of the city, with the sports campus as the north pole and Northtown Mall as the south pole. Which brings us to the second anchor.

Northtown Mall Is Not A Mall Anymore

The former Becker Furniture Outlet space at Northtown had been dark for a while. It is not dark now.

Asia Village at 301 Northtown Drive NE held its grand opening June 13, 2026, transforming a former department store at Northtown Mall into an Asian food pavilion, retail and entertainment hub with about a dozen vendors. The full concept is roughly 130,000 square feet.

The vendor lineup, for the residents who have been asking whether it is worth the drive:

• Pho Mai Express, a counter-service spinoff from local restaurateur Michael Bui and his wife Mai, focused on build-your-own banh mi, noodle salads, and pho bowls
• Sot House, from the team behind Mirror of Korea, serving traditional Korean fare
• Chingu Fried Chicken, the Burnsville Center eatery specializing in Korean twice-fried chicken, opening its second Minnesota outpost
• 85°C Bakery Cafe, the Taiwanese chain making its Minnesota debut
• Hokkaido Ramen House, also a Minnesota debut
• Spice and Smoke Korean BBQ and Hot Pot, a full-service restaurant on the second floor
• Oday Creamery, the local outfit scooping Asian-inspired ice cream flavors

The reason Asia Village matters to homeowners has less to do with the food and more to do with what it says about foot traffic. An indoor playground of more than 11,000 square feet, with climbing areas and slides, is part of the lineup, with a game room featuring arcade games and claw machines planned to follow. That is a Saturday morning destination for families, in July or in January, which is exactly the problem a north metro suburb has to solve to hold onto young households.

One more that closes the loop: Cava, the customizable Mediterranean bowl chain, is opening one of its first two Minnesota locations at 12351 NE Ulysses Street in Blaine later this year. If you have been driving to Roseville for a Cava fix, that trip is about to get shorter.

The Rest Of The Summer Calendar

The 3M Open is the loudest event, but it is not the only one worth blocking off. The Blaine Festival returned June 26 to 28 with a parade, carnival rides, live music, pig races, petting zoo, and food vendors at Aquatore Park at 9191 Lincoln Street NE. That one is in the rearview, but the fall follow-up is not: the Oktoberfest concert series at Tom Ryan Park brings Fiddle and Flannels, Anti-Skip Protection, and GB Leighton to the bandshell, followed by the Flashlight Pumpkin event.

Between now and then, the Tom Ryan Park summer concert series continues. LP and the 45s is on the schedule, along with Bark in the Park at Aquatore Park. Night to Unite kicks off citywide at 5:30 p.m., which is the one August evening a year when your neighbors on the cul-de-sac you never see actually come out and stand in the street.

For families with school-age kids, Safety Camp runs August 12 and 13 at SBM Fire Station 3.

The Highway 65 Question That Outlasts Everything Else

The redevelopment on 105th Avenue only works if the road serving it works. That is the second-order story most residents have not fully absorbed yet.

MnDOT's Highway 65 project will convert the at-grade intersections at 99th, 105th, 109th, and 117th/Cloud Drive into grade-separated interchanges, add a pedestrian bridge near 113th to 114th, and shift local access to frontage and backage roads. C.S. McCrossan was the apparent low bidder at about $168.2 million, with construction beginning in June and work stretching roughly through summer 2030. Crews will try to maintain two lanes of traffic in each direction whenever possible, but motorists should plan for intermittent single-lane shifts, short closures, and detours during major work.

If you own a home along that corridor, the noise wall vote is the part to track. MnDOT identified several locations where noise walls are being considered, and affected property owners who would see at least a 5-decibel reduction are eligible to vote on whether a given wall is constructed. That vote is one of the few times the market value of a specific stretch of homes hinges on a single ballot process, and it is happening now.

The pattern to watch over the next four summers: as each interchange finishes, the property on either side of that intersection gets easier to reach and quieter to live on. That is a slow shift, but it is a real one, and it is why 105th Avenue is being redeveloped now rather than in 2030.

What The Week Adds Up To

Tournament week is the easiest week of the year to see Blaine clearly. The out-of-town press flies in, files their story about the golf course and the sod farm history, and flies out. The residents stay. What is left behind, after the tents come down, is a city that has quietly done more this spring than it has done in any single stretch in the last decade: a food hall grand opening in June, a fast-casual chain planting its Minnesota flag in April, a $168 million road project breaking ground, and a plan on paper for the strip that connects all of it.

If you have been thinking about what your house is worth in the middle of all this, or about whether the next stretch of Highway 65 changes what a home a block off the corridor will sell for, Epic Realty is a broker-led team based in downtown Anoka that watches this corner of the north metro closely. Get your free home valuation and see what the current market says your address is worth.