Long before Nordstrom opened at Ridgedale Center in Minnetonka, the site was farmland, light industry, and open fields. By 1974, it had become a two-level enclosed mall with just over one million square feet of retail space.
Today, some of the original parking spaces are a city park with a skating rink. The former Sears site now holds a 35-foot climbing wall and an indoor batting cage.
The mall stands off I-394 in Minnetonka, about a mile from I-494. That location helped shape the center and gave it a steady flow of drivers from more than one direction.
Most people in the center court today would not think about the planning disputes during the mall's development or the construction fire during a department-store renovation.
But that history is still visible in the layout. The mall was built around four anchor stores. Part of the parking lot edge became what Minnetonka calls its first urban park.
Ridgedale Center is partly a retail story and partly a planning story. Most of all, it is the story of a site that kept being rebuilt without ever being torn down completely.
Ridgedale Center: Planning, Opening, and Early Impact
The project started under different names. During planning, the development was considered under the working titles "Oakdale" and "Twelve Oaks" before landing on Ridgedale.
Dayton-Hudson developed the center, and it became the fourth in the Twin Cities "dale" series, following Southdale, Brookdale, and Rosedale.
Cerny Associates served as architect, and Gunnar I. Johnson as contractor.
The opening happened in stages. On July 29, 1974, a two-level Dayton's and roughly twenty inline stores held their dedication ceremony.
JCPenney opened on January 22, 1975, followed by Sears on March 5, 1975, with Donaldson's arriving later.
The mall had been announced in 1972 and drew environmental criticism during the planning process, though the construction moved forward on schedule.
The original enclosed center came in at roughly 995,000 leasable square feet, with Dayton's, Donaldson's, JCPenney, and Sears filling the four anchor positions.
What those early numbers do not quite capture is how much the center represented a new direction for western Hennepin County.
Minnetonka's own planning material describes the Ridgedale Center area transforming from farming and light industrial land into a major regional retail district in the early 1970s.
The mall did not appear on existing suburban infrastructure - it helped create new infrastructure around it, a pattern the city is still working with today, more than fifty years later.
Ridgedale's Long Anchor Shuffle
The most complicated chapter in Ridgedale's interior life involved one department-store box that changed hands, brands, and purposes repeatedly over three decades.
Donaldson's, one of the original four anchors, was sold in 1987 and rebranded as Carson Pirie Scott in 1988. That Carson's location closed in 1995.
What happened next was a deliberate competitive move: the former Carson's building became a second Dayton's, this one focused on men's and home merchandise.
At the same time, the original Dayton's shifted its attention to women's and children's.
The two-Dayton's arrangement was understood at the time as a way to prevent Nordstrom from taking a foothold at Ridgedale Center - occupying the box before anyone else could.
The name changed again when Dayton's became Marshall Field's, and again when Marshall Field's became Macy's.
By January 2013, the two buildings were operating as Macy's Women's and Children's and Macy's Men's and Home.
That year's redevelopment plan would close the secondary Macy's box entirely and fold those functions into an expanded main Macy's store, freeing up the second building for Nordstrom.
This retailer had been held off for nearly two decades.
2007 Renovation and the Tenants That Never Materialized
Before the bigger 2013-2015 remake, Ridgedale Center began a major interior renovation in March 2007.
The project included new ceilings and lighting, Italian tile in the central atrium, refinished columns with color-changing LED panels, a redesigned water wall, new flooring in the center court, new carpeting on the second floor, and rebuilt lower-level restrooms near JCPenney.
The mall stayed open during construction, so most of the work took place after hours. The project lasted nine months.
Its purpose was to update the center as it competed with Mall of America and with newer open-air shopping centers that had become more popular in the previous decade.
That same year, in November 2007, Nordstrom signed a letter of intent for a Ridgedale store planned for 2011. The timing did not hold.
A planned Trader Joe's at Ridgedale Center stalled in fall 2008. Nordstrom then pulled back its plans for the site in February 2009.
General Growth Properties had owned Ridgedale since 2004 through a $190 million fixed-rate loan deal, and by then the company was heading toward the bankruptcy filing it made later that year.
The new tenants, the building changes, and the larger remake all had to wait.
The 2013-2015 Overhaul That Remade the Mall
On January 4, 2013, Nordstrom confirmed a second Twin Cities full-line store at Ridgedale Center, targeted for fall 2015.
The deal required Macy's to close its Men's and Home building, absorb those departments into an expanded main store, and hand the vacated building over to Nordstrom, which would occupy about 138,000 square feet.
That was only the first phase of what became a multi-year project. By February 2014, the city of Minnetonka had approved a second phase.
It covered a new 142,000-square-foot Nordstrom, an 87,800-square-foot two-story mall addition, two new restaurants, and two new mall entrances.
It also included exterior access on three sides of the Nordstrom building, a pedestrian bridge over the loading docks, reconstructed parking, and stormwater improvements.
During construction in November 2013, welding work in the northwest corner of the Macy's construction site started a fire in the roof area.
Shoppers and employees were evacuated, and no injuries were reported.
Nordstrom opened on October 2, 2015, as a two-level, 140,000-square-foot full-line store with a restaurant and bar.
By that point, Ridgedale Center had also added Banana Republic, TUMI, Tommy Bahama, Michael Kors, Athleta, Redstone American Grill, Tiger Sushi, and Oliver's, among others.
A Twin Cities Business article from October 2015 said the Nordstrom opening positioned Ridgedale at the top of the west metro's mall market after what it called a decades-long decline.
Sears Closes, and Something Else Takes Its Place
Sears had been part of Ridgedale Center since March 1975. After Sears filed for bankruptcy in 2018, the Ridgedale store was included in the closure plan and held liquidation sales through the end of that year.
The building then stood empty until Dick's House of Sport opened there on June 3, 2022.
The new store covers 115,000 square feet and was built to function more like a sports complex than a standard sporting goods store.
The ceiling was raised to 35 feet for a climbing wall.
The space also includes batting cages, golf simulators, and an outdoor turf field measuring 20,000 square feet. In winter, that field becomes a hockey rink.
The former Sears Automotive outbuilding took a different route. In December 2023, plans were announced for a 27,000-square-foot Kowalski's grocery store in that space, with a target opening in 2025.
The Ridgedale Center tenant directory now includes Kowalski's in its system with a coming soon mark.
From Parking Lots to Parks and New Tenants
The area around Ridgedale Center did not stay the same while the mall changed. Minnetonka started the Ridgedale Village Center Study in 2012. In 2017, the city adopted a public realm plan for the district.
It set goals for 800 housing units, 180,000 square feet of office space, 250 hotel rooms, and at least $400 million in capital investment.
One clear result appeared in 2023. A two-acre part of the mall parking lot became Ridgedale Commons. The city calls it Minnetonka's first urban park.
It has a stage, an open lawn, seating, a winter skating area, an interactive water feature, more than 100 trees, and 83 plant species. The Minnetonka Farmers Market used the site.
The mall itself also kept changing. A LEGO Store opened in August 2025 on Level 1 near Center Court. Alo Yoga opened in October 2025.
Dick's House of Sport added a Collector's Clubhouse for trading cards and memorabilia. Lululemon expanded its store in late 2025.
Ridgedale Center also drew more visitors. It was listed among Twin Cities malls with strong gains in traffic. The increase was tied to dining, entertainment, and recurring events that brought people back.
A decade earlier, that pattern was more common at outdoor lifestyle centers than at enclosed regional malls that opened in 1974.
Ridgedale Center
Former shopping mall in Minnetonka, MN
Address: 12401 Wayzata Blvd, Minnetonka, MN 55305
Opened: 1974
Developer: Dayton-Hudson Corporation
Owner: Brookfield Properties, CBRE Group
Floor area: 1,105,337 square feetClosest cities:
Minneapolis, MN
Plymouth, MN
Hopkins, MN
Wayzata, MN
St. Louis Park, MN
Eden Prairie, MN
Golden Valley, MN
