If you drove to Ridgedale Commons on a Tuesday afternoon this summer expecting the farmers market, you probably found a quiet plaza instead of live music and a produce table. That's not a scheduling glitch. The market packed up and went home, literally, back to the parking lot it started in at The Marsh on Minnetonka Boulevard. Ridgedale Center's own visitor FAQ confirms it in blunt terms: the market that used to run at the Commons has been moved back to its original site by the city.
What's worth understanding isn't just the address change. It's why the plaza built next to Ridgedale Mall never actually needed a weekly market to justify its existence, and why the rest of Minnetonka's outdoor summer calendar didn't collapse into one location when the produce stands left. The city split its programming across three distinct places, and each one now does a specific job.
Where the Market Actually Went
The Minnetonka Farmers Market runs Tuesdays from 2 to 6 p.m. through Sept. 29, 2026, at The Marsh parking lot, 15000 Minnetonka Blvd. That's roughly three and a half miles southwest of Ridgedale, back at the site the market operated from before its stint at the Commons. The weekly rhythm hasn't changed: fresh eggs, meats, breads, produce, flowers, and dinner-to-go from local chefs, plus the Power of Produce Club that gives kids a two-dollar voucher each week to pick their own fruits and vegetables. If you've been meaning to use those vouchers before they expire on Sept. 29, this is the season's last stretch.
If you're the type who plans a Tuesday evening around the market, that closing date matters more than it sounds. There are only a few Tuesdays left before it packs up for the winter.
The Plaza Was Never Designed Around a Market
Ridgedale Commons opened in 2023 as Minnetonka's first urban park, built on two acres donated to the city through a 2018 residential development's park dedication. Part of the additional funding, including nearly a million dollars, came from park dedication fees tied to the United Properties apartment project off Carlson Parkway. The design brief was never "farmers market venue." It was flexible event space: a plaza and grassy lawn built to host both markets and ice skating, a garden room planted with pollinator species, an interactive fountain, a wooded lounge area, and a park building with restrooms, a warming house, and a rentable meeting room for groups up to 39.
That's the detail that explains why losing the market didn't leave a hole. The plaza was engineered to rotate through different uses depending on the season, not to anchor itself to one recurring event. A market was simply the first tenant to occupy it.
What Actually Fills the Calendar Now
With the market gone, the Commons still runs its own lineup, just a different one than most people assume:
- Saturday morning lawn yoga, 8:30 a.m., through the summer
- Carnival in the Commons, held Aug. 8, 2026 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., with a DJ, bouncy house, face painting, and yard games
- Light Up the Commons, the city's winter kickoff in December, with park lighting, hot cocoa, a food truck, a fire performer, a glow stick and candy hunt, and a costume contest for dogs
- Ice skating on the plaza once the season turns cold, the same lawn that hosts summer yoga
None of that requires a produce vendor. It requires open lawn, a fountain that can be turned off for winter, and a park building with a warming house. The Commons was built for exactly this kind of seasonal flip, and it's been running that way since before the market ever left.
The Rest of Summer Didn't Collapse Into One Spot
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you only think about Ridgedale: Minnetonka's broader outdoor programming didn't consolidate at the Commons when the market moved out. It spread across other city parks that already had their own identities.
Civic Center Park, at 14600 Minnetonka Blvd., runs its own Tuesday evening concert series at its outdoor amphitheater, a separate event from anything happening at the Commons or The Marsh. The city's free movie nights, shown about 15 minutes after sunset, filled out the same summer calendar, with Zootopia 2 on Aug. 27, Lilo & Stitch on Sept. 4, and Elio on Sept. 11 closing out the season.
Put the sites side by side and a pattern shows up that a single roundup post won't tell you: The Marsh handles the weekly market. Civic Center Park handles the concert series. Ridgedale Commons handles carnivals, lawn yoga, and the transition into winter lighting and skating. Nobody consolidated. The city spread its summer programming across specialized venues instead of one general-purpose one, and each keeps its own calendar.
What This Means If You Live Near Ridgedale
For residents who circle the district for errands, dinner, or a weekend walk, this matters more than a scheduling footnote. If you're heading out for produce, that's a Tuesday afternoon trip to The Marsh, not the mall. If you want a free concert or movie under the stars, that's Civic Center Park. If you're looking for something to do with kids on a Saturday morning, or you want to catch the December lighting event before the cold really sets in, that's the Commons.
The district around Ridgedale keeps shifting in smaller ways too. A LEGO Store opened inside the mall in August 2025, Alo Yoga followed in October 2025, and Dave's Hot Chicken has been drawing lines since it opened directly across Plymouth Road from the mall entrance. None of that is tied to the market's move, but it's part of the same pattern: this corner of Minnetonka keeps adding new reasons to stop by, they just don't all live at the same address anymore.
Two Tuesdays are left before the Minnetonka Farmers Market closes for the season on Sept. 29. After that, Ridgedale Commons goes quiet on produce and starts building toward Light Up the Commons in December, the plaza doing exactly what it was designed to do all along.
If you're curious about more of what's changing around Wayzata, Lake Minnetonka, and the western suburbs, from local happenings to the neighborhoods themselves, the Fowke Weber Team keeps a close eye on both. Get in touch anytime you want a local read on the area.
