The Nine Mile Creek Detour You've Been Using Stops Working September 7

If you walk or bike through Moir and Central Park with any regularity, you already know the workaround. Since a pedestrian bridge north of Queen Avenue was pulled from service in the summer of 2025 after heavy rains chewed away its footings, regulars have learned to enter at James Road, walk south, and turn back before the gap. It's been a minor annoyance for more than a year now, the kind of local knowledge you pick up after one confused loop and never forget.

That workaround expires this week. Starting September 7, the entire park closes, not just the damaged bridge segment. Every trail access point, including the ones you've been using to route around the old closure, goes behind signage and barriers. This is not an extension of the inconvenience you already adapted to. It's a different kind of closure entirely, and knowing the difference changes where you should be walking this fall.

Why This One Doesn't Have a Workaround

The bridge closure that's been in effect since the summer of 2025 was a point failure. Erosion made one crossing unsafe, so the city fenced off that stretch and left the rest of the park open. What starts September 7 is the first phase of the Nine Mile Creek Corridor Renewal Project, and it treats the whole park as a construction site rather than a trail with one broken link.

The scope explains why there's no partial-access version. Crews are set to remove the existing shelter buildings and other park amenities in September and October to make room for a new shelter building the city plans to install in 2027. At the same time, work along the creek corridor covers stream and bankside restoration, woodland and wetland repair, invasive species removal, and ADA accessibility upgrades, with a possible boardwalk extension toward the Minnesota River. Harrison Park, part of the same corridor closure, is already shut down along with its own trail access point as construction on a new Veterans Memorial there moves forward. The City Council awarded the construction contracts for both the corridor renewal and a related lower-valley management plan on August 3, which is what set the September 7 closure date in motion.

None of this comes with a projected reopening date. The city's language is that the closure stays in effect until construction is complete, and given that the new shelter alone isn't slated for installation until 2027, this is a multi-season absence from the park, not a few weeks of detour signs.

Where the Money Came From

This project isn't a routine parks maintenance line item. In November 2023, Bloomington voters approved a half-percent local sales tax to finance $155 million in bonds across three projects: modernizing the Bloomington Ice Garden, building a new Community Health and Wellness Center, and rebuilding the Nine Mile Creek corridor along with Central and Moir Park. Residents voted to fund this specific rebuild two years before the first shovel went in the ground, which is worth knowing if the closure feels sudden. It isn't. It's been on the books since 2023, and this fall is when the funded work actually starts moving dirt.

Where the Walk Goes Instead

The city has been flagging alternatives since early summer, and they fall into two categories depending on what you actually liked about the Moir/Central loop.

If it was the creek-side ravine trail and the tree cover, your closest match is the Nine Mile Creek Regional Trail itself, which continues well beyond the closed section and connects Bloomington to Richfield, Edina, Minnetonka, and Hopkins along the same waterway.

If it was the shorter, close-to-home loop, a few named options cover that need:

• Girard Lake, 8401 France Ave S, has an 0.8-mile natural loop trail around the lake, an easy stand-in for a short evening walk.
• Pond Dakota Mission Park, 401 E 108th St, sits on a tree-framed bluff with views over the river valley and a longer local history than most people realize, tracing roughly 12,000 years of use by native peoples and later Euro-American settlers.
• Hyland-Bush-Anderson Lakes Park Reserve, spanning more than 2,600 acres, offers Richardson Nature Center at 8737 E Bush Lake Road, West Bush Lake Park at 9401 W Bush Lake Road, East Bush Lake Park and Beach at 9140 E Bush Lake Road, and Normandale Lake Park at West 84th Street and Chalet Road. As of January 1, 2025, Three Rivers Park District manages Bush Lake and Normandale Lake Park directly under a cooperative agreement with the city, so trail conditions and programming there run through one agency rather than two.
• Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge, with more than 46 miles of trails, has multiple entry points inside city limits: the Bloomington Education and Visitor Center at 3815 American Blvd E, the Old Cedar Avenue Bridge Trailhead at 9551 Old Cedar Ave S, Lyndale Avenue and Sorenson Landing at 11135 Lyndale Ave S, the Bloomington Ferry Road Trailhead at 11255 Bloomington Ferry Rd, and the Bass Ponds Trailhead at 2501 86th St E.

None of these replicate the exact ravine-and-creek feel of Moir Park's trail, which is part of what made it distinctive. But between the refuge's mileage and the Hyland-Bush-Anderson system's size, there's more total trail available across these alternatives than what's closing, even if it's spread across more separate access points.

The Corridor's Birding Season Doesn't Pause for Construction

One reason to lean toward Old Cedar Avenue Bridge specifically has nothing to do with the closure and everything to do with timing. Earlier this fall, on August 16, the city's own naturalist program ran a bird walk there, framed around the start of fall migration, covering binocular basics and the birding apps worth having on your phone. That program picked Old Cedar for a reason: it's one of the better migration corridors in the city, and the season it's built around runs well past mid-August.

So while Moir Park is losing its shelters and portions of its tree canopy to restoration work this fall, the corridor's most active birding stretch shifts a few miles south to a trailhead that was never on the closure list. If fall migration watching was part of why you used the Nine Mile Creek trails, Old Cedar Avenue Bridge is arguably a better stop for it than Moir Park ever was.

The Rest of the City's Trail Network Isn't Standing Still Either

It's tempting to read a park-wide closure as a step backward for Bloomington's trail system, but the same year Bloomington closes Moir Park is also advancing a separate trail project several miles south. Three Rivers Park District held a public open house on August 25 at the Edgewood/Jan's Place Shelter inside Hyland Lake Park Reserve to share a draft design for a new singletrack trail, developed in partnership with the One Track Mind Foundation. Construction is tentatively scheduled for 2027, with a target opening in spring 2028.

That timeline means Bloomington will spend the next two years simultaneously closing its most established creek trail for a full rebuild and opening a new kind of trail experience at Hyland that didn't exist before. Neither project is small, and neither is really about loss. Once the Moir/Central rebuild wraps, whenever that turns out to be, the corridor is set to reopen with restored wetlands, new ADA accessibility improvements, and a shelter and playground that don't currently exist. The city planned for both projects with the same set of trail users in mind, just on different clocks.

What to Actually Do This Month

If Moir Park has been your default trail, don't wait until September 7 to figure out your alternative. Pick one of the options above based on what you actually go there for, whether that's a short lake loop, a longer wooded hike, or migration season birding, and start using it now so the switch on closure day is a formality rather than a scramble.

Bloomington's trail network is in the middle of its biggest single investment since the corridor was established, funded by a vote residents already made in 2023. The closure is real, the timeline is long, and the payoff is a rebuilt park most current trail users haven't seen yet. Knowing which door closes and which ones stay open is the difference between losing your fall walk and just relocating it for a while.

If you're weighing what a specific corner of Bloomington actually offers day to day, whether that's trail access, park proximity, or the kind of neighborhood texture that doesn't show up in a listing description, the Amanda Cox Home Team spends enough time in these neighborhoods to know the difference. Reach out anytime to talk through what a particular block or park system means for how you'd actually live there.