NORTH MANKATO — New pavement, safety upgrades and other improvements coming to Highway 169 in Mankato-North Mankato won’t shut down the busy highway for the entire construction season next year.
Overall construction — including preliminary work on frontage roads adjacent to the highway and lane closures in the final stages of paving — will likely consume every bit of available time from when the frost leaves the ground in April until winter’s chill returns in November.
“It’s a lot of work to fit into one year,” said Nick Ollrich, the project manager for the Minnesota Department of Transportation.
But the complete closure of the busy highway from just north of the Belgrade Avenue interchange to just south of Lind Street — and the resulting detour for the 24,000 drivers who use that stretch of roadway each day — should be more limited, Ollrich said. More like five months, starting no earlier than May with a reopening as soon as early October.
Ollrich was one of numerous state and local officials answering questions from dozens of residents and highway users attending a project open house in North Mankato’s Spring Lake Park Wednesday afternoon.
A sizable undertaking
The heavy turnout demonstrated the intense interest in a project that will bring major disruption for the two communities and for drivers who use Highway 169 to travel from southern Minnesota to the Twin Cities metropolitan area and points in between.
When it’s done though, following additional work farther to the south during the 2028 construction season, the two-year $56 million project will bring not just new pavement but also a new look for the community’s second busiest highway and its primary entryway from the north.
“This is a really significant transformation for the Mankato-North Mankato community,” Ollrich said.
The 2027 portion of the project totals an estimated $37 million and will bring complete reconstruction of more than a mile of pavement, replacement of signalized intersections with roundabouts, the elimination of the Lind Street intersection, the creation of a new intersection at North River Lane south of Lind Street, the addition of two pedestrian underpasses and substantial changes to the appearance of the highway’s northern segment.
“We’ve got a lot of landscaping and aesthetic improvements included,” Ollrich said.
One couple’s review
North Mankato residents Mike and Sheila Skilling, who attended the open house, are looking forward to the finished product, treating the traffic turmoil that comes first as an inevitable necessity.
“When it’s done, it’ll be nice,” Mike Skilling said.
He was referring to the improved pavement and the elimination of the red lights at Webster Avenue and at the intersection north of Webster — not the trees, native flowers and other decorative elements.
“That doesn’t do a whole lot for me,” he said.
His wife, however, likes those elements.
“I think it’s going to be beautiful,” Sheila said.
She was less enamored with the roundabouts in the design: “I’m not quite sure some people know how to do a roundabout, quite honestly.”
Retired, the Skillings are not too worried about the detours. And as Wall Street residents, they don’t expect a lot of traffic to end up on their narrow street when the highway is closed, although they wonder if a few confused drivers — looking for a shortcut alternative to the recommended detours — might end up heading the wrong way down the one-way residential street.
Detour details
The official detour will send Highway 169 through-traffic to Lookout Drive and Highway 14, Ollrich said. But people looking to get to lower North Mankato and to Mankato businesses on the east side of the closed highway will have less lengthy options.
The Belgrade Avenue interchange — which was closed as part of this year’s Veterans Memorial Bridge reconstruction — will be completed and open to traffic by the end of 2026. So drivers from Mankato, as well as those coming from south of Mankato on Highway 169, will be able to use Belgrade to reach lower North Mankato even when the highway is shut down just north of the Belgrade interchange.
The Highway 169-Highway 14 interchange will also remain open throughout the project, as will the Lind Street intersection during the months when Highway 169 is being detoured, Ollrich said. That means drivers on Highway 14 will be able to exit the highway at 169 and use Lind Street to reach lower North Mankato. The same route will provide access to businesses such as the McDonalds, Kwik Trip, the Harley Davidson dealership and others located between the closed portion of Highway 169 and the Minnesota River.
Highway 169 drivers arriving from the north will be able to use that Lind Street option, too, to reach those destinations.
Schedule specifics
Work next year will actually begin in April on the frontage roads to make them ready to provide local access when the detour kicks in.
“We want to get the contractor started as early as possible in the spring,” Ollrich said.
Once that work is complete, the major construction on Highway 169 will begin — likely in May but possibly in June. That’s when the highway will be closed to traffic and the detour will be in force.
When work is finished on the closed portion of Highway 169 in the fall of 2027, it will reopen to traffic and crews will focus on repaving the northern segment of the highway from just south of Lind Street to Mankato’s northern edge. That surface-level mill-and-overlay work can be done while traffic flows, although there will be significant lane restrictions.
And whatever it takes, the contractor will need to wrap up all work that necessitates a detour next year.
“We do have a requirement that the contractor open it up at the end of 2027,” Ollrich said. “We anticipate sometime in October or November.”
If poor weather or other issues delay construction, the mill-and-overlay on the north end could be pushed off to the 2028 construction season. But that work could be finished without closing the road to traffic.
Although more details on the 2028 portion of the project won’t be revealed until later next year, it’s already been decided that the second-year improvements will be scaled back.
“Due to budgetary constraints, we had to reduce the scope a little bit,” Ollrich said.
The southern segment from the Belgrade interchange to the Riverfront Drive interchange near West High School will still receive new pavement and repairs to bridges, including the North Star Bridge in 2028. Other elements, such as stormwater and drainage upgrades, will be delayed until the next time that area is due for repaving.
Deferring that work, along with updated cost projections on the rest of the project, resulted in the preliminary $80 million estimated expense declining to $56 million. But precise costs won’t be known until bids are sought and received late this year.