Jonathan Atkins
City Traffic Engineer

New streets and avenues will criss-cross the 16-acre Center Mall area.

Fourth Street will extend north past the east side of the Center Mall parking ramp.

The new section of Sixth Street runs between the former United Sugars building and new commercial and residential 650 Block. (Photos/Nancy Hanson.)

Fifth Street will fall along the east side of the soon-to-be-freestanding City Hall.

Nancy Edmonds Hanson

Completion of the 11th Street underpass project in 2026 may be at the forefront of Moorheaders’ minds these days. But much more construction is coming up, some of it likely to change residents’ mental map of their city.
Traffic engineer Jonathan Atkins’ new office on the seventh floor of the FM Center looks out onto an area that will be transformed next summer. The nine blocks of the 16-acre site were combined 50 years ago to build the Moorhead Center Mall. They will be split again into a grid much like the area’s original configuration.
Work has already begun on Sixth Street, the roadway that separates the 650 Block project now rising east of the former United Sugars building. It will stretch about two blocks, from Center to the railroad tracks.
The new grid of city streets and avenues will stretch from a straightened Fourth Street on the west to the new Sixth, with a jogged two-block reincarnation of Fifth Street in between. The three street extensions will cross two new avenues, Minnesota and Red River, flanking the site of the soon-to-be-freestanding City Hall. Red River Avenue will follow the route of what’s currently called Center Mall Avenue; Center Mall North, the condominium-style strip mall, will tie into it.
The northward Fourth Street extension will pass the city-owned parking ramp on its east side. Planners have determined the ramp structure is sound; it will remain, standing alone to the west of the demolished mall.
The new street plan is a key part of the city’s goal of creating a walkable neighborhood where only businesses stood in the past. The five-block-square street grid is expected to be lined with a variety of mixed-use developments, many with commercial and retail spaces on the ground level and apartments or condominiums above. The area is expected to fill in slowly over the next five to ten years – avoiding the pitfalls of flooding the market too quickly with available real estate.
“A large portion of the downtown street construction is scheduled for 2025, with some carryover into 2026,” engineer Atkins explains.
But downtown streets aren’t the only project coming up for the center of Moorhead.
“The Minnesota Department of Transportation won’t stop when the underpass is finished in 2026,” he notes. “They’ll begin work on US Highways 75 and 10 toward the east in 2027.” Highway 75 runs up Eighth Street to downtown, then turns east along US Highway 10. The two major routes, both heavily traveled, separate again west of the Eastern Mall area.
“We’ve been planning for the upgrade of Highways 10 and 75 since 2016,” Atkins points out. “Metro Cog (the Metropolitan Council of Governments) led the study along with Moorhead and MNDoT. We have high hopes for the outcome.”
According to Atkins, MNDoT will carry out a mill-and-overlay from 24th Street to Main in 2027. “It will take care of the double curves,” he predicts. An additional project planned in 2029 will create a safe pedestrian and bicycle pathway all the way from downtown Moorhead to Dilworth.
Atkins understands that extensive roadwork is never popular at the time it’s undertaken. “Every construction project starts with a hole in the ground. There are always going to be detours and traffic delays. You’ve always got to adjust signals, figure out new routes, add or remove stop signs,” he admits. “It’s annoying to have to adjust your habits.
“But in the long term, the public benefits. That’s what makes the disruption worth it: two years of construction versus 25 more of smoother driving and better travel times.”