ST. LOUIS PARK

Suburban boom

At the end of World War I, only seven scattered retail stores operated in St. Louis Park because streetcars provided easy access to shopping in Minneapolis. Between 1920 and 1930, the population doubled from 2,281 to 4,710. Vigorous homebuilding occurred in the late 1930s to accommodate the pent-up need created during the Depression. With America's involvement in World War II, however, all development came to a halt.

Explosive growth came after World War II. In 1940, 7,737 people lived in St. Louis Park. By 1955, more than 30,000 new residents had joined them. From 1940 to 1955, growth averaged 6.9 persons moving into St. Louis Park every day. Sixty percent of St. Louis Park's homes were built in a single burst of construction from the late 1940s to the early 1950s.

Residential development was closely followed by commercial developers eager to bring goods and services to these new households. In the late 1940s, Minnesota's first shopping center — the 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m2) Lilac Way — was constructed on the northeast corner of Excelsior Boulevard and Highway 100. (The Lilac Way shopping center was torn down in the late 1980s to make way for redevelopment.) Miracle Mile shopping center, built in 1950, and Knollwood Mall, which opened in 1956, remain open today.

In the late 1940s, a group of 11 former army doctors opened the St. Louis Park Medical Center in a small building on Excelsior Boulevard. The medical center merged with Methodist Hospital and today is Park Nicollet Health Services, part of HealthPartners, the second-largest medical clinic in Minnesota (after Rochester's Mayo Clinic).

During the period between 1950 and 1956, 66 new subdivisions were recorded to make room for 2,700 new homes. In 1953 and 1954, the final two parcels — Kilmer and Shelard Park — were annexed. These parcels (originally in Minnetonka) came to St. Louis Park because of their ability to provide sewer and water service. According to Al Franken, whose mother was a realtor there, in the Twin Cities the area was nicknamed St. Jewish Park, given that 20% of its residents were of Jewish background. He states also that there appeared to be a tacit agreement between bankers, developers and real estate agents to ensure redlining, in order to prevent the spread of Jewish and Afro-American families across streets like Texas Avenue into areas with a different ethnic composition.

From village to city

In 1954, voters approved a home rule charter that gave an overwhelmed St. Louis Park the status of a city. That enabled the city to hire a city manager to assume some of the duties handled by the part-time city council. Several bridges built during that time are now being repaired or razed.

In those days, the primary concerns were the physical planning of St. Louis Park, updating zoning and construction codes, expanding sewer and water systems, paving streets, acquiring park land and building schools.

Filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, who grew up in St. Louis Park, set their 2009 film A Serious Man in the city c. 1967. It was important to the Coens to find a neighborhood of original-looking suburban rambler homes as they would have appeared in St. Louis Park in the mid-1960s, and after careful scouting they opted to film scenes in a neighborhood of nearby Bloomington, as well as at St. Louis Park's B'nai Emet Synagogue, which was later sold and converted into a school.

In the mid-2020s, St. Louis Park experienced a significant surge in transit-oriented and commercial redevelopment, anchored heavily by the upcoming Southwest light rail line. The city's top-tier commercial spaces bucked broader metropolitan office vacancy trends; by late 2025, the West End district posted a vacancy rate of just 12.8%, the lowest major corridor vacancy in the Twin Cities metro. Major multi-family residential construction projects also advanced, including the $130 million, 380-unit Beltline Station project by Sherman Associates, and the 223-unit Terasă mixed-use redevelopment at the former 5401 Gamble Drive office site, which officially broke ground in early 2026. Additionally, municipal infrastructure updates during this period included the extensive Cedar Lake Road and Louisiana Avenue intersection improvements, which integrated new modern roundabout corridors.