Things to Do in Edina Late Summer This August

If you drove past 3945 Market Street this week, you saw plywood where Lynhall used to be. Two blocks south, 5036 France is dark inside the old Cocina del Barrio windows. A third storefront, the former Salut, has butcher paper up. It looks like something is wrong with 50th & France. Nothing is wrong. Four separate restaurants are being built at once, and none of them will be serving dinner in August.

That is the shape of Edina's late summer. The dining district everyone defaults to is in a between-tenants moment, and the programming worth actually planning around is a mile east at Centennial Lakes Park, where the free concert calendar runs to the end of the month and hands off to Fall into the Arts on September 12. If you live here, the six weeks between now and mid-September are a good stretch to relearn the park and treat 50th & France as a place to check back in November.

The concert cadence at Maetzold, actually explained

Centennial Lakes puts free live music at Maetzold Amphitheater from June through August. The rhythm is more specific than most residents remember: 7 p.m. Sundays, Mondays, and Wednesdays for family-friendly evening performances, and 10 a.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays for kids' shows. Picnics are welcome, alcohol is not, and concerts run rain or shine unless the city cancels for thunderstorms. Popcorn, ice cream, and beverages are for sale near the seating.

The amphitheater has tiered concrete seating, but blanket-and-lawn-chair space fills in quickly on warm Sundays. Free parking is at Hughes Pavilion and across the amphitheater in the Centennial Lakes Office Park on West 76th Street, which is the entrance most people forget until Hughes is full.

Thursdays do double duty. The children's concert wraps by mid-morning, and the Centennial Lakes Farmers Market takes the plaza from 3 to 7 p.m. from mid-June through late September. If you have never treated a Thursday as a "kids' show, market run, dinner on the lawn" day, that is the underused version of this park.

A late-August calendar worth blocking off

The Torchlight Concert is the one to protect on the calendar if you have not been. The Model Yacht Club's Lighthouse Night is quieter and stranger and genuinely charming if you have a kid who likes little boats.

50th & France is a construction site right now

Four restaurants are being fitted out in the same six-block district, and the opening dates cluster in a way that will change how residents move through the neighborhood after Halloween.

• Thérèse, an upscale French brasserie from Daniel del Prado, is taking the former Lynhall space at 3945 Market Street inside Nolan Mains, with an early November opening. The menu leans classic: steak frites, croque monsieur, Lyonnaise salad, escargot, French onion soup, plus more ambitious plates like uni custard, stuffed pig trotters, and langoustine ravioli. Beverage director Megan Luedtke is handling the French wine and cocktail program.
• Americana, del Prado's partnership with Ryan Burnet, is going into the former Cocina del Barrio at 5036 France Avenue South by fall 2026, with a glass-enclosed rooftop patio and a redesign by Christian Dean Architecture. The project has been slowed by an Edina parking ordinance that requires the restaurant to add 14 off-street spaces so the district's public ramps stay usable for everyone else.
• General Sports Bar, from the Nolo's team, is opening this summer in the former Salut Bar Americain space at 5034 France, with more than 25 TVs. Of the four projects, this is the one most likely to actually be pouring drinks before Labor Day.
• Smith Coffee & Cafe, the Eden Prairie farmhouse cafe, is taking the former D'Amico & Sons space at 3948 West 50th Street. Owner Ann Schuster is targeting a fall grand opening, with daily hours from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. and the possibility of pizza nights later.

Two things to know as a resident. First, the Vernon Avenue and Highway 100 interchange work wrapped up in late June, which means the drive from north Edina to 50th & France is now a genuinely different trip than it was a year ago. Second, most of what is happening at 50th & France between now and Halloween is behind construction fencing. Treat it as a fall project.

Where the neighborhood is actually eating this month

The dining that is open, not coming soon, sits in a wider ring around the district.

The Mad Hatter Bakery and Cafe at 7300 Metro Boulevard, inside One Corporate Center, has been open since late April. Owner Jules Hill, a longtime farmers market fixture with the Mad Hatter Cake Co., is doing British comfort food that is hard to find anywhere else in the metro: sausages, meat pies, scones with clotted cream, Belgian buns. Weekdays 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., dine-in or patio.

Starling, the Jester Concepts restaurant at 4917 Eden Avenue across from Edina City Hall, has been the "restaurant desert" solve on the northwest side since it opened. Balinese fried rice, curry cauliflower, sticky wings, a monkey pod bar. It does not take reservations except for large parties, which owner Brent Frederick has said is the point.

Over near 50th, the Side Door at Dexter's food hall inside del Prado's Dexter's on West 50th Street runs three counters worth knowing: Daq Daq for Korean fried chicken, Lucia's for pizza and salad, and Rose Sushi for nigiri and rolls. It is the closest thing to a "50th & France dinner" that will actually be open on a Tuesday in August.

At Southdale, Smithson from the Baldamar and 6Smith team is a steak-and-seafood project slated to open in fall 2026, which is worth knowing about now because it changes what Southdale's dinner options look like once it lands.

Fall into the Arts is the bookend

The 22nd Annual Edina Fall into the Arts Festival takes over Centennial Lakes Park and 7601 France Avenue on September 12 and 13, 2026, with roughly 245 artists, food vendors, and sponsors. Saturday runs 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free to attend. Proceeds go to the Edina First Responders Fund.

This is the day the summer programming at Centennial Lakes ends and the fall calendar begins. It is also the largest single event held in Edina outside of the Fourth of July, and Explore Edina calls Centennial Lakes one of the most scenic art fair locations in the Midwest, which is a rare piece of tourism copy that turns out to be true. Photography, jewelry, pottery, sculpture, wearable art, glass, fiber, wood, painting. If you have been to it three times, the useful move is to arrive on Sunday morning instead of Saturday afternoon, when the crowd is lighter and the artists are more likely to talk.

One Saturday that uses all of it

If you want a template for the next few weeks, this one works with kids or without:

1. Coffee and a pastry at Mad Hatter on Metro Boulevard around 9 a.m. before the corporate campus fills in.
2. Farmers market at Centennial Lakes on a Thursday afternoon, or the 10 a.m. Tuesday or Thursday kids' show if you have small ones.
3. Nine holes on the Centennial Lakes putting course, $7, or a walk around the ponds looking for the model yachts on a Sunday afternoon.
4. Dinner at Side Door at Dexter's on 50th, or at Starling on Eden Avenue if you want a sit-down table without a reservation battle.
5. A Sunday evening concert at Maetzold with a blanket, or the Torchlight Concert if the date lines up.
6. Sept. 12 or 13, back at Centennial Lakes for Fall into the Arts.

That is the whole late-summer arc: the park is doing the heavy lifting, the shopping district is under scaffolding, and the interesting new restaurants are either three months out or a mile from where you would look for them.

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