For most of the last decade, the pitch for buying in St. Paul's southwest corner came with an asterisk. Highland Park and Macalester-Groveland offered the character of Minneapolis's Linden Hills or Fulton corridor at a real discount, and the asterisk was always the same: once the old Ford assembly site finally filled in, the amenities would multiply, the neighborhood would tighten up, and the discount would close. Buyers were told, gently but consistently, to get in before that happened.
The site is filling in now. After roughly a decade of closure, construction at Highland Bridge, the 135-acre redevelopment of the former Ford Motor Company assembly plant, is finally moving at scale. And the comps in the two neighborhoods that sit closest to it just came in for early 2026. They don't tell the same story.
The Decade Nobody Priced In
Ford's Twin Cities assembly plant shut down in 2011. What followed was a long stretch of environmental review, community planning, and a master development agreement with Ryan Companies that promised a walkable, sustainable neighborhood on the site. What actually happened for years was very little. Market conditions and a slow city regulatory process kept much of the property as graded land and a handful of finished blocks.
That changed in May 2025, when the City of Saint Paul approved amended development agreements designed specifically to unstick the project. The amended terms committed the site's partners to 447 new housing units across three multifamily buildings, four new commercial buildings totaling roughly 36,500 square feet, and a $2.8 million prepayment toward green infrastructure. City officials framed it plainly at the time. Council President Rebecca Noecker put it this way:
"We're shifting development at Highland Bridge into high gear and putting developers on the hook to deliver."
Fifteen months later, that isn't just language in a press release. It's visible from the street.
What's Actually Landing At Highland Bridge Right Now
The build-out is arriving in pieces, not all at once, because different parcels are owned and built by different companies on different timelines.
| Partner | What They're Building | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Ryan Companies (master developer) | A 97-unit apartment building with roughly 14,000 square feet of standalone retail across three buildings and a 13,000-square-foot daycare center | Broke ground June 2025; substantially complete by November 2026 |
| M/I Homes | 144 new townhomes, with a first phase of 12 units platted along Woodlawn, Montreal, and Saunders avenues | Final plat approved June 2026 |
| Pulte Homes | 167 row homes | Expected completion late 2026 or early 2027 |
| Weidner Apartment Homes | Roughly 170 residential units with about 2,000 square feet of ground-floor retail | Construction expected to begin in September 2026 |
| Sustainable9 | Custom homes on premium lots along Mississippi River Boulevard, priced $475,000 to $1.15 million for land alone, with total build costs projected between $1.3 million and $3 million | Ongoing, with the Montreal Residence and Saunders Residence already built |
City planning staff gave the fullest picture yet in a May 2026 update to the Planning Commission: the completed development is now projected to include somewhere between 2,600 and 2,800 residential units, more than 55 acres of public open space, and roughly 66 acres still slated for private retail and housing. The next section, the block closest to Ford Parkway, is expected to reach substantial completion later this year.
That is a lot of new supply landing inside a neighborhood that spent a decade being sold on scarcity.
What The Comps Are Actually Saying
Here is where the story stops being simple.
In Highland, the neighborhood that borders Highland Bridge directly, median sale prices sat around $450,000 as of January 2026, up 0.6 percent year over year. Homes there were also moving faster: an average of 28 days on market, down from 35 days the year before. Fewer homes changed hands overall, but the ones that did were selling close to their prior pace and price.
In Macalester-Groveland, just beyond the development's immediate footprint, the March 2026 numbers moved the other direction. Median sale price came in at $482,919, down 3.4 percent year over year. Price per square foot fell even more sharply, down 13.9 percent to $242. Homes took longer to sell, averaging 34 days on market compared to 27 days the year before, and fewer of them sold at all: 34 homes changed hands in March 2026 versus 42 the year prior.
Two neighborhoods, one major construction project between them, and two different directions in the data during the exact months that project finally started delivering finished buildings.
Why Proximity Cuts Both Ways
The easy assumption walking into this market is that a major redevelopment lifts everything around it. More amenities, more foot traffic, more reasons to want to live nearby. That assumption is half right, and the half that's wrong is the half most buyers don't think to check.
Highland Park sits close enough to Highland Bridge to capture its upside directly. The neighborhood already has access to the site's Lunds & Byerlys grocery store, its parks, its trail network, and the storm-water feature that has become something of a signature for the development. Buyers shopping Highland right now are shopping a neighborhood that gets the amenities without absorbing much of the direct competition, since Highland Bridge's own new-construction townhomes and row homes are priced as their own product, largely for buyers comparing them against other new construction rather than against a 1920s bungalow three blocks away.
Macalester-Groveland is close enough to feel the competitive pressure without capturing as much of the amenity lift. Buyers weighing a renovated bungalow in Mac-Groveland against 144 new M/I Homes townhomes or 167 new Pulte row homes a short distance away now have a real alternative that didn't exist five years ago, and that alternative is brand new construction with modern systems, a warranty, and no deferred maintenance. That's a meaningfully different competitive set than the one Mac-Groveland sellers were pricing against in 2023 or 2024, and the March 2026 numbers, slower sales, softer price per square foot, longer time on market, look like a market absorbing that shift.
The takeaway isn't that new construction lowers home values nearby. Highland's own numbers say otherwise. The takeaway is that how close you sit to a project like this, and whether you're positioned to benefit from its amenities or compete with its inventory, determines which side of the ledger you land on.
What This Means If You're Comparing These Neighborhoods
If you've been circling St. Paul's southwest corner because it reads as the value alternative to Minneapolis's Linden Hills or Fulton, the current data changes the urgency calculus in each neighborhood differently.
In Macalester-Groveland, buyers currently have more room to negotiate than the multi-year "the discount is closing" narrative suggested. Sellers there should price against the March 2026 print, not against a story about future scarcity that the data isn't currently supporting. A well-priced, well-presented bungalow still sells, but the market is giving buyers more time and more leverage than it was a year ago.
In Highland Park, the calculus is closer to the original pitch. Faster turnover and flat-to-slightly-positive pricing suggest less slack for buyers who are waiting for a better entry point. If the appeal was always about being adjacent to the finished amenities rather than just adjacent to St. Paul character generally, Highland is delivering that closer to on schedule.
Either way, the decision shouldn't be made off the general story about the neighborhood. It should be made off which side of Highland Bridge's footprint a specific property actually sits on, and what that means for its competitive set over the next 12 to 24 months while the remaining phases finish.
A Few Questions Worth Asking
Does new construction near a neighborhood always lower resale values there? No. Highland's own numbers through January 2026 show slight price growth and faster sales even as Highland Bridge added hundreds of units next door. The effect depends on whether nearby homes compete directly with the new inventory or benefit from the amenities it brings without absorbing the competition.
How much longer will construction continue around Highland Bridge? Based on the city's May 2026 update to its Planning Commission, the section closest to Ford Parkway was expected to reach substantial completion later this year, but the full build-out, projected at 2,600 to 2,800 residential units across multiple owners and builders, is still years from finished.
Is Macalester-Groveland still worth a premium over St. Paul's more affordable neighborhoods? On a raw dollar basis, yes. Its March 2026 median of $482,919 remains well above the citywide figures typically cited for entry-level St. Paul neighborhoods. What's changed is that the gap isn't currently widening the way it was expected to a few years ago, which is worth factoring into how much urgency a buyer should feel.
Comparing a specific block in Highland against a specific block in Macalester-Groveland, or weighing either against Minneapolis's southwest lakes neighborhoods, is exactly the kind of decision that benefits from someone who tracks these numbers block by block rather than neighborhood by neighborhood. David K. Wells III Real Estate works both sides of the river from the Coldwell Banker Minneapolis Lakes office, with the Coldwell Banker Global Luxury network behind it when a search needs to stretch beyond one submarket. Contact David & Wren to discuss your next move.
