In January, Baxter City Hall filled past standing room. People held signs that said "Please Vote No." The Baxter City Council spent the better part of two meetings arguing over a $58 million overpass design nobody had fully agreed to trust, and on January 20 they voted 3-2 to reject it unless the Minnesota Department of Transportation met seven conditions. Three weeks later, MnDOT sent a letter accepting those conditions, and the fight that had consumed Baxter's winter was, on paper, over.
If you've driven Highway 210 through Baxter's commercial corridor since spring, you already know the four-year construction era everyone braced for didn't wait for that overpass. It started somewhere else, and most of the public argument never mentioned it.
What Everyone Watched This Winter
The project that packed the council chambers is the Highway 371 and Highway 210 interchange rebuild, known locally by its design name: the buttonhook. It lifts Highway 371 over the BNSF Railway tracks and over Highway 210, adds a second bridge over Excelsior Road, and threads in five roundabouts, two of them carrying east-west traffic on Highway 210. It's a Corridors of Commerce-funded project, meaning the state picked up most of the $58 million, with Baxter covering an estimated $4 million in related costs for streets, storm sewer, and utility work.
The Brainerd Lakes Chamber of Commerce surveyed Baxter businesses ahead of the vote and found 60 percent rated the buttonhook design poor or very poor, with 58 percent wanting major changes. Council members Mark Cross and Patrick Sundberg voted against the project outright. Mayor Darrel Olson, Connie Lyscio, and Zach Tabatt voted to approve it with conditions attached, which is the version that ultimately moved forward once MnDOT's district engineer confirmed the state would meet Baxter's terms.
That's the story with the packed room and the raised signs. It is not, however, the project currently under construction.
The Project That Already Has a Start Date
Running in parallel, and with far less public drama, is a separate $45.8 million reconstruction of Highway 210 and Washington Street, stretching from Baxter Drive to the east end of the four-lane section in Brainerd. It's a different scope, a different budget, and critically, a different clock. Where the overpass isn't expected to break ground until 2028, this corridor work was already penciled in for 2026 and 2027, and the Chamber said as much in January, while the overpass debate was still unresolved.
"We have confidence in the resilience of our small businesses"
That's the Chamber, writing the week of the council vote, bracing its members for what it called four years of major road construction, starting with Washington Street that spring. The overpass got the headlines. Washington Street got the excavators.
Here's how the two projects actually stack up:
| Project | Cost | Where | Construction Window |
|---|---|---|---|
| Highway 210 / Washington Street reconstruction | $45.8 million | Baxter Drive to the east end of the four-lane in Brainerd | 2026 to 2027 |
| Highway 371 / Highway 210 buttonhook overpass | $58 million | The 371/210 interchange, BNSF crossing, and a new Excelsior Road bridge | 2028 to 2029 |
Put together, that's the four-year stretch the Chamber flagged, running from this year through 2029, and the confusing part for most residents is that the more disruptive-sounding project, the one with roundabouts and a railroad overpass, is actually the second half.
What This Means for Getting Around Right Now
If your daily route touches Highway 210 between Baxter Drive and Brainerd's four-lane stretch, you're already living inside phase one. That's the corridor carrying Washington Street traffic, and it's the piece with an active 2026-2027 build window right now, not a future date on a planning document.
The overpass phase, when it arrives in 2028, will touch a different and more commercially dense stretch: the intersection area serving Cub Foods, Cash Wise Liquor, and the Holiday Stationstore near Excelsior Road, along with access points near the Essentia clinic and El Tequila closer to Glory Road. Baxter's negotiated conditions specifically protect a three-quarter intersection at Highway 210 and Golf Course Drive and a right-in turn lane at Design Road, both aimed at keeping those businesses reachable once the interchange goes vertical. None of that construction has started. It's a 2028 problem, still two years out.
For now, the disruption you're feeling belongs to Washington Street, and it's worth knowing that so you're not waiting for an overpass closure that isn't coming yet, while missing the corridor work that already is.
Baxter Keeps Building While the Roads Do
Road construction is only half of what's changing along that corridor this year. A few hundred feet from the Washington Street work, Panera is finishing a 3,128-square-foot restaurant with a drive-thru and patio on the lot between Highway 210 and Costco, off Elder Drive. Site work started in early May, the Baxter City Council approved the plat and conditional use permit back in November, and the opening is targeted for this fall, which makes it one of Panera's few locations sited in a smaller Minnesota community rather than the Twin Cities metro, St. Cloud, or Duluth. Plans call for 10 to 15 employees and daily hours from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., with a later Sunday start.
As Lakeland PBS reported, a few minutes away, the Northland Arboretum has spent the past year finishing what staff describe as the largest bike skills park in central Minnesota, a project that got a boost this fall from a $50,000 Kubota Hometown Proud grant covering new equipment and trail materials.
The report also quoted executive director Trevor Pumnea: "It's one of the largest bike parks in the state."
The Arb's bigger annual draw returns October 15 through 17 with its Haunted Trail, the nonprofit's largest fundraiser of the year, set across 400 acres that started life as the old Brainerd landfill in 1972.
None of that pauses for road construction. If anything, it's the clearest evidence that Baxter's growth isn't waiting on the corridor project to finish before it adds the next thing.
The Timeline Worth Keeping
Baxter residents spent the winter treating the overpass vote as the finish line. It wasn't. It was the second of two separate, sequential construction commitments, and the first one is the one currently reshaping how you get from one side of town to the other.
Spring 2026 through 2027 belongs to Highway 210 and Washington Street. 2028 into 2029 belongs to the buttonhook overpass and the businesses clustered around Excelsior Road and Glory Road. Four years, two projects, one corridor, and understanding which phase you're actually driving through right now is the difference between planning around real construction and bracing for a future one that hasn't started.
If you're weighing what a home near this corridor looks like once both phases are finished, or you're simply trying to time a move around four years of changing access, Up North Signature Properties knows this stretch of Baxter block by block. Reach out to schedule a free consultation and get a straight read on what's ahead.
