When travelers in one of the fastest growing areas in the country must rely on a highway created in 1934 to get where they are going, it's bound to cause some headaches. But now crews in Carver County, Minn., are remedying that with a $125 million project expanding and updating about 4 mi. of Highway 5 from Chanhassen to downtown Victoria.
“The roadway today is way over capacity for a two-lane highway, and there are safety issues,” Eric Johnson, Carver County program manager, told Construction Equipment Guide. “There are multiple intersections that have very high, statistically significant crash issues. There are hours of congestion every day, both ways, and rush hour, coupled with this being a hot spot of the growth within a fast-growing county. All the cities are growing, but the highway had stayed the same ever since it was built. It was overdue.”
The Highway 5 project grew out of the Arboretum Area Transportation Plan (AATP), a study that began in 2019 and wrapped up in 2021 with a vision for the area approved by both the involved cities and Carver County. Highway 5 was one of the priorities that came out of the plan.
Work began last spring with contractor C.S. McCrossan crews focusing on the north and southbound roadways crossing Highway 5.
“The utility coordination has been a major part of our focus in 2026,” said Mike Lindsay, senior communication specialist, Carver County Public Works. “We have a lot of private utilities, not just telecom, but also gas, also power ... a lot of moving pieces in this rapidly expanding part of the county. So, there's a few threadings of the needle to make it all work. We had very wet June, which presents some challenges. We're maybe a couple weeks behind, but we're close.”
One of the biggest challenges crews face is space. The work takes place in a narrow corridor bounded on the north by Minnewashta Lake, and to the south by the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, a world-class public garden drawing 800,000 visitors a year.
“It's a really neat property, but that has an operational reality for us in terms of easements and right of way that we can't infringe on,” Lindsay said. “When you've got a lake to the north and that kind of property to the south, we get limited pretty quick on where we can stage equipment and materials. So, it's been a challenge.”
Crews are overcoming those challenges with planned closures and detours but also by creating regional access maps to help the public make their owns plans for travel. And while, in the “land of lakes,” it's not always a straightforward path to get around construction, Carver County did the advance work to help “set the stage,” Lindsay said.
“This is kind of the capstone, the big project, and we, together with our partners, have done a lot of projects so this can go smoothly. Carver County built a new county road, County Road 18, which is just south and it's parallel to Highway 5, and that keeps the locals in Victoria connected to their school versus taking the bigger detour.”
City partners Chanhassen and Victoria also coordinated with the county on projects to help avoid bumps in the road, and likewise, the University of Minnesota, which is rebuilding access to the arboretum.
“So, in addition to detours and road closures, we also all work together to do multiple projects to keep the area connected as best we can,” Lindsay said.
In conjunction with the Highway 5 project, county partners also are improving the regional trail system,” Johnson said. “We're filling in voids, getting everybody connected, and I think that's an awesome part of it.”
They're also working to help the endangered rusty patched bumblebee survive.
The county also is working with the city of Victoria and the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum to help save the endangered rusty patched bumblebee by including 10 acres of mitigation in the Highway 5 project. The acreage features habitat for the bees to live and forage on in different seasons and will be maintained by the Arboretum in perpetuity.
“We're building both summer and winter habitats,” Johnson said. “Some of it is woodlands, and some of it is prairie, and it's essentially restoring native species, getting rid of invasives and having a flower-rich prairie. So, it's a net benefit to the environment ... I think we're benefiting everybody.”
