Walk West River Parkway on a Saturday morning this September and you will pass the Mill City Farmers Market in full swing, a hundred-plus vendors set up between the Guthrie Theater and the Mill City Museum, then keep walking and hit two dark storefronts within a few blocks of each other. One is the upper level of Water Works Pavilion, the glass-walled restaurant space with the best sightline to the Stone Arch Bridge in the neighborhood. The other is a taped-over storefront at 602 Washington Avenue South, formerly the home of a ramen spot that Vikings linebackers used to eat at after practice.
Both spaces are getting new tenants. What's easy to miss, if you only skim the headlines, is that neither one is going to an established restaurant group. Both are going to people building their first real restaurant, funded out of their own pocket or through a public fundraising campaign, in two of the most photographed pieces of real estate the district has.
Two Closures, Five Months Apart, One Coincidence
The timing looks connected. It isn't. Zen Box Izakaya served its final bowl of ramen on November 22, 2025, closing for reasons that had nothing to do with ambition: owners John Ng and Lina Goh cited prolonged road construction and uncertainty over their building's future. Five months later, on April 30, 2026, Owamni served its last dinner at Water Works Pavilion for the opposite reason. The James Beard Award-winning restaurant had outgrown its space and was moving two blocks east to the Guthrie Theater's main floor, a move announced the previous October that would roughly double its footprint.
One closure was a retreat. The other was an upgrade. Both left prime storefronts empty for the better part of a year, and both are now being filled by people who have never run a full-service restaurant before.
What Owamni Left Behind at the River
Water Works Pavilion was not built as generic restaurant space. When the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board and HGA designed the $24 million pavilion, the upper level was designed exclusively for Owamni, with floor-to-ceiling windows aimed at St. Anthony Falls and the bridge. Owamni generated $5.6 million in revenue in 2024, and Park Board restaurants like it pay rent as a percentage of sales, roughly 12 percent, which put about $672,000 a year on the table for whoever came next. That is real money for the Park Board to be sitting on an empty kitchen for.
The board issued a request for proposals that December, and by April 20, 2026, had chosen Arch and River, a French bistronomie concept with an Afro-Caribbean twist from Diane Moukouri and chef Fritz Ebanda. Their track record before this was B'beri Desserts, a pastry counter inside the Alliance Française school. Arch and River is their first full restaurant, and their five-year concessions agreement with the Park Board runs through 2031. As of an early August report, the opening had slipped from its original summer target to September, meaning residents walking past the pavilion this month should not assume the doors have opened just because the calendar says fall.
Owamni, meanwhile, reopened at the Guthrie under a new name, Indígena by Owamni, celebrating its opening on June 18, 2026, with a kitchen large enough to add a full oyster bar and expand its seafood program, according to chef Sean Sherman.
A Ramen Institution's Last Service
Zen Box's roots go back further than most people realize. Ng and Goh started as a lunch counter in the Minneapolis skyway in the mid-2000s before moving into the Mill District storefront in September 2011, where they spent 14 years turning it into what executive chef John Ng called something close to a cult following. The restaurant hosted the Ramen Attack festival for years, drew Vikings players Anthony Barr and Eric Kendricks as regulars, and closed out what MPR News described as a two-decade run under one ownership team.
The building's owners never gave a clear answer on what would come next, and Ng and Goh spent their final weeks helping staff find other jobs rather than plotting a second act of their own.
The Sushi Chef Sanding His Own Walls
Chef Baaska Tegshbileg spent three years building a following through pop-ups at Steady Pour, Bar Brava, and Picnic Linden Hills before signing the lease on the old Zen Box space in August 2026. He is doing the buildout himself, converting the old kitchen bar into a proper sushi counter, and he turned down outside investors on purpose.
"Opening up a restaurant costs a lot. Those are the things that people don't see; that happen behind the curtain."
To cover it, Sushi by Baaska launched a public fundraising campaign, offering everything from sushi classes to a full restaurant buyout in exchange for early support, with a target of $200,000 to finish renovations, upgrade kitchen equipment, and cover employee benefits before opening. The plan calls for an exclusive 16-seat omakase preview four Sundays before the grand opening, which was targeted for October 2026.
Prime Real Estate, Rookie Owners
Lined up next to each other, the pattern is hard to miss.
| Address | Former Restaurant | Closed | Incoming | Owner's Background | Target Opening |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Water Works Pavilion, 425 West River Pkwy | Owamni | April 30, 2026 | Arch and River | First full restaurant, previously ran a pastry counter | September 2026 |
| 602 Washington Ave S | Zen Box Izakaya | November 22, 2025 | Sushi by Baaska | First brick-and-mortar, previously pop-ups and in-home dinners | October 2026 |
Two of the most recognizable restaurant addresses in the neighborhood, one built by the Park Board around a single tenant and one that anchored a corner for 14 years, are both being handed to people opening their first physical location. Neither incoming owner is backed by an existing restaurant group. Both are financing the buildout themselves or asking the community to help.
If you already live in this stretch of the riverfront, a few things follow from that:
- The actual opening dates will likely move again. Arch and River already slipped from summer to fall once.
- Social media and fundraising pages, not press releases, are the most reliable place to check real progress. Sushi by Baaska has been posting renovation updates directly rather than waiting for a formal announcement.
- Expect a softer rollout than a typical grand opening. Preview dinners, limited seating, and gradual ramp-ups are more likely than a single ribbon-cutting.
Two Storefronts Worth Watching
The Mill District's identity has always been tied to what happens at these specific addresses, the pavilion the Park Board built to showcase one restaurant, the storefront that turned a skyway lunch counter into a neighborhood institution. What's different this fall is that the next chapter at both is being written by people learning the business in real time, in some of the most visible square footage the neighborhood has. That's worth knowing if you eat here regularly, and it's the kind of granular, block-by-block detail that tends to matter just as much when you're thinking about what it's actually like to live here.
If you're weighing a move to the riverfront, or you already call the Mill District home and want a broker who tracks changes like these as closely as comps, Christian Klempp would be glad to talk through what's happening on the ground here. Schedule a consultation whenever you're ready.
