If you drove past Kelley Park on a Friday night this summer, you might have wondered where everyone went. No lawn chairs, no food trucks, no crowd spilling toward Fortino Street for the free concert that's been a fixture there for 25 years. The park wasn't quiet because interest had faded. It was quiet because the whole thing was torn up, and the Apple Valley Arts Foundation had to figure out where to put a concert series that had outgrown its own stage.
That detail matters more than it sounds. The city isn't just replacing a tired amphitheater with a nicer one. Its own planning documents say the old stage couldn't handle the crowd the series already draws. Everything happening at Kelley Park this month, the new bandshell, the new playground, the September 26 grand opening, traces back to that one admission.
Three Addresses, One Series
Music in Kelley Park has run every summer for a quarter century, hosted by the Apple Valley Arts Foundation on Friday evenings. This year, with the park under construction, the foundation moved the whole series to Bogart's Entertainment Center on Garrett Avenue for seven straight Fridays, June 19 through July 31. Then, for one night only, the series set up inside Splash Valley Water Park on August 7, with the horn band Power of Ten playing a set to a crowd that could dry off between songs.
Neither venue was a downgrade exactly, but neither was home. The series returns to Kelley Park for good on September 26, closing out the season with Urban Classic, a Minneapolis-based Earth, Wind & Fire tribute band led by Michael Bland, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. It's the first time all summer the concert series will play on its own stage, and the first time that stage will be the new one.
The City Already Told Us Why the Stage Got Bigger
Apple Valley's own Parks Referendum FAQ, published ahead of the 2023 bond vote, doesn't dress this up. It states plainly that the popularity of the concert series supports a slightly larger venue, and that an improved Kelley Park could eventually host festivals, movies in the park, and community theatre.
That's a city admitting, in writing, that the old stage was a bottleneck. The new bandshell was designed by JLG Architects working alongside landscape architects at Confluence, the same firm pair handling the larger Redwood Park rebuild across town. According to the firm's own project notes, the new stage moves to the southwest portion of the park with a sloped bowl in front, built specifically to improve sightlines for a crowd the old flat lawn setup wasn't designed to hold. Residents who took part in the design charrettes reportedly pushed for solar-ready construction and a warmer, more contemporary look rather than a purely functional upgrade, which is part of why this reads as a real rebuild and not a patch job.
What Actually Opens September 26
The reopening is being billed by the city as the Kelley Park Grand Opening Festival, and it absorbs what would otherwise be a separate event, the city's third annual Fall Food Truck Festival, into one afternoon. The schedule, as currently published by the city, runs like this:
- Noon to 1:30 p.m.: a kids DJ set to open the festival
- 1:30 to 3 p.m.: a set from the District 196 Continuing Education Band
- 3 to 5:30 p.m.: a sports game broadcast on the city's newly purchased mobile LED screen
- 5:30 to 6 p.m.: the ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the park's official reopening
- 6 to 7:30 p.m.: Urban Classic closes the night with its Earth, Wind & Fire set
That mobile screen is its own small story. Apple Valley Parks and Recreation Director Eric Carlson told the City Council in August that the 17-by-10-foot unit isn't tied to Kelley Park alone. It's built to travel, meaning the sports broadcast on September 26 doubles as a preview of movie nights and other programming the city plans to run at parks across town going forward.
The other headline debut is the Purple Bear Playground, expected to be finished in time for the festival. The city is running a "Big Purple Bear" coloring activity ahead of the event, with sheets due by Thursday, September 24, so kids who submit one may see their work projected on that same big screen during the celebration. Next to the playground sits a new splash pad sponsored by George Fischer Industries, part of a broader rebuild that also added a larger restroom building, a basketball court, public art, and expanded on-site parking with dedicated food truck space.
The Food Truck Lineup
The announced vendors for the Fall Food Truck Festival portion of the day include:
- Ray's BBQ
- Tikka Flavors
- Tono
- Kenny's Meatball Wagon
- Dearest Baker Macarons
- Firefly S'mores
Food trucks are scheduled to start serving at noon, right alongside the kids DJ set, so plan to eat early if you want to beat the ribbon-cutting crowd.
The Number That Grew Between May and August
Here's a detail worth sitting with if you're the type who reads city budgets for fun. When Mayor Clint Hooppaw and city staff gave their State of the City address on May 21, 2026, the Kelley Park redesign was still being described as an $8.6 million project. By the time Carlson presented to the City Council on August 27, the figure he cited was approximately $10.9 million, a jump of roughly $2.3 million in three months.
The city hasn't published a public breakdown explaining the difference. It's possible some of that gap reflects the mobile LED screen purchase, announced at the same August meeting, or added scope elsewhere in the build. It's also possible it's simply a more accurate accounting of costs that were always going to land higher than the early estimate. Either way, it's a reminder that the number attached to a project in a press release rarely holds steady until the ribbon actually gets cut.
Getting There Without the Headache
Kelley Park sits on 5.6 acres at 6855 Fortino Street, with multifamily housing on three sides, so parking on-site will be tight once the crowd builds. The city is running a free Minnesota Valley Transit Authority shuttle starting at 4 p.m. from the Apple Valley Municipal Center at 7100 147th Street West, with pickups roughly every 15 minutes through the evening. If you're coming for the ribbon-cutting or the concert rather than the early food truck rush, parking at the Municipal Center and riding the shuttle is likely your easiest option.
Bring a blanket or lawn chairs. Glass containers aren't allowed on-site, so leave the wine glasses at home even if the evening feels like it calls for them.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
The takeaway isn't that Apple Valley built a nicer park. It's that the city looked at a 25-year-old concert series that had quietly outgrown its stage and rebuilt around that reality instead of around a wish list. The sloped bowl seating, the bigger bandshell footprint, the mobile screen meant to travel beyond Kelley Park entirely, all of it reads as capacity planning dressed up as a ribbon-cutting.
If you've been meaning to check out Music in Kelley Park but never made it to a Friday show, September 26 is the one day the whole thing converges: the concert series comes home, the food truck festival runs alongside it, and a brand new playground opens for the first time, all inside one afternoon on one 5.6-acre lot.
If you're curious about more of what makes this stretch of the south metro tick day to day, our Apple Valley neighborhood page keeps a running list of local spots worth knowing about.
And if watching a project like this reshape a park you've driven past for years has you thinking about what's happening to home values in the neighborhoods around it, the team at Huerkamp Home Group tracks that kind of shift block by block. Reach out anytime you want a read on what it means for your own address.
