County Road 81 (Hennepin County, Minnesota)

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Hennepin County Road 81 is a county highway which runs from I-94 & County Road 66 in Minneapolis, Minnesota to Main Street (Hwy. 101) in Rogers, Minnesota and is twenty-three-miles in length. County Road 81 passes through the Northwest suburban communities of Rogers, Dayton, Maple Grove, Osseo, Brooklyn Park, Crystal, Robbinsdale, and the city of Minneapolis.

[edit] History

County 81, between the Robbinsdale and Minneapolis border and present-day Highway 169 in Brooklyn Park, was constructed between the late 1940s and 1950s. Until Interstates 94 and 494 were built, County 81 served as the principal route between Minneapolis and points northwest.

Formerly a trunk highway supervised by the State and known as U.S. 52, U.S. 169, State Hwy. 101, State Hwy. 152, and State Hwy. 218 in various segments at various times, the state turned over management of the road to Hennepin County in 1988 and renumbered it County Road 81. (From 1982 to 1988, a portion of the route was known as Trunk Highway 81).

[edit] Redevelopment

Since 2000, local governments and business leaders in the County Road 81 corridor (also known as the Northwest Corridor Partnership) have been working in partnership on a strategic redevelopment plan supported by a transit line. Rapid bus transit was originally considered for this corridor in the early 2000s. Since 2007, light rail transit is now being studied as the more favorable option. The portion of County 81 from Rogers to Robbinsdale will be signed as Bottineau Boulevard in the near future, named after historic frontiersman Pierre Bottineau. The portion of County 81 in North Minneapolis will remain signed as West Broadway.

[edit] Major intersections with County Road 81

Intersection Notes
TH 101 Northern terminus in Rogers
CR 13 / CR 101 Brockton Lane
CR 121 - Fernbrook Lane
CR 130 Elm Creek Blvd. Future intersection with TH 610
CR 30 93rd Ave. N.
Jefferson Ave. - Central Ave. in Osseo
US 169 Scheduled for upgrade from at-grade to interchange
CR 130 / CR 152 Brooklyn Blvd.
CR 8 W. Broadway
I-94 / I-694
CR 10 Bass Lake Rd.
TH 100 Converted from at-grade to interchange in 2006
CR 9 42nd Ave. N.
Lowry Ave. - Theodore Wirth Pkwy. Interchange
CR 2 Penn Ave.
CR 66 west
I-94
Washington Ave. N. - CR 66 east Southern terminus in Minneapolis