There is a specific kind of family trip that happens every fall around here. You load up the car, drive south on Highway 169, and somewhere between Jordan and Belle Plaine a wall of yellow paint rises up out of the cornfields. Inside, there's an animatronic band that has been playing the same set for years, a genuine British phone booth someone hauled in decades ago, a silo painted like outer space, and more than 3,000 kinds of candy stacked floor to ceiling. You bring cash, because they still don't take cards. You bring a cart, because you'll need one. And every October, you fill it with caramel apples and pumpkins from the farm out back before the cold sets in.
If you grew up near Belle Plaine, this trip is not a novelty. It's a tradition, the kind of place out-of-town relatives get dragged to every time they visit. Most people who make this drive call it "the Belle Plaine candy store," even though, technically, it has never been in Belle Plaine at all.
This fall, that distinction matters more than it ever has, because this is the last ordinary season the store will spend where it's always been.
A Closing That Looks Like Every Other Closing
Minnesota's Largest Candy Store, formally known as Jim's Apple Farm, plans to close for the season on December 1, 2026, according to the Star Tribune's reporting on the move. On paper, that's nothing unusual. The store closes every winter and reopens every spring. Families who show up this November for one last pumpkin run won't see anything different about the parking lot, the register, or the yellow paint.
What's different is that this time, the store isn't coming back to this spot. Next spring, for the first time in the business's history, its doors will open somewhere else.
The reason is a highway project, not a business decision. Scott County is leading a $13 million interchange rebuild on Highway 169 that will eliminate the store's direct highway access, the kind of drive-up visibility that owner Robert Wagner has said keeps impulse customers coming through the door. Wagner and his family fought the change for years. According to reporting from the Henderson Independent, Jim's Apple Farm, Scott County officials, and local legislators tried to negotiate a compromise, including a proposal for a temporary right-turn-in from the highway while the new road was built. MnDOT denied it.
The workaround that finally stuck was a land swap. The county will take over the store's current 17-acre site in St. Lawrence Township to build the new interchange, and in exchange, the Wagner family gets a 48-acre parcel in Jordan, right next to the Jordan Supper Club and Tap Room, where they'll build a store roughly double the current size in two construction phases.
Here's what changes and what stays the same.
| Current site (St. Lawrence Township) | New site (Jordan) | |
|---|---|---|
| Land | 17 acres | 48 acres |
| Building size | 27,000 square feet under roof | Roughly double, built in two phases |
| City services | None, township land bordered by wetlands | Full city water and sewer access |
| Highway access | Direct off Highway 169 for nearly 50 years | Reached through the new interchange, near Jordan Supper Club and Tap Room |
| Season | Closes December 1, 2026 | Reopens the following May 1 |
Why Everyone Calls It Belle Plaine's Anyway
This is the part locals rarely think about until it's pointed out. The store has always sat in St. Lawrence Township, an unincorporated stretch between two cities, with no municipal water, sewer, or the zoning flexibility that comes with being inside a city's limits. That's part of why expansion was so constrained. The wetlands surrounding the property left almost no room to grow, which is exactly why the county's land swap offer was attractive in the first place.
Belle Plaine gets the cultural credit because of geography, not paperwork. The store sits on the Highway 169 corridor that connects the two towns, closer to Belle Plaine's daily orbit than to downtown Jordan's. Families here have always treated it as theirs the way you'd claim a favorite diner just off your exit, even if the sign technically belongs to the next town over.
When the new store opens in Jordan next year, it will be fully inside city limits for the first time in its history, with real utility access and, per the Star Tribune's reporting, room to eventually pursue what Wagner has floated as a longer-term goal of becoming not just Minnesota's largest candy store, but the world's. Belle Plaine won't lose access to it. The store is a short drive up the same highway either way. But the version everyone grew up with, wedged into a wetland-locked township with no room to breathe, closes its doors for good this winter.
What Else Is Actually Happening This Fall
The candy store isn't the only thing on the calendar right now, and it's worth knowing what else fills a Belle Plaine weekend before the leaves are gone. The city's summer stretch wrapped with BBQ Days in mid-July, and All-Wheel Wednesdays car shows, run by the volunteer group behind Belle Plaine Festivals, wound down in late August. What's left on the books for fall reads like a short, specific itinerary rather than a vague sense of "things happening."
- September 10, live music from Bill Litzau & Open Highway at Union Trail Brewing, the riverside brewery known locally for its German-style lagers and a patio that backs up to the railroad tracks.
- September 18, the second annual Buffalo Street Bash, hosted by the local nonprofit Rooted Legacy Foundation in downtown Belle Plaine.
- September 19, Concert in the Park with the Minnesota Valley Community Band, a recurring fixture of the city's downtown green space.
- Union Trail Brewing's monthly Paint & Sip nights continue through the fall, one more reason the brewery has become the default answer to "where should we go tonight" for a lot of Belle Plaine households.
None of this replaces the candy store trip. It sits alongside it. A family heading to the Buffalo Street Bash on September 18 might make the same Highway 169 drive out to the barn the following weekend for apples, without realizing they're doing it for the last time in that particular spot.
The Part That's Easy to Miss
What makes this fall different isn't drama. There's no ribbon-cutting, no farewell tour, no countdown clock on the marquee. The store will open its doors this September and October exactly as it has for decades, and that ordinariness is precisely what makes it worth paying attention to. The families who show up expecting a normal fall outing are, without any fanfare, taking part in the last one this location will ever host. By the time the new Jordan barn opens next May, this version, wetlands and all, will be gone.
If you've lived near Belle Plaine long enough to have a favorite candy from that store, or a photo of your kids standing in front of the superhero mural, this fall is the one to make the drive with intention. Not because anything about the visit will look different. Because you'll know something the store's own closing sign won't say out loud.
Belle Plaine has a habit of holding onto the things that make it feel like itself, from a downtown festival that fills Union Park every July to a brewery that's become the default answer for a night out. Whether you're watching a local landmark change addresses or just keeping an eye on what's next for your own corner of Carver and Scott County, Chestnut Realty has been part of this community long enough to notice these things too. If you ever want to talk about what's changing in your neighborhood, or anywhere else in the area, talk with a local Chestnut Realty expert.
