Drive Huffine Lane past Owenhouse Ace Hardware West on any weekday morning and you will pass two active construction sites within about half a mile of each other. Both have orange fencing. Both have heavy equipment moving dirt. Both get lumped together in conversation as "all that construction on the west side." They are not the same project, and they are not answering the same question about where West Bozeman is headed.
One is called Ferguson Farm II. The other is Urban Farm. If you have wondered which one is getting the elevated trail, which one might get a grocery store, or why the traffic pattern near Laurel Parkway is about to change, the answer starts with treating these as two separate bets rather than one continuous blur of new build.
Same corridor, two different plans
Ferguson Farm II sits on 31 acres east of the existing Ferguson Farm development, the area that already includes Sidewinders, The Market at Ferguson Farm, and Town & Country's newest grocery store. The preliminary subdivision plat filed with the city lays out 92 lots, including 62 building pads. When Bozeman's city commission reviewed the project, the developer described the goal as building a pedestrian-focused district anchored by hospitality, offices, and dining rather than new rooftops.
Urban Farm is a different animal entirely. It covers 106 acres between Gooch Hill Road and Cottonwood Road, and its second phase alone is building out roughly 86 acres of infrastructure. City economic development staff have said the finished project is expected to add close to 1,000 new housing units, including a share set aside for affordable housing, once the horizontal infrastructure clears the way for vertical construction.
Here's the comparison side by side:
| Ferguson Farm II | Urban Farm | |
|---|---|---|
| Footprint | 31 acres east of the existing Ferguson Farm | 106 acres between Gooch Hill Rd and Cottonwood Rd |
| Signature feature | An 18 to 24-foot elevated "skyline bridge trail" from Huffine Lane to Fallon Street, plus a half-acre park for summer events and winter skating | A new traffic signal at Huffine Lane and Laurel Parkway |
| Housing planned | None confirmed for this phase; the public framing has centered on hospitality, office, and retail | Roughly 1,000 units total, including single-family, multi-family, and a dedicated affordable housing component |
| What's open now | Sidewinders, The Market at Ferguson Farm (Tanglewood, Hachi, Liberty Burger, Salchica), Town & Country Foods | Phase 1 condos, apartments, and homes built starting in 2019 |
| Current stage | Streets and utility tie-ins underway ahead of individual building permits | Phase 2 infrastructure targeted to wrap this fall, per the developer's own project page |
That last row matters if you're the one sitting behind the wheel. The lane closures and utility work you're driving through right now aren't random. They're each pointed at a specific fall 2026 milestone.
What's already walkable today
It's worth separating what exists from what's still a rendering, because the two corridors are easy to conflate when you're just trying to get to work.
- Sidewinders opened in the original Ferguson Farm development as an Americana grill with rooftop seating, built specifically to serve growth on the west side.
- The Market at Ferguson Farm is the 21,000-square-foot building anchoring the first phase, home to Tanglewood (which opened its doors there back in 2019), along with Hachi, Liberty Burger, and Salchica.
- Town & Country Foods relocated its largest store yet, a 34,500-square-foot location, to the north end of Ferguson Farm after decades on North 19th Avenue.
- Owenhouse Ace Hardware West sits on Huffine Lane between Rocky Mountain Credit Union and Petco, across from Bank of Bozeman and Huckleberry's Natural Market, and has been a fixed point on this stretch for years.
- Wingstop opened its first Bozeman location in the Valley West neighborhood in April 2026, next to Chipotle near Gallatin High School, adding another quick-service option to the west side without any wait for construction.
None of that list belongs to Urban Farm. Its visible presence right now is still Phase 1: the condos, apartments, and homes that broke ground back in 2019, sitting quietly while Phase 2's infrastructure work continues around them.
Why the grocery rumor landed on one project and not the other
Late last year, a rendering connected to Urban Farm showed a Trader Joe's logo, and it spread through local social media fast enough that a city spokesperson had to address it directly. The chain's own team told a local outlet they don't currently have a confirmed Bozeman location and list every upcoming store on their website. City economic development staff were more direct about the intent behind the rumor: they confirmed conversations with Trader Joe's had happened, without anything guaranteed, and said plainly that "grocery is targeted for something like that" as part of the plan.
That rumor never attached itself to Ferguson Farm II. It didn't need to. A grocery anchor needs rooftops to support it, and Ferguson Farm II isn't building any in this phase. Urban Farm is building close to 1,000 of them. The logic of where a full-size grocery chain would consider planting a store follows the housing, not the hotel plans. Once you see that distinction, the rumor stops being random speculation and starts being a fairly predictable outcome of which project is actually creating new households nearby.
This is also why Ferguson Farm II's signature piece of infrastructure is a trail rather than a grocery anchor. The skyline bridge trail is designed to link into paths that already exist through Valley West, Cottonwood Condos, and Flanders Mill. It's not building a new neighborhood. It's stitching a new gathering spot into neighborhoods that are already there, which fits a project built around hospitality and daytime office use rather than new residents who need groceries, schools, and daily services within walking distance.
What the disruption is actually buying you
If you've been rerouting around Fallon Street and Valley Commons Drive because of water and sewer tie-ins for the Ferguson Farm II subdivision, that work is laying the groundwork for the elevated trail and the half-acre park at its midpoint, the one planned to host summer events and double as a skating spot in winter. It's a multi-year build, with early work focused on streets and utilities before any buildings go vertical.
If your delay is closer to Laurel Parkway, that's tied to Urban Farm's Phase 2, where the new traffic signal at Huffine and Laurel is part of the infrastructure package targeted to finish this fall. Once that phase closes out, the plan calls for third-party developers to start construction on the housing and commercial space that will eventually fill the 86 acres.
Neither project has an exact opening date for its retail or restaurant tenants yet, and no business has been confirmed for either site beyond what's already open under the original Ferguson Farm name. What is confirmed is the shape of each bet: one corridor is filling in around the people already living on the west side, the other is building the next set of people who will move here.
If you're trying to make sense of what a specific parcel along this stretch of Huffine Lane is zoned for, or what a new development nearby might mean for a property you already own, that's the kind of local detail worth a real conversation rather than a guess based on which fence you drove past last. Brad Ehrnman Real Estate has been tracking the west side's growth on the ground for years. Let's Connect.
