Drive west on Lincoln Road past the church and you'll pass two strip malls with weather-themed names built almost a decade apart. One is full. One still has empty storefronts next to a liquor store and a pharmacy under construction. Both belong to the same man, and the order he's filled them in tells you more about daily life here than any population count does.
That's the real story behind the headlines you've probably already seen on local radio: a new pharmacy, a growing town, another business finally landing on Lincoln Road. The individual updates are easy to skim past. Strung together, they show something specific about what this town still runs to Bismarck for and what it's slowly building on its own.
Two Malls, One Builder
Lance Hagen has been the person behind most of the commercial construction on Lincoln Road for more than a decade. He's the registered agent listed on the Lightning Strip Mall's business filing, which dates back to August 2015, and he's the developer local reporters have credited with bringing Dollar General to Lincoln as well as building the newer Thunder Strip Mall just down the road.
The gap between those two projects matters. Lightning went up and filled more than a decade ago. Hagen didn't mention a second strip mall to local media until November 2022, and construction on Thunder didn't wrap until 2024. That's not a developer racing to meet demand with a master plan. That's one person reading the town's growth year by year and building the next piece when it made sense.
The growth itself has been real. Local reporting citing World Population Review data has Lincoln's population at 4,529, enough to pass Grafton and become the 16th largest city in North Dakota. That's a notable jump for a town that didn't incorporate until 1977. But a population number doesn't build a pharmacy. A developer with a read on what a growing commuter town needs, in what order, does.
What Filled In First
Lightning Strip Mall's tenant list is the base layer of what an under-served bedroom community asks for first, before anything else:
- Lightning Fitness
- Hometown Credit Union
- Wild One Daycare
A gym, a bank, and childcare. Not a restaurant, not a boutique, not entertainment. The first wave of commercial space in Lincoln went toward the things families need on a daily loop between home and work, not the things you'd choose for a night out. If you already live in Lincoln, that combination probably feels unremarkable. It shouldn't. It's a signal of what an incorporated town under 5,000 people prioritizes when it finally gets enough rooftops to support commercial leases at all.
The Slow Fill at Thunder
Thunder Strip Mall has told a slower, more interesting story. It's a 9,000-square-foot building with five lease spaces, sitting just west of the church on Lincoln Road. Its first tenant was River Liquor, which opened in the fall of 2024 with hours running Sunday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday until 11 p.m.
For months after that, River Liquor sat alone in a five-unit building. Then, in the space just to its west, came word of a second tenant: a Medicine Shoppe pharmacy. The owner, Kenny Haugen, is a 2020 NDSU graduate who already runs the Medicine Shoppe location in Mandan. He announced the Lincoln location in the spring of 2025, with plans for a drive-thru on the building's west side.
Construction ran behind schedule. Haugen had originally hoped to open by the summer of 2025. By January 2026, local reporting had the opening pushed to "the next couple of months, no later than the start of spring." The most recent update available, from May 2026, described the building simply as half full, with three storefronts still sitting empty next to a liquor store and a pharmacy in its final stretch of buildout.
The Pharmacy Hours Are the Real Story
Here's the detail that's easy to miss if you're only tracking "new business opens in Lincoln" as a headline. Haugen didn't set his pharmacy hours off a standard retail template. He told local media he's aware most Lincoln residents commute to Bismarck for work, and that the pharmacy's hours would need to be adjusted around that reality rather than around typical business hours.
That's a small operational choice with a bigger implication. A pharmacy in a self-contained town sets its hours around when people are home during the day. A pharmacy in a commuter town sets its hours around when people leave before 7 and get back after 5. Lincoln's newest piece of healthcare infrastructure isn't being built for a town that stays put. It's being built for a town that leaves every morning and needs its errands to fit around that schedule, not the other way around.
That's the throughline connecting Lightning's daycare-and-fitness combo to Thunder's liquor-and-pharmacy pairing. Every business that's landed here so far solves a problem for people who spend most of their waking hours somewhere else. None of it is destination retail. All of it is designed to shave a stop off the drive home.
What Still Sends You to Bismarck
The gap is just as informative as the fill. Hagen has been asked directly about a car wash, and by his own account, it's something he's working on but hasn't delivered. Until that changes, running your car through a wash still means a trip out of town, alongside the things Lincoln residents have long handled elsewhere: dry cleaning, a wider restaurant selection, big-box shopping.
What Lincoln does have, beyond the two strip malls, are the longer-standing anchors along Santee Road and Lincoln Road: Tumbleweed Bar and Grill, John's Food Center, Dakota Community Bank, DJ's Bar and Grill, and Tri-Energy Convenience Store, according to the City of Lincoln's own business listing. Those have been the steady options for years while the newer strip malls filled in around them one lease at a time.
Put the two lists side by side and you get an honest picture of a Wednesday in Lincoln right now. You can bank, work out, drop your kid at daycare, grab a drink, and soon fill a prescription, all without leaving town. You still can't wash your car, and your dinner options are a short, familiar list rather than a long one. That's not a complaint. It's just where the buildout stands as of this year, and it's worth knowing exactly which errands still cost you the drive.
If the pattern from Lightning to Thunder holds, the next storefronts to fill in Thunder's remaining three units will solve for the same commuter logic that's shaped everything else here: quick, practical, built around people who aren't home until evening. Keep an eye on that building. It's a better indicator of what's coming to Lincoln than any growth projection.
If you're already living this commute and want a local read on how Lincoln's growth is shaping the area beyond retail, from what's happening with new construction to how the town compares to nearby options, Patrick Koski tracks these changes closely and is always glad to talk through what he's seeing. Reach out any time for a free home valuation and consultation, or just to ask what's opening next.
