Yeah, I recently walked through here and was a little bummed that there seemed to be no attempt to take down the fence under the bridge and form a connection to the river.I'm still waiting for the woonerf to connect to the river. At the moment, it looks like it will end just south under the the 3rd Ave. bridge, in a Thelma & Louise sort of way.
It looks like it will be a phase of the Water Works construction, which apparently wont begin until 2017.
http://mplsparksfoundation.org/projects/water-works/