And stop calling me Shirley! This week's response to last Sunday's Strib article about skyways suggests that we look to Venice for ideas about our skyway system is creative at best, loopy at worst, I cannot decide. What I do know is it would be horrendously expensive and legally impossible to achieve, so let's just move on. But before I dismiss the entire idea, there are some nuggets of good ideas here. I love the idea of naming the skyways. Why not? Even if I were in charge, the skyways will be here for a while and they are hard to navigate, so sure, name them. The most practical idea is to have regular opening hours for skyways. The catch is most skyway businesses close by the time or before office workers head home, so standardizing skyway hours, while a fine idea, may not result in much improvement with most businesses closed during evening hours anyway. Second, is the city really the best entity to regulate hours of the shopping district? Wouldn't that decision be best left in the hands of the Downtown Council or Downtown Improvement District? And finally, we already have pedestrian passageways that are open 24/7 - they are called sidewalks! My biggest problem with this issue is the real world - does Mr. Sykes understand eminent domain laws? They have been severely curtailed in recent years, making eminent domain extremely difficult for even the most worthy redevelopment projects. If you can prove the skyways are polluted and neglected, then have at it. Professor Sykes says, and I quote, "Good real estate lawyers can figure this out." No, they can't! No disrespect to real estate lawyers and Professor Sykes, but even this nut would be too tough to crack! And even if we could use eminent domain, how much would that cost? Furthermore, are the overburdened taxpayers of the city willing to spend more for a takeover of the skyways as public space when we already have public space downtown that is sorely underfunded? Let's pool what resources we have, primarily private dollars to improve our existing public realm at the street level! So, if the skyways are around to stay, perhaps a more reasonable option is to create a system whereby every dollar, public and private, spent on skyways in the future is matched by an equal investment in the public realm at the street level. How does that sound? Let's stick to reality here, folks. What we have on our hands is an expensive system that keeps people warm for a fraction of the year, but funnels precious dollars and even more precious citizens away from the thing we all share, the public realm - the thing that sets us apart from being a truly world class city.

While my post on this website and at Streets.mn suggesting that we gradually remove the skyways from downtown Minneapolis over a 50-year timeline got a couple compliments and a rebuke by Streets.mn's own David Levinson, it was also picked up by the Star Tribune. In that piece, Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak was quoted as saying "I don't think we need any more skyways...I don't think they don't help at all." Well, there are 68 comments and counting on the Star Tribune website, most of them over-my-dead-body defenses of skyways. Many are outright angry at the mayor for suggesting they aren't helpful in sub-zero January. I get it! And I expected when quoted in the Star Tribune piece and my own post that I'd hear that. I don't disagree that skyways are comfortable. What is crazy, as Streets.mn's Bill Lindeke points out, an original idea for skyways was that they be open to the elements, and simply grade-separated from those busy streets. Wow! How Corbusian (look it up)! But how interesting that it has been burned in to our folklore that winter weather is the reason for skyways. It isn't. I will say this, though, thank goodness they are enclosed! Skyways would not be so But winter. What a shame one defense of skyways is defense against bitter cold that really only occurs one week or so per year. Is that one week really worth the sacrifice of our sidewalks and public space the other 51 weeks of the year? And the notion that we don't embrace winter is ludicrous! We're Minnesotans! We embrace winter - we ski, we snowmobile, we ice fish, we have the Winter Carnival, the Lakes Loppet and outdoor ice bars. When it is cold, we're out in it, and it's a badge of honor! We traverse sidewalks in all our great urban neighborhoods year-round - Uptown, Grand Avenue, Highland, near northeast, you name it, we're out there. We are outdoors downtown in the winter - Peavey Plaza has ice skating, and we have Holidazzle with sidewalk concessions at Brits! Why not have outdoor fireplaces and more outdoor activities around downtown? Some suggest retrofitting the skyways to make them more easily accessed, like adding glass-enclosed elevators, and outdoor or semi-enclosed stairways or elscalators. These all cost substantial sums of money, and enough is already being spent on skyway construction in the first place, I just don't think a major retrofit is responsible economically. My biggest arguments are these: 1. What if all those millions of dollars spent on skyways had instead been spent on sidewalks, benches, trees, and other public realm improvements that improve the livability of downtown? Just think about it. Instead of spending increased amounts on both, let's cut our losses and focus on the pubic realm from now on. 2. It would be expensive and reckless to "tear down" the skyways right now, and I'd never suggest such a thing. However, I do believe we've built them over 50 years, and let's take the next 50 to remove them gradually. If not in 50 years, at least when they require replacement due to age and deferred maintenance. I cannot argue that skyways aren't comfortable on a cold winter's day, and I will admit they aren't coming down without a fight. I do, however, believe this is a critical aspect of the discussion of our vision for Minneapolis as an urban place in the future. As well, I believe over time our focus will turn more to sidewalks and our public realm, and skyways will fall out of favor, if not for aesthetic reasons then certainly for financial ones. And that's all I care to say about this right now. On to a new topic!

It is a common rule of thumb that stores and malls achieve maximum parking usage on the last Saturday before Christmas. If this is true, then take a look at this photo, taken at 1:30PM on Saturday, December 17th, 2011, of the Target store parking lot in Midtown, at Lake and Hiawatha. It sure seems like we don't need this much parking. This particular Target, which was renovated recently, is located in an area of the city that allows for a lower percentage of trips to be made by car. For one, I suspect the automobile ownership rate is lower in this area on average than many other areas of the Twin Cities. Second, it is located near the Lake Street station of the Hiawatha light rail line, and along Lake Street, a high-frequency bus route. The site is the former location of the Minneapolis Moline farm implement factory, and was redeveloped in the 1970s in to a suburban-style Target, attached interior mall and a grocery store. Like so much 1970s development, it was an excercise in urban awfulness. But, except for the interior mall, the Target and Cub Foods are economically successful, so one cannot argue economic blight, just urban blight. For one thing, with so many people clearly arriving by bus or rail, the fact that the entrance to Target, even after renovation, is still nearly a full block from Lake Street, is a real shame. Along came a light rail service in 2004, and with it a plan to transform the heavily surface-parked big box area in to an urban village. One 80-unit building with ground floor retail, Hiawatha Commons, has been built so far to the north of the Target and Cub parking lot, so progress has been made. Now the clear lack of demand for parking in the Target parking lot indicates the physical potential for an attractive mixed-use building near the northwest corner of Minnehaha and Lake. Retail could work well on the ground floor (after all, there is plenty of parking behind the building!) and the market could support affordable or market rate apartments at that location (a short walk to light rail, Target and two grocery stores, for starters). Clearly we don't need that much surface parking, so why not pursue new development that will improve the character and urbanity of this emerging transit village? Good development at this particular location will set the right tone for the future of the area. Speaking of surface parking, we have this from Gordon Price's Pricetags Blog, showing aerial views of surface parking in various cities. I will always recall my first visit to Portland in 2000, and walking through the downtown on a seemingly endless quest for a surface parking lot. How impressive, I thought.

The following post shares a similar argument as an article I wrote four years ago for the Downtown Journal (in Minneapolis). I was chastised at the time and suppose I will be again. However, with the recent opening of a new, $3 million skyway link to better connect the Accenture tower to adjacent blocks, as well as the new Downtown 2025 Plan taking on the “Skyway Paradox,” I was persuaded to bring it up again. So here goes: Isn't it about time to start removing our skyways? A few years ago, Jen Gehl, a notable and well-respected Danish urbanist, was in town for an Urban Land Institute presentation. He noted downtown Minneapolis was “no longer up to the beat” of other world-class winter cities, blaming the skyways for striking a “defensive posture” against nature. Save for perhaps one bitter cold winter week per year, I couldn’t agree more. It doesn’t make sense to spend more than $1 million per skyway to perpetuate this anti-world class defensive posture. Gehl’s comments made it into the Skyway Conundrum section of the recently-released Downtown 2025 Plan, so someone is listening! While the plan doesn’t suggest removal, at least they admit the problem, and that, my friends, is the first step to recovery. The strategy is simple – it took us 50 years to build our skyway system, so let’s dismantle it gradually over the next 50 years. Remove one skyway per year, and nobody will really notice when they are gone (indeed, many of us won’t be around by then, but our grandchildren will thank us). This strategy follows Gehl’s hometown of Copenhagen, which gradually removed a few parking spaces per year from the central city. According to Gehl, nobody noticed when it was a few per year, and coupled with attention to the public realm, Copenhagen is now a world-class winter city. We can do the same with our skyways (and our parking!). I’m not just saying this because people from around the world believe skyways are a curiosity at best, gerbil tubes at worst. They haven't fundamentally improved or saved Downtown retail, they are expensive to build and they detract heavily from pedestrian life. As well, we need a concerted effort to continually improve the public realm of Downtown. To their credit, the Downtown Improvement District, Downtown Council, CPED, businesses, developers and elected officials are making the pedestrian realm a priority, but there is so much more to do, and skyways are a distraction from that goal. The original intent of the skyways has not panned out. The first skyways were built in the early to mid-1960s largely as a defense against the loss of retailing to the suburbs – an investment to make downtown more like Southdale. Well, that clearly didn't work as a strategy. Retail is a fickle industry, as Downtown boosters well know, and while certainly skyways didn’t cause the loss of department stores and the failure of City Center, the Conservatory, and Block E, I think it’s a fair question to ask did they help? Was it in any way worth the cost? History has shown us that chasing the next big retailer to come downtown isn’t worth the cost or effort, but I’d suggest that an improved public realm is. As for the small skyway retailers, it is simply a function of supply (food, coffee and convenience items) and demand (135,000-plus workers). Most of the retail you now find on our skyway level could slowly be relocated to the street level over time, without any fundamental change in demand. Those 135,000 office workers will still need coffee in the morning, lunch, dry cleaners, banks and convenience goods. In other words, the retailers won’t flee to the suburbs, but there isn’t enough to support two levels of retail. Just look at other world-class downtowns like Chicago’s Loop – they have winter, and I’ve spent weekdays working there in the winter. You just go outside for lunch, on sidewalks, no big deal. I’ve also worked in downtown Minneapolis, and I avoided the skyways out of stubborn pride and the quest for urban serendipity. To all of you downtown Minneapolis workers, I feel your pain, but you, too, will get used to it. After all, under my plan, you’ll likely be retired or working elsewhere before your nearest skyway comes down anyway. Office tenants would not flee, either. Downtown Minneapolis is the best-performing office sector right now, but the primary reason for that is not the skyways, but rather light rail, restaurants, sports facilities, and entertainment – in other words, the center of it all. Skyway removal will not change that, but an improved public realm will enhance it. True, leasing agents will argue that skyway access is an advantage to leasing one building versus another, but that is a circular argument – remove all skyways and the issue will be moot. Remember, each new skyway costs more than a million dollars to construct. Yes, this cost is largely borne of the private sector (the building owners), but the most recent Accenture skyway link cost $3 million. Imagine if we could instead put those millions of dollars towards improving the public realm, like better sidewalks, lighting, planting trees and adding benches, fountains and art? We already have sidewalks, a second set of pedestrian routes is costly and redundant. Skyways bifurcate downtown economically. True, they add value to the second story of buildings, but they reduce value of the ground floor. Remove the skyways and the ground floors will increase in rent and value, and the second stories can be converted back to office in many cases, although some will remain retail. Downtown also gets bifurcated socially. Being private property, building security can keep skyways clear of riff-raff, the homeless and troublemakers, relegating them to the streets. This wouldn’t be as big an issue if everyone was on the sidewalk, providing more “eyes on the street.” It certainly would not solve the homeless issue or prevent incidents at certain bus stops, for example, but a shared sense of responsibility for, and actual, physical sharing of public realm would garner more attention and encourage creative solutions. Do you realize it is possible to drive downtown, park in one of several parking ramps, go to work or shop, and never set foot on the public sidewalk!? Some of you think that is pretty cool, but I think it is absolutely insane and anathema to urban life. Downtown should be downtown. That said, we have very good places in downtown such as the south end of Nicollet Mall, for example. That is a great place to simply be and we need more of it. That is what today's society craves – they don’t go somewhere to shop; they go somewhere to be. Our downtown needs to provide that, and skyways preclude it simply by taking too many people off the sidewalks and out of the public realm. Some of you will say remove the skyways over my dead body! Well, that is sort of the point. We've had them for just 50 years; surely we can be rid of them in another 50. You and I may be pushin’ up daisies by then, but our downtown will live on and be a better place for it. Minneapolis must become a more attractive, urbane city with a better pedestrian environment. Continuing to throw money at expensive skyways is wasteful and prevents us from achieving this goal. Remember, their original intent has not worked, and their current convenience doesn’t outweigh what they take away from downtown. Kudos to those who prepared the Downtown 2025 Plan for recognizing the “skyway conundrum.” We must encourage continued support for a high-quality public realm, free of skyways, that welcomes and embraces Minnesotans and visitors in all seasons.