[Part of the Saint Paul Field Guide to Public Spaces, put together by a geography class at Macalester College in fall 2018. See introduction here.] by Luke Sageser Take a walk through the skyways at noon on a weekday, and you get the impression that you have stumbled into a hybridization of a mall, an apartment complex, […]
Here’s a question left hanging downtown for more than 30 years: If Paul Westerberg was singing about a particular skyway in the 1987 Replacements song, “Skyway,” which skyway was it? That mystery lies at the confluence of two local cottage industries of inquiry: The history of skyways and the geography of the Replacements. Studies of […]
This week on Deep North: The climate controlled hallways that elevate Minneapolis and St. Paul humans to the second floor. The value of these skyways is a contentious issue. Some say they kill street life and hurt small business. Others see the skyways as an asset for less mobile populations, and a comfortable way to […]
I took my mother to the Oak Grill in January. We needed to see the place one last time. Share one last popover. And a manhattan. I’m embarrassed to say I’d never been. So for me eating at the Oak Grill was a new experience in downtown Minneapolis. Looking around the dining room that day […]
“Since the first skyway opened in 1962,” Kim Ode writes in her piece on the expansion of the Minneapolis Skyway System, “the elevated passages have signified escape, whether from traffic noise, stoplights or the weather.” Yet there is another kind of escapism at play here: an escape from the demands of empathy, social responsibility, and […]
One of the most paradoxical aspects of the downtown Rochester ecosystem, is the relationship between Destination Medical Center (DMC) and Mayo Clinic. It is quite the dichotomy. On the one hand, Mayo Clinic is DMC. They were the ones responsible for its inception; the ones who felt compelled to act and create DMC. The ones who ultimately […]
Each year my wife and I attend the American Craft Council show at St. Paul RiverCentre, this year on April 8. The level of artistry and skill is breathtaking. I highly recommend it, but that’s not the reason for this post. Each year we park in the Kellogg Blvd. ramp and walk across the skyway, […]
If you haven’t heard, the Vikings and the Met Council looking at partnering to build a pedestrian bridge that would lead directly from the new Vikings stadium to the Track 1 platform of Downtown East station. The reason this bridge is being constructed is that on event days (let’s be real, they mean Vikings game days), a lot […]
A topic of conversation recently has been the need for better public connections between Nicollet Mall and the downtown Minneapolis skyway system, to meld our distressingly disparate pair of pedestrian pathways into a unified urbanist utopia. Both a Minnpost article and a discussion on the forums came to the conclusion that the Nicollet Mall project’s abandonment of its originally […]
It’s been quite a week — first, one of our contributors appeared on KARE to talk about disappearing sidewalks. Yesterday, another contributor was cited in the StarTribune re: that Vikings pedestrian bridge and its $6 million price tag. Today? WCCO featured Nick Magrino’s perspective on that bridge. We’re proud to be providing a venue for […]