A love letter to a linear park.
Five miles. Forty‑seven blocks. The largest publicly owned skyway in the worldis what we call a linear park everywhere else — the High Line, the Cheonggyecheon, the SkyMart. We’re asking the Saint Paul City Council to recognize the skyway for what it already is— and operate it that way.
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Town Square Park
indoor park · closed to the public 2000 · downtown Saint Paul
the precedent, hiding in plain sight
About
the skyway.
Five miles of carpet, glass, and quiet civic miracle.
The Saint Paul Skyway is the largest publicly owned skyway system in the world. It is also the place you go to get a sandwich without putting on a coat.
Threaded together over decades — first as a private hop between the First National Bank Building and Merchants Bank in 1931, then formalized into public infrastructure by the city in 1967— the system now runs roughly five miles across 47 city blocks of downtown, all on the second floor and all heated.
It is, by turns: a lunch counter, a shortcut, a daycare drop-off route, a date, a city in a city, and on the right February afternoon, the warmest place a human has ever stood.
Unlike Minneapolis’s privately owned system, ours was built with public dollars and maintained as public infrastructure — a bold experiment in urban design that said this space belongs to everyone.
The
map.
Five miles. Forty‑seven blocks. Building by building.
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The paradigm
shift.
The skyway is a linear park. It always has been.
A petition to the Saint Paul City Council
The paradigm shift
The High Line proved an elevated public path can be world-class — eight million visitors a year at its pre‑pandemic peak, billions in nearby property value, one of the most- studied public spaces ever built. What it couldn’t solve was who got to stay. Saint Paul has already done the harder policy work — housing reform, the elimination of parking mandates, a real transit network — that lets us do this the right way. The renewal without the eviction.
01A skyway is a structure. A Linear Park is a place.
Reclassification gives Saint Paul’s second floor a name, an accountable steward, a real budget, and a stake every resident can claim. Today the corridor is governed building-by- building — sixty‑five buildings of private landlords setting hours, rules, and signage. One designation. One steward.
02Standards become a public good.
Lighting, wayfinding, accessibility, year-round public hours, public art, restrooms — funded and standardized as park infrastructure, not negotiated lease-by-lease. The way Mears Park’s gardens get funded. The way Rice Park’s events get permitted.
03The High Line lesson — done the Saint Paul way.
New York’s elevated park drew the visitors and the value, then priced out the people who made the neighborhood worth visiting. Saint Paul has already done the harder policy work — housing reform, parking mandate elimination, transit access — that lets this happen without the eviction. Existing residents and small businesses get to benefit, not get displaced. That’s rare. We should use it.
The ask
The renewal without the eviction.
04A climate-controlled civic commons.
For five months a year, the skyway is the only walkable public space downtown that doesn’t punish you for being there. Treated as a park, it earns the stewardship, programming, and care it already deserves — year-round, weatherproof, free.
05The connective tissue of the city.
There’s already a permitting process for skyway events — but it treats the corridor as private hallway space, not as park. Recognized as a Linear Park, the second floor becomes what it functionally already is: the connective tissue between Mears, Rice, Pedro, Kellogg, and now the Riverwalk. Skyway programming gets the same consideration as the parks it links. The corridor joins the network instead of sitting outside it.
Become
a friend.
No dues. No meetings. One short letter, every Friday.
The Skyway Weekly
What arrives every Friday morning.
One short letter from a real human — about five minutes to read — covering the four things worth knowing each week about the second floor of downtown Saint Paul.
- What’s openSkyway hours, building changes, the corridors actually open this week.
- What’s newPop-ups, art, music, civic happenings — the small things you’d miss otherwise.
- Who to supportOne small skyway-level business worth a Friday lunch visit. Every week, a different one.
- Where to beEvents, walks, meetings — everywhere the skyway is being talked about that week.
Fridays · ~5 min read · One click to unsubscribe
The Skyway
Library.
Every bridge has a paper trail.
Every skyway bridge downtown exists because two parties signed an easement — a recorded agreement granting the public a right to cross private property, second floor, in perpetuity.
We’ve scanned those agreements and made them searchable, in public, for the first time — the bridge-by-bridge easements alongside the two master documents that govern the whole system. The paperwork that built the largest publicly owned skyway in the world, finally readable by the people who walk it.
The
masthead.
Kept by hand, for the people who walk it.
skywayfriends.org is an unofficial appreciation society for the Saint Paul Skyway — run on volunteer time and a simple idea: keep the second floor public, and credit the people who show up.
The site, the map at spskyway.com, the Skyway Library, and the Friday letter are built and stewarded by Jacob Ramos, with Open‑Civ on the platform.
New friends — and new volunteers — are always welcome. If you’d like to help, have something for the library, or just love the skyway, say hello at skywayfriends@open‑civ.com.
Masthead
- Jacob RamosEditor & steward
- Open‑CivBuild & platform
With thanks
To the organizers who built and ran the early Friends of the Skyway:
- Jennifer Horton & Robb MitchellProgressive Dinner
- Jamie Stolpestad & Julie PrintzSkyway Social · Spooktacular
and the countless others who tabled in the cold, came to the progressive dinner, fed us, and keep showing up for the skyway. Thank you.
Everyone’s a friend
You are, by default, a Friend of the Skyway — no dues, no sign-up. The map you came here for is live at spskyway.com.