Opinion | Does Melbourne, Australia, hold the solution to Minneapolis skyway malaise?

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Minneapolis is home to the eighth wonder of the world — but only in the eyes of non-Minnesotans.

I’m speaking of our skyway systems, a place that surprises and delights so many out-of-town visitors. The utopian vision of a magical second floor where travelers, commuters and shoppers alike can commune with one another is something that sparks the imaginations of those who have only heard it whispered about from afar.

Yet when those out-of-towners arrive here, they are greeted with the sorry state of our skyways. With opaque entry points, vacant storefronts and disjointed hours that confuse rather than welcome, these places are far from the visions held in the heads of visitors. They could be so much more.

I speak from experience — I’m the founding director of two walking tour companies on two continents: Melbourne, Australia; and Minneapolis. My career started as I spanned the globe, giving tours in more than 30 countries in the world as I was armed with a microphone and a bus, a boat or just on foot.

So when I returned home to Minnesota three years ago I was able to look at the state with fresh eyes. Every week, my staff and I host dozens of people from across the country and the world.

The early promise of the skyways was to be able to compete with suburban shopping malls. Southdale was the first, but many more would come. From the middle of the last century through to the dawn of the internet age, skyways served the shoppers. Then came the internet.

But the city worker still powered this city’s skyway economy, diligently coming into the office five days a week and regularly dining in the food courts, dropping off dry cleaning at the laundromat or getting a shoe shine. Then came the pandemic.

Downtown visitation is “now at about 70% of pre-COVID,” Kittie Fahey of the Minneapolis Downtown Council told me when I called her to speak about the subject. She shared a few graphs that showed promising bounceback, but those statistics are hard to reconcile with the current state of the many vacant storefronts visible at the skyways level, as well as the recent real estate news.

Within the last year, two Minneapolis skyscrapers have sold at a more than 90% discount from their last sale. Developers don’t want the buildings, and the workers who are being beckoned back are not happy about it. Try as he might, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube that is the work-from-home revolution.

So Minneapolis is left here to wait for things to get better. The skyways sit here as a largely disused asset. An exciting and unique place peppered with vacant spaces and forgettable chain restaurants.

Admittedly, you can’t get much further from Minneapolis than Melbourne. Draw a line through the center of the Earth from Minneapolis, and the closest naturally inhabited country is Australia. Yet Melbourne in the 1980s has a lot in common with Minneapolis of the 2020s.

It too was struggling to resuscitate the downtown as folks moved further and further outside.

It too struggled to market its harsh winter weather.

It too had a massive disused asset ripe for revitalization.

Australian laneways (“alleyways” in American parlance) crisscross downtown Melbourne, and have now become a hive of activity. Marketed as the “culture capital” of Australia, visitors and locals alike flock to the independent bars, restaurants, museums, record stores and live music venues hidden behind the main streets.

Their state government updated the liquor laws to allow for small bars to operate without the need to sell food. The city took a “fine grain” approach to development, favoring small retail spaces of under 1,000 square feet. In short, the city took a strong interest in making the laneways attractive places for young entrepreneurs to open hip shops that would attract large numbers of people in.

Turning our attention back to Minneapolis: When skyways were introduced eight decades ago they were a bold innovation in city design that proved wildly popular until recent times.

Notwithstanding the interesting but impractical suggestion that we tear down our skyways, it’s time we look for bold new approaches. Turning skyways into attractive independent shopping and dining districts isn’t without its challenges. Downtown developers will need to agree on keeping them open on evenings and weekends.

We’ll need to develop a bold, possibly gaudy new signage system that makes everyone aware of where to access the skyways. We’ll need to convince city and state officials to change laws so our skyways have more than just another chain restaurant in them.

This all seems like a big task. But we’ve built something remarkable before. Why not do it again?