Sick of getting lost in the Minneapolis skyway? This new interactive map should help.

Dressed in only a light jacket, Hank Brekke-Peer tried four different buildings on his way to the office on a 20-below day before he found an unlocked entrance to the Minneapolis skyway system last winter.

While banks and government buildings were closed for a federal holiday, it wasn’t a day off for his office and many others on the west side of downtown.

“I decided all of these PDF and image maps that the city has made for the skyway is not enough for me,” he said. “I set out to build an app that would have the map of the skyway, but more importantly, the hours and the holidays of the skyway.”

Brekke-Peer’s interactive and searchable map, Skyway.run, takes aims at the challenges he discovered finding his way through the skyway after moving downtown last year.

The Minneapolis skyway, a 10-mile, glass-enclosed labyrinth that connects many downtown skyscrapers, has long been a trap for lost tourists trying to make it to a basketball game and a headscratcher for visiting conference-goers looking for the Convention Center. For new corporate hires, navigating the second-level maze is a rite of passage.

While he’s long worked downtown, Brekke-Peer now uses the skyway to get to the gym, the doctor or to get groceries.

“Everything I do, I’ve tried to do within downtown,” he said. “Being lost dozens of times in the skyway, whether it’s because a building is closed temporarily, or their hours are different ... has been one of my biggest struggles.”

Skyway.run operates like a “living map,” said Brekke-Peer, who is a software engineer. The app pulls data from OpenStreetMap, a Wikipedia-like site that allows community members to tag buildings with their hours, shops and restaurants.

Brekke-Peer showed off the app at the tech startup showcase Minnedemo in October, when it got a plug from Council Member Katie Cashman, who represents downtown.

He’s offered orange business cards with the app’s QR code to skyway businesses, and many have happily taken stacks of them for lost patrons.

Kristi Henrichs and Denise Smith have worked at law firms downtown for decades and have witnessed many eras of the skyway they now know well.

Somewhat frequently, the pair said, lost travelers will go to them for directions. They do what they can, but Henrichs said her advice has remained the same.

But in his first few months of working downtown, Erik Haug had trouble navigating the skyway; traditional navigation aids were little help.

“All of the signs everywhere are outdated,” Haug said. “I think they date back, maybe, to when the Super Bowl was here a few years back.”

That 2018 event at U.S. Bank Stadium that attracted more than 100,000 visitors to downtown was indeed the last time many maps saw a refresh, said Downtown Council President Adam Duininck, who is part of a skyway subcommittee that came out of the group’s 2035 plan.

That plan calls for the inclusion of digital smart screens that would be easy to update. It also highlights skyway rooftops as potential real estate opportunities that could help the system evoke some of the “wow factor” found in New York City’s elevated High Line park.

The skyway committee plans to keep looking at updating maps and improving building hours, which does bring costs like additional security for building owners, Duininck said. But the changes are necessary as the city continues to try to reanimate downtown, he said.