Shut St. Paul's skyways at midnight? It's not an easy call

The St. Paul City Council may vote later this month on stricter rules and shorter hours for the downtown skyway system after some building owners complained of people vandalizing and sleeping in the skyways, and using them as a toilet.

However, a public hearing on the issue that drew a big crowd to City Hall Wednesday night shows there's no clear consensus on what to do.

Neither downtown residents nor their landlords fully backed a proposed ordinance that would close skyways at midnight instead of 2 a.m. and require building owners to put city-approved video surveillance systems in place along with private security personnel.

The plan emerged from discussions the last seven months with a skyway working group that included business leaders, community organizations, and police, said St. Paul City Council Member Rebecca Noecker.

"The general sentiment," she said, "was that we really needed to do a better job in creating a welcoming and safe and clean, beautiful environment in our skyway system, that we really just needed to raise the bar."

But that working group did not include advocates for the disabled. Rick Cardenas, who lives downtown and uses a wheelchair, said he likes most of Noecker's plan but that shutting down the skyways two hours early would prevent him from fully participating in city life.

"I go to hockey games. I got to music at Xcel," he said. "And it's often that it's after 12 o'clock before I even attempt to go home."

St. Paul's skyways are public easements through mostly privately-owned buildings. And in the system's many second-floor lobbies, it's hard to tell where the public thoroughfare ends and the private spaces begin.

That's a concern many building owners are raising because among the proposed changes is an end to the longstanding ban on sitting, kneeling, lounging or lying down in the skyway.

That particular rule change will only increase confusion, said Jerry Hersman with the Greater St. Paul Building Owners and Managers Association.

"The elimination of the sitting prohibition adds grayness," he said, "and we don't know where people can sit and they can't sit. And they certainly don't know where they can sit."

In general, Hersman said the new ordinance will improve the skyways. But other property managers say the system is beyond repair.

Jaunae Brooks owns the Railroader Printing House in Lowertown, and says being skyway-connected has been a disaster. People, she said, have been doing drugs, sleeping and having sex in her building. And for much of this year she openly flouted the law, locking her skyway doors at 8 p.m.

After Wednesday night's hearing, Brooks said it's disingenuous for city leaders to describe the system as a public-private partnership while leaning on building owners to provide security. At the very least, she said she'd like to see regular police patrols again.

"The burden is all on us. There is no partnership," she said. "Did anybody say what the city does? What does the city do? Zero. They don't do anything."

Brooks says the city is in breach of its original agreement with property owners that established the skyway system. And with few people at City Hall willing to listen, Brooks says her next move may be a lawsuit.