People sell all kinds of oddities on Craigslist, but if you’re looking for really weird stuff you might want to sign up for an email list generated by the University of Minnesota. That’s how Ben Awes, Bob Ganser, and Christian Dean, who together make up the architecture firm Citydeskstudio, found their skyway.
“We signed up for the U’s Bid Information Service to get RFPs for work,” said Awes, referring to the request-for-proposals that institutions send out when they need contract work. “But one email sent in June had an item about a skyway going up for auction.” Mildly curious, the trio clicked onto a University website to see the pictures. “We almost fell off our chairs–we thought, ‘There’s no way they’re actually selling this!’” That’s because “this” was no brassy-tacky 80s skyway, nor some context-sensitive postmodern 90s model–it was of 70s vintage, when skyways were still young and cool and futuristic. Even better, it came with a pedigree, having been designed by Edward F. Baker & Associates, the firm whose namesake designed the Cities’ first two skyways in the early 60s.
An elegant glass rectangle encased in a painted steel frame, including seven diagonal bars that run across its long sides, the skyway definitely has retro-modern appeal. At just 1,300 square feet, it’s also invitingly cozy, recalling the new generation of prefab homes (like the Flat Pack House and the Weehouse, both also designed right here in the Twin Cities), which have been all the rage in design magazines of late.
But the Citydeskstudio architects would hate to see their prize wind up as a private home. “One priority is to have a public use,” said Ganser. “We’d like it to stay in the public eye, to keep that connection to its history as public space. Given how much skyways mean to the Twin Cities, it’s an icon in a way.” Sitting isolated on a vacant lot at the University, the 140-ton structure does appear oddly monumental. It once hung unremarkably over Fifth Street in downtown Minneapolis, where it connected the old JC Penney and Powers department stores, but the city took it down to make way for the new light rail line. Then the U acquired it, but plans to use it on campus didn’t come to fruition. When the U’s stadium deal went through, the dirt lot where the skyway had been stored became needed for (surprise) a parking lot. Thus the auction.
The architects declined to specify their winning bid for the skyway, but did note that they were the only party that submitted one. Ganser said that they’re comfortable with what they paid. “We took a chance‹we didn’t want to lose it, but we had limits.” One thing to consider, said Awes, was that “there was no guarantee this was a feasible project. And we had less than two weeks to decide whether to go for it.” They also had to factor in the cost of relocating the skyway from the future parking lot to another nearby parcel of land, where the U would allow it to remain until the end of the year.
So it was that, on a hot, windy morning last month, a crew from Stubbs Building and House Movers–which famously lugged the Shubert Theater to its Hennepin Avenue location a few years back–arrived at the lot on Twenty-fifth Avenue Southeast and Fourth Street Southeast. In amazingly short order, they had the skyway propped up on four sets of wheels, one at each corner, and a hydraulic system rigged to keep it level once it was in motion. Cables were hooked to a metal plate on one end of the skyway that ran to a pair of extra-burly tow trucks. Then the trucks began inching up and over a hill. It all took considerably less than a day’s work.
Now the challenge is to create a plan–and find the partners–to make the erstwhile aerial passage into a bona fide building: “A main event,” as Christian Dean put it. He and his partners have no shortage of ideas regarding new uses for an old skyway. In the Cities, they envision it as a bar or restaurant, a gallery, a warming house in a park, or a yoga studio.
Out in the country (they have the wherewithal to move it up to 150 miles away), it could become an interpretive center, a chapel, or even a rentable cabin or retreat. “It’s not hard to get the motivation to think about a project like this,” said Awes. “This is our baby now–our bouncing baby skyway.”
Leave a Reply Cancel reply