August 2005

Like many failed ideas, the skywalks in Cincinnati were built with the best intentions. They were dreamed up in a fit of 1960s urban renewal, a development guru's idea for making downtown Cincinnati easier to navigate and enjoy. The city erected a small network of second-story bridges that spanned the streets and linked offices and hotels, allowing people to stroll through downtown without stepping onto the sidewalk.

Two dozen cities across the country pursued similar plans over the last 30 years, building skywalks and underground retail catacombs to keep businesses and stores from fleeing to shopping malls. They ensconced shoppers and office workers in climate-controlled environments and insulated them from crime, cold and urban blight. In Salt Lake City, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is contemplating a skywalk between its two downtown malls as part of a rebuilding project.

Yet, many cities are gripped with builders' remorse. They say the skyways and tunnels have choked off pedestrian traffic, hurt street-level retailers and limited development in the city core. ''The skywalks were not the best-developed scheme in recent history and have not served us all that well,'' said Jim Tarbell, a Cincinnati councilman. As cities try to draw residents downtown with loft conversions and tax incentives, several are trying to divert pedestrians back to the street and do away with the walkways, which critics say are antiseptic and have transformed cities into places to pass through, not live in.

''If I could take a cement mixer and pour cement in and clog up the tunnels, I would do it today,'' said Laura Miller, the mayor of Dallas. ''It was the worst urban planning decision that Dallas has ever made. They thought it was hip and groovy to create an underground community, but it was a death knell.'' This attitude shift shows that city planners and officials now see the pulse of their downtown not in its office towers and 9-to-5 workers, but in street cafes and restaurants, sidewalks and pedestrian traffic during the day, after work and on weekends.

''At the time they were built, they were seen as a way of competing with the suburbs,'' said Dave Feehan, director of the International Downtown Association, a collection of city-center groups. ''Remember the fear of crime people had 20 years ago? Downtowns were seen as unsafe places and places people didn't want to be.'' But now? ''People are saying, if we had it to do all over again, we wouldn't do it,'' Feehan said.

Dallas has considered offering retailers $2.5 million in incentives if they relocate from the tunnels to the street. Des Moines has limited the expansion of its skywalks. Cincinnati has gone the furthest and approved a plan to tear down pieces of its 30-year-old skywalk system. Still, skywalks and tunnels have become crucial arteries of city life in cold-weather places like Fargo, N.D., and Minneapolis, St. Paul and Rochester in Minnesota.

Other cities that have soured on their skywalks have no choice but to live with them. Many were built with a mix of public and private money and are now owned, maintained and guarded by the office towers through which they run. In Hartford, Conn., plans to demolish the Asylum Street sky bridge, widely ridiculed as a civic embarrassment, stalled last year over objections from the tenants and leaseholder in the office building on one end of the bridge. Developers who are building a huge residential tower across Asylum Street still hope to tear down the skywalk, but legal disputes could keep it intact for another two years.

Not so in Cincinnati. In the 1960s, the city asked its director of development, Peter Kory, to build sky bridges that would join commercial towers to hotels to a convention center downtown. Tarbell, the councilman, said the city modeled its skywalks after those in Minneapolis. The skywalks loom over Fountain Square, Cincinnati's central civic plaza, cutting off views and strangling retailers and restaurants on the ground floor. One office building on Vine Street with a skywalk link does not even have a lobby on the street level.

''The skywalk - it's ugly, and the space underneath it is dark and yucky,'' said Charlie Luken, the mayor of Cincinnati. ''The whole area is dead too much of the day.'' The skywalks deteriorated over the years and were used mostly by office workers looking for cigarette breaks, city officials said.

The city paid to build the skywalks and now pays to maintain them. And so, the City Council in June approved a $42 million plan to renovate Fountain Square, which would finance destruction of several pieces of the skywalk, keeping one leg that connects to the Cincinnati Convention Center. Demolition is set to start in August, but not everyone is happy. ''It's a very controversial issue because people are used to the thing,'' Luken said. ''When it rains or snows, they're used to using it.''

But for what? The businesses that fill skywalks and tunnels mainly serve office workers on lunch breaks, small-bore shoppers and residents seeking relief from the heat, cold or rain. There are copy centers, office-suppliers, diners and coffee shops and a smattering of salons and gift stores, but few high-end restaurants or retailers.

''If you come here, people would think we have no retail at all,'' said Cheryl Myers, a senior vice president of Charlotte Center City Planners in North Carolina. In the 1970s, the city began building its Overstreet Mall, a series of retail shops on the second floor of office buildings, connected by skywalks. Today, the skywalks connect 30 downtown blocks, Myers said. ''Everyone knows it's a mistake,'' she said.

Des Moines began building its three miles of skywalks in 1982, arguing that the $10 million program would save the city. Twenty-three years later, city officials blame the skywalks for the ghostly sidewalks and ground-floor vacancy rates of 60 percent. There are no plans to rip down its skywalks, but the City Council has passed resolutions limiting them to a central Skywalk District downtown.

Inside the Dallas Underground, a two-mile tunnel system that supports 90 businesses, the corridors are sometimes bustling, but sometimes deserted. Despite the mayor's desire to plug the tunnels and lure businesses away, owners say they are happy to be down below, ready to serve thousands of people who work above.

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