Last year the Hennepin County sheriff shut a bridge so people couldn’t use it as a vantage point to see the I-35W bridge-collapse site. Now the city attorney is studying whether Minneapolis can ban the public from viewing construction of the new Twins stadium from city-owned skyways, for fear of would-be terrorists making crib notes. So when exactly can a person take an honest gawk at a disaster  – or a stadium that could become one?

Mike Sachi, Minneapolis’ parking and skyway systems engineer, tells the Downtown Journal the skyways serving the city’s Warehouse District parking ramps "offer some pretty unique vantage points as to how things are being constructed, and the bad guys could potentially use some of that information against us."

Such security concerns led to ongoing research by the city attorney into security policies for skyways the city owns: Can those who hang around watching or photographing stadium construction be ordered to move along? Policies of ramp operator Ampco System Parking currently extend to the skyways, but the city attorney is also examining whether case law supports such use of private rules in public places.

When Mayor R.T. Rybak tried to reopen Bridge 9, the former railroad bridge converted to pedestrian and bike use, 15 days after the I-35W bridge fell last year, Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek immediately ordered it closed again. His reason: so the public wouldn’t see recovery efforts before families of the dead. Six days later, divers recovered the body of the last victim, and Bridge 9 reopened for good.

If the city attorney decides you can’t stand still to observe a site before a disaster, and the sheriff won’t let you access a public vantage point after a disaster, what’s an honest onlooker to do? It’s a catch-22 that didn’t exist in 1981 and 1982 when snow caused the Metrodome’s fabric roof to collapse. Then the Hennepin County Law Library, on the 24th floor of the Hennepin County Government Center, hosted dozens of spectators at windows that afforded a panoramic overview of the scene. Perhaps the difference is the ready access of those onlookers to law books, had authorities tried to blinker their view.