From different backgrounds, pair launched first skyways As the pandemic casts doubt about workaday downtowns, it's fitting to flash back to this pair of downtown boosters. By Curt Brown Special to the Star Tribune March 13, 2021 — 1:20pm Text size Copy shortlink: They were born nearly 25 years and 400 miles apart in different pockets of the Midwest. But when Leslie Park and Edward Baker came together in Minneapolis more than 60 years ago, they changed the face of downtown — creating the city's first skyways. The son of a general store merchant, Park was born in 1901 in Balsam Lake, a northwestern Wisconsin town of a few hundred. Baker was born in 1926 in bustling Chicago, the son of a Russian-born Jewish traveling salesman.