Live
Wayfinding
A fast, accessible interactive map of your district — turn-by-turn routing, real-time closures, and a “Simple Guide” mode built for all ages. Live today as the Saint Paul skyway map.
Built & operated in a real downtown — Saint Paul, MN
A website and digital platform for your business improvement district
A map shows your district exists. We fill it with people, and prove it.
Open·Civ is the civic platform we run in the Saint Paul skyway every day — wayfinding, a business directory, live events, volunteer tools, and foot-traffic sensing. Launch is the start. If you want, we stay on to help you run downtown, and we measure what moves.
- spskyway.com— live
- eat.— 155 diners · est. $16.6–23.2K impact
- social— sold out
- v/hub— 681 surveyed
Your district’s website, with the map, directory and events built in
A district needs a public site people find, and a platform behind it that keeps working after launch. We build both. The site tells the district’s story; the map, the directory and the events calendar live inside it.
The proof is already running. The Downtown Revival Trust’s four sites show the site craft. The Saint Paul skyway map, live every day, shows the platform.
Don’t take our word for it
Touch the real thing.
The Saint Paul skyway map is live in production today — a 5-mile, 47-block indoor network with 60+ connected buildings and 160+ businesses, plus an accessibility-first “Simple Guide” for all ages. Built solo, running every day.
Open spskyway.com ↗spskyway.com Live
The platform
Five services, designed to connect into one operating relationship.
Each one is a real, running tool — not a slide. Connected, they let you activate downtown and measure it, so impact compounds instead of scattering across five disconnected vendors.
In development
Insights
Foot-traffic sensing → board-ready impact reporting: the evidence that defends and grows your funding. Two sensors deployed; the cross-city product is in active development.
Live · self-serve in beta
Directory
A searchable business directory where owners claim and edit their own listing — hours, photos, events — and see their own views.
Proven
Activations
We don’t just publish a calendar — we run the events. A $5 progressive dinner moved 155 diners through five restaurants in one night; a sold-out skyway mixer with a university dean on the mic.
Method proven · productizing
V/Hub — relational organizing for the whole community
Volunteer routing, registration, surveys, and tabling that get stakeholders of every age participating — person to person, the way real organizing works. One-tap add-to-homescreen, no app store. Proven by a 681-resident survey and live check-in; the multi-tenant product is being built, and the first districts to sign on will shape it.
Proof · the number your board can defend
Estimated · methodology shownOne $5 dinner. An estimated $16,600–$23,240 spent downtown in a single night.
This is the kind of evidence a district can hand its board, its city and its funders: proof that people came, and an estimate of what it was worth.
- 324
- Seats registered
- 155
- Unique attendees
- 511
- Check-ins · 3.3 each
- 548
- Dishes rated
How we counted: a floor of $3,050 in app-rated plates; the range assumes $25–$35 per visit at downtown prices; it excludes drinks, second orders, and walk-ins. The range is our estimate from the app’s counts.
We measure what people do downtown, and what it’s worth.
Why the measurement matters
The data is the instrument that unlocks the next dollar.
- 01ActivateRun real events
- 02MeasureSensors + check-ins
- 03Proveest. $16.6–23.2K, one night
- 04FundDefend & grow the budget
- 05GrowMore downtown, sustainably
↻ Each turn funds the nextConnected activation services, so impact compounds — proven first with the dinner above.
About
An operator, not a vendor.
Open·Civ is run by Jacob Ramos — a decade in political advocacy, marketing, and organizing, building civic software where he lives. The work isn’t drafted in a coastal office; it runs in the skyway every day, then travels.
The platform is built to travel to other downtowns, not only to skyways. The method is proven; your district is the next deployment, designed with you.
We listen, we organize, we challenge expectations, we build.
Operated locally
You talk to the person who builds and runs it — not an account manager or an offshore queue. An operator, not a vendor.
Your data, portable
Your content and data are yours and exportable, with no lock-in if we ever part ways.
Already in daily use
The platform already exists and runs in the Saint Paul skyway every day. A first project starts with clear success criteria, agreed before any work begins.
Privacy-first by design
Passive sensing keeps counts, not identities. A phone is linked to a person only if that person opts in through the app.
How this travels
Proven in the hard case. Easier on open streets.
The skyway is an unusual environment — a five-mile indoor network. The platform underneath it isn’t skyway-specific: it runs there every day and is built to travel to other downtowns. The activation playbook — dinners, mixers, surveys, volunteer drives — is geography-agnostic.
We’re early and one downtown deep, on purpose. The method is proven, not theoretical — and your district is the next deployment, designed with you. You get the founder’s direct attention, not a ticket queue.
Partner perk
Sponsor a digital refresh for the businesses in your district, at partner rates or built into the partnership.
One builder
You work with the person who builds it
- You talk to the person who builds and runs it, not an account manager.
- Your content and data are yours and exportable, with no lock-in if we ever part ways.
Questions districts ask
- How does this compare with wayfinding kiosks?
- There is no hardware to buy or maintain. Directions run on visitors’ own phones, and the map is scoped to your district.
- Do visitors need an app?
- No. It opens in the browser, and anyone who wants it on their home screen can add it in two taps.
- How do businesses update their listing?
- They do it themselves: hours, photos and events, from a phone, whenever they change.
See your district lit up.
Thirty minutes with Jacob: a live walkthrough of the skyway map, and what a first project would look like for your district.