Returning workers add some bustle to downtown Minneapolis

Monday mornings at Corner Coffee in downtown Minneapolis used to be slow. But this week, store manager Mia Pariseau had at least five people lined up at any given time for about an hour straight.

“We got just slammed,” Pariseau said. “And it was just me and one other person here.” 

Corner Coffee sits just down the street from Target headquarters, making it a prime spot for employees of the retailer, especially now that those in the company’s commercial unit were ordered to work in person three days a week starting Sept. 2.

In-person work is back to almost 75% of pre-pandemic numbers, according to Kittie Fahey, senior director of advancement for the Minneapolis Downtown Council. That’s expected to increase as the numbers from Target’s return-to-work policy come in. 

As Minneapolis continues to recover from the surge of remote work spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, the return of employees of several major companies is already changing the energy downtown. “It’s more vibrant and exciting during the day,” said Madelyn Dunn-Lammert, an associate designer for Target. 

Dunn-Lammert, who primarily worked remotely since she started three years ago, said being able to grab lunch with co-workers or work through a project in-person helps build team connections and facilitate collaboration, especially in a creative field. 

For Fahey, this increased collaboration and socialization in professional settings is good to see. She hopes people will extend this connection past working hours to take part in the downtown community. 

“Go out for lunch, stay after and go meet friends, go do some things,” Fahey said. “Use all the resources we have.” 

But even with Target buzzing with a back-to-school-like energy, downtown’s pre-pandemic liveliness has not fully returned. 

“It’s a lot less busy post-pandemic,” said Jenny Lissarrague, an attorney who has worked downtown since 2012. “It’s not quite as dead as it was, like 2020, 2021, but it’s still down quite a bit from what it was before the pandemic.” 

After remote work skyrocketed during the pandemic, Minnesota was slow to bring employees back to the office, but now the state is catching up, according to Fahey. 

Minnesota’s share of primarily remote workers was 21% in 2021, higher than the national share of 17.9%, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. In 2022, Minnesota’s share dropped to 16.9%.

“It felt a little bit less isolated before the pandemic,” Lissarrague said. “It’s getting a little bit of that feel back. I came down here during some of those high pandemic years, and it was a ghost town, it was just nobody.”

But will anyone hang around?

Target is the second-largest employer downtown, behind Hennepin Healthcare. Other large employers include Wells Fargo and Ameriprise Financial.

For Lissarrague, getting downtown in the first place is more challenging than before the pandemic as increased remote work means fewer buses are needed to transport people downtown. 

Even as workers return, traffic hours are more spread out than before the pandemic, Fahey said. Many return-to-work policies allow employees to choose certain days to come into the office and some workers may be commuting to work around noon rather than earlier in the morning.

As in-person work returns, the pre-pandemic workday structure may again become the norm. Of the top 15 downtown employers, 12 have back-to-office policies, according to Fahey.

The Twin Cities also saw an increase in in-person work over the summer as state government employees were required to spend 50% of their workdays in the office starting June 1, a policy that was met with resistance. 

Fahey hopes the return to downtown will not be confined to workday hours. For the downtown scene to regain its pre-pandemic vibrancy, people need to stick around after they clock out. That also goes for the roughly 60,000 downtown residents, not just commuters leaving the city at the end of the day. 

“It used to be you sort of came downtown, you hung out downtown,” Fahey said. “But now it’s like they kind of come in, they work and they go home and we’d love to see that not be the direction anymore.” 

That isn’t always easy, though. Fahey said restaurants also close earlier than they did before the pandemic, so there is simply not as much to stick around for. “You’d be hard pressed to find, in the central business district, a restaurant open until 11 (p.m.),” Fahey said. “That’s crazy different than pre-pandemic.” 

Still, as more and more people line up to get coffee on their way to the office, the revitalization of downtown life is trending toward optimism. 

“The future is bright,” Pariseau said. 

Wren Warne-Jacobsen is a reporting intern with MinnPost.

The post Returning workers add some bustle to downtown Minneapolis appeared first on MinnPost.