A look at how downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul have bounced back from the pandemic
MINNEAPOLIS – Like many downtowns across the country, the Twin Cities are hurting.
The pandemic sent workers and visitors to Minneapolis and St. Paul home. But new cellphone data shows things are starting to rebound.
The biggest bounceback was in Salt Lake City, followed by San Diego. Minneapolis came in the middle of the pack.
RELATED: How one downtown rebounded from the pandemic, even as others struggle
So what exactly does that mean? Susan-Elizabeth Littlefield dug deeper to show us how the Twin Cities are rebounding.
The Mighty Mississippi. It divides Minneapolis and St. Paul. And it divides loyalty.
As of late, the differing cities have been in the same predicament: The pandemic turned downtowns into ghost towns.
So we went to St. Paul and Minneapolis to see how they are bouncing back.
Josh Cobb, who works in downtown St. Paul, is one of the many who cut back on city life, and leaned into home life.
"I've been kind of two, three days a week in the office," Cobb said.
And in Minneapolis, Kristin Luedtke is doing the same.
"I think it allows my team to get together and actually collaborate, and then also allows my team to be productive in the spaces they like to be in," Luedtke said. "When it snows, we don't come in."
They say as they've partially come back to work, their respective downtowns are partially coming back, too.
"I think people are starting to get back in the office," Cobb said.
"I don't feel like it's back, but it's definitely more lively than it was last year. There's new things opening up, there's restaurants that I haven't seen, so that's nice."
We looked at the numbers, starting with Minneapolis. Steve Cramer and the Minneapolis Downtown Council gave us some perspective on the complicated rebound.
"As the economy comes back, there will be more purchasing power to support more restaurants, so it's a big chicken-and-egg problem. So the ultimate solution is to get more downtown workers, bring their buying power so some of those other things increase," Cramer said.
He says their latest survey shows that employee building occupancy was at 16% in December 2020. As of this year, 62% are returning to the office at least part of the week
As for events, 9.5 million visited pre-pandemic. Last year, the number was almost back to par, at 8.6 million.
But there are still some glaring holes in the central downtown landscape. Almost everywhere you look on Nicollet Mall, there's empty storefronts. So what can be done?
As we have seen kind of the downtown economy morph a little bit these last few years, there's a place for some retail downtown. It's not our old department store culture. That's probably in our past," Cramer said.
So they are looking for smaller, boutique-style businesses to fill the void, so numbers continue to climb.
The numbers are climbing in St. Paul, too. They found daytime visits in the last 12 months are up 43% compared to the same time in 2021. And night/weekend visits are up 72%.
Former St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell is now a safety consultant for cities across the United States. He says safety is a big part of this conversation.
"I have noticed a lot more activity in St. Paul, a lot more people showing up at the restaurants," Axtell said. "One thing I do know after being a police officer for 35 years is criminals don't like witnesses. The employees coming back to work really provides an extra level of crime prevention."
And even though the streets of both cities are recovering in different ways, the resilience is the same.
"The world is never gonna be the same. So I mean, it's just a matter of just adapting," Cobb said.
New statewide job data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis show the hospitality and entertainment industries are still taking a hit across the board. Areas seeing growth include real estate, transportation and warehousing.