"Just good for downtown": Target conference brings thousands of staff downtown, albeit momentarily
MINNEAPOLIS -- – For the first time in a while, it felt like a pre-pandemic week for Steve Barnier.
"At first, there's a little bit of panic," said Barnier, owner of Dave's Downtown restaurant in the Minneapolis skyway. "Am I going to have enough food or enough staff to turn it? But then, it's just great. It's finally good to be busy again."
Barnier says Target's annual downtown conference, which draws leaders from thousands of stores across the nation, gave him a 25 percent bump in sales over a three-day period.
"It's just good for downtown," he said. "They bring more vendors downtown – it's just kind of the heart of downtown."
Amidst the excitement is uncertainty. With the conference's end, Minneapolis' largest employer returns to a hybrid schedule with no minimum requirements for working at the office.
A company spokesperson says of Target's 7,100 employees based in downtown Minneapolis, roughly two in three are not coming to the office on a weekly basis.
"If we can get more people in, busier skyways, it'll just be better for the cities," Barnier said. "It's better for small businesses, I think just growth as a whole."
Roughly two-thirds of Minneapolis' 200,000 plus downtown employees are returning to work at least once a week, according to the Minneapolis Downtown Council.
"We're excited to see the influx of employees back downtown," said Vice President Leah Wong. "Employees are a really important part of our downtown ecosystem."
"It's just good to see faces," Barnier said. "We want to get to know you. We want to see you out and socialize with you, and for us, it's just support."