What will Downtown Raleigh be like when workers return? Leaders look for recovery ideas
As more workers return to the office, what type of Downtown Raleigh will be there to greet them?
Downtown Raleigh is slowly recovering from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which sent thousands of workers to work from their homes; reduced the number of people who could dine in restaurants and visit shops; and canceled cultural and entertainment events.
But that recovery hasn’t been felt evenly across downtown.
Weekends, particularly Saturdays, have started bustling as museums, restaurants and bars have reopened, said Bill King, president and CEO of Downtown Raleigh Alliance.
“What can we do on Thursday? What can we do on Wednesday? Things like that to try and stretch out downtown’s foot traffic,” he said. “We are doing well on weekends, but it is still quieter on weekdays.”
In a presentation to the Raleigh City Council Tuesday, King showed which downtown districts were close to hitting their pre-pandemic sales of food and beverages.
Glenwood South reached 89% of their pre-pandemic sales in March while the Warehouse District approached 67%. But the Fayetteville District, in particular, has not bounced back. Historically it’s been the most reliant on office workers and visitors traveling to the Raleigh Convention Center complex, King said.
The pandemic’s impact on downtown was coupled with a year of protests that occasionally turned violent. Some businesses were burned or had their windows smashed, resulting in business owners putting up plywood. About 96% of the plywood has come down in downtown, King said.
Most downtown workers are still working from home but anticipate coming back to the office, at least partially this summer and fall, according to a Downtown Raleigh Alliance survey of downtown employees, employers and residents.
Workers are worried about whether their local lunch spots will be open and how easy it will be to find open businesses near them, according to the survey. If workers are given the choice to stay home versus come back to the office, are there events and plans to make downtown a better draw?
And if employers are offering flexible workweeks split between the office and home, employees want to know if their parking will as flexible, according to the survey.
Ideas to bring people downtown
A handful of business owners and residents called into the meeting to share their ideas on how to help downtown recover. Some suggested lowering the speed limit on roads in downtown, working with rideshare providers to make it cheaper to come to downtown and creating open-container districts for alcoholic beverages.
Several of the speakers mentioned employees wanting to feel safe downtown.
“They are not worried about COVID coming back to the office,” said Andy Ellen, a downtown Raleigh business owner. “But the concerns we heard from employees in just the two days they’ve been back have all been centered in and around safety in and around the office. And where I’ve got some asking for concealed carry permits.”
The city already has implemented some ideas that have come from business owners, including a new alert system and a free parking program for small business employees, said Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin.
Hundreds of downtown businesses, employees and residents signed up for the alert system that would notify them ahead of a planned protest and other events like a gas leak or road closure.
“They might have ideas we’ve never thought of,” she said. “They are living it. Not us. What do they need? What are their ideas? And we want to be supportive.”
Downtown Raleigh is the “largest employment center” in the city and has the largest collection of locally-owned businesses in the region, King said.
“Great cities and regions need great downtowns,” he said. “And when you think about all those things, downtown is where we come together and express ourselves. It’s the place where we take our friends and family from out of town. It’s the place where we celebrate. Where we come together.”
