CLEVELAND — Downtown Cleveland Alliance president Michael Deemer is hoping for more foot traffic downtown. His organization is still trying to get visitors back to pre-pandemic numbers.
“We certainly haven’t had the visitor traffic that we typically have,” Deemer said. “Really been dependent entirely on the 20 thousand residents that live downtown.”
The alliance’s March recovery report found that daily foot traffic is up every day of the week compared to last year. Visitation, retail and entertainment traffic are still working its way back up to where it was before the pandemic.
“What’s slower to come back is the office workers,” Deemer said.
Their report showed that as of February, just less than 50% of downtown office workers have returned since Jan. 2020.
“As convenient as the work from home phenomenon is, people have a desire to be with their colleagues, have those social experiences that you only have with other people,” Deemer said.
He said areas like Euclid Avenue are ripe with businesses that are here for the work crowds, and some of them may not survive if more people don’t return to the office. The Alliance is optimistic that downtown employees will return to the office, and said more businesses are in downtown than before the pandemic.
“Office workers we have, which is kind of the missing piece of the puzzle for the downtown economy. The better business these small business owners will be able to do in the lunch hour and into the evenings,” Deemer said.
He is optimistic that large spikes in foot traffic will help local businesses, since shows are back at Playhouse Square, the NBA All-Star game was in Cleveland this year and there will be a baseball season with full capacity for the first time since 2019.
