Downtown Minneapolis Office Market

[martykoessel]

Considerations for the health and vitality of downtown streets and stores will have nothing to do with decisions by business leaders to push workers to return to downtown office space. To the degree that leaders believe that getting their employees into the office and meeting face to face will improve productivity--and therefore financial performance--workers will return. Even in the public sector, concerns about employee satisfaction and work performance should trump concerns about how Downtown Minneapolis feels. Since many--perhaps even most--downtown workers are never coming back full time, it's good that so much thought is being given to how Downtown Minneapolis will evolve. Can the growth of the residential population and retail to support it outpace the sense of decay coming from empty office space and closed stores? Can residential life revive the Central Business District, not just the North Loop and East Downtown? Can affordable housing fit adequately into the mix? It will be interesting to see how all this plays out over the next decade or two.

[Didier]

A lot of public sector workers don’t work downtown, so you’d either have to bring them back too for no reason, or arbitrarily force certain employees to come back, apparently against their wishes.

[xandrex]

Is there really a significant chunk of city or county workers who can work from home who weren't based downtown? Of admin-type workers at the county, for instance, nearly all of them worked downtown. Librarians, public works staff, social workers, service center, and other folks obviously don't all work downtown, but many of them can't work from home anyway. The only major exception I can think of were Medina transportation folks.

In any case, the county isn't moving to bring folks back to the office and workers seem to be moving further out given that opportunity.

[Didier]

The county has lots of office space / service centers outside the main downtown location. It’s my understanding that the relatively new building on Lake Street is pretty empty, so I assume others are similar.

[fehler]

Maybe we don't want a Library Director who works remote from California.

[Mdcastle]

Is there some evidence our libraries would be better directed if the directer lived locally and spewed carbon out of his car on the way to a local office?

[Tom H.]

I feel like it's at least reasonable to assume that directors (of any type of institution) benefit in their managerial roles from being able to physically experience the places which they manage.

The optics of it are also not negligible. It's distracting from the mission when having to answer / deal with these issues, and I think there's also probably a morale boost when subordinates can see their managers engaged in the work.

Not saying that there isn't a counterargument, but it's not an unreasonable demand that the director of a public institution be physically proximate to said institution.

[Didier]

This isn't even worth a discussion. The people in charge of local, public assets should have a connection to the community.

[Mdcastle]

I'm assuming they hired the best qualified candidate.

The argument is we'd be better off with a director that's not as qualified but willing to put up with the lost time, hassle, and expense of having to drive to the office every day?

Is his job to physically wander around the libraries and notice that the Technology and Foreign Language sections are getting worn and sparse, or just to supervise the people that do that and draw up budgets for replacing them while sitting in front of a computer?

[VacantLuxuries]

There's a big difference between hiring someone who lives in Hennepin County but prefers to do a majority of their white collar leadership work from home, and someone going through the entire job life cycle of recruitment, hiring, working, and departing for another position without ever setting foot in a Hennepin County Library.

Does the director of the library system need to literally drive to and be present in one of the libraries every day when their role and responsibilities don't demand it? No, that's silly. Should they be within a reasonable distance so that they can visit different parts of the system and have some amount of understanding of the organization they're running? I'd agree that's prudent. And as previously stated, it's an optics thing.

It's why when job postings include language to the effect of "Remote work available within XX miles of the home office," it makes sense. Hopefully Hennepin Co Library has learned from this, and good luck to Seattle Public Library when the director in question jumps again for another remote position.

[xandrex]

Hennepin County requires anyone at certain levels of management who oversee direct service/in-person employees to live in Minnesota (or Wisconsin).

The county has lots of office space / service centers outside the main downtown location. It’s my understanding that the relatively new building on Lake Street is pretty empty, so I assume others are similar.

Most of Hennepin's offices/services centers outside of downtown primarily serve those who need to provide in-person services or support the staff that does. There really aren't that many folks that would work out of those locations that would be forced back because of a change to WFH policy - most of them (of which, to my understanding, there are few) are already back.

Many of the county's properties (Government Center, other downtown buildings, libraries, service centers, etc.) are available for office workers to use as flex space, but I think usage is fairly low. Because non-downtown properties (and HCGC) usually house something else useful, I'm sure they're going to stick around. But I wonder if the 701 and Thrivent buildings have any reason to be held long term.

[Nick]

Can't blame them for not foreseeing the pandemic, but the county spending fifty million on the Thrivent building (and taking a half block of downtown off the tax rolls) at the same time the city was building a new office building across the street was a real missed opportunity.

[rhettcarlson]

Biz Journal really taking Target to task over their RTO policy. Glad it's getting coverage.

How Target's flexible work policy compares to competitors Amazon and Walmart
https://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/ ... rison.html

[Mdcastle]

"Amazon workers are back in the office three days a week and Walmart workers are returning two days a week. Both companies recently reported stronger second-quarter earnings than Target."

Are they trying to imply Amazon and Walmart have stronger second-quarter earnings because they're hurting their employees by forcing them to waste time and money coming into the office?

I think it's more likely correlation doesn't imply causation here.

[VacantLuxuries]

Business journalism comes in two flavors:

1) Report a list of facts that when viewed together, create a narrative
2) Ask a rich person/CEO their opinion on something, report it as news

Neither of which I think are a good reason to draw serious conclusions about anything you aren't already informed on.

Walmart and Amazon's earnings versus Target probably have far more to do with their race-to-the-bottom prices, which consumers are gravitating towards as their spending power decreases or their anxiety about economic trends makes them more cautious about spending. Target, who has built their reputation on the trade off of reasonably higher prices for the cache of not being a Walmart shopper, is obviously going to do worse in this economic climate.

It has zero to do with "synergy" or "water cooler culture."

[Tom H.]

...reasonably higher prices for the cache of not being a Walmart shopper...

I'm stealing this quote. Pure gold.

[Mdcastle]

Yeah, it's usually the middle guys that get squeezed out. Anyone remember Mervyn's and Carson's?

I think the stigma of shopping at Walmart is basically gone now, so "at least we're not Walmart" is no longer a winning strategy.

Also I heard "Walmart is a grocery store that also sells home goods, Target is a home goods store that also sells groceries". When you need eggs, you need eggs and it's a problem if Target is out of stock because they can't figure out their grocery department . You generally don't need home goods with the same sense of urgency, and if Walmart doesn't have it, there's Amazon.

[StandishGuy]

My buddy works for Target and used to be located in City Center in Downtown Minneapolis before the pandemic. He's 100% remote and actually has a home in New Orleans that they go to in the winter. He was told a few years back that his new local office would be in Brooklyn Park, which was very unpopular with his colleagues. However, no one has ever been made to go there and I imagine a revolt if Target changed the policy. He's fine if allowed to go downtown because the Blue Line would be easy and convenient, but it would cause issues with the winter home.

[kdo5581]

https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teach ... _stops.pdf

lol

[Nick]

Thank you.