Lunds and Byerlys, the only grocery store in downtown St Paul, to close March 26. Store did fine until Covid. Ever since then, it has been losing money. They will leave the store fixtures (etc) in hopes a new grocery store will move in to serve the market.
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Did they say why, even in a food near-desert people didn’t return to buying food after Covid? How did they get food during covid?
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Very simple. Downtown businesses require people working in stores and other businesses in the immediate area. So the grocery store did well with a much larger downtown workforce. After the Covid Plague began, that workforce disappeared from downtown and will never return. There are plans to convert some office towers to residential, but that new population is nowhere near the size of the now-gone downtown workforce.
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Hadn’t thought about that, but sure, an office space is typically jammed with people: dozens crowded into cube farms, sales people coming and going, secretaries and bosses, vendors coming in to pitch IT services, janitorial staff or other.
Take the same space, you have maybe 2, possibly 3 apartments, for a total of 6 adults and maybe half a dozen kids. Not going to support the same kinds of coffee shops, convenience stores, and bars. Multiply by 1000 in a skyscraper and you have a very different looking street-level mix of stores.
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