Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey wants to increase downtown foot traffic after slow post-pandemic recovery.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is trying a unique strategy to get remote workers to return downtown: insulting them.
“I don’t know if you saw this study the other day,” Frey told an audience of 1,000 at Minneapolis Downtown Council’s annual meeting on Wednesday. “What this study clearly showed … is that when people who have the ability to come downtown to an office don’t — when they stay home sitting on their couch, with their nasty cat blanket, diddling on their laptop — if they do that for a few months, you become a loser!”
The comment was a “complete joke” and the study was made-up, the Minneapolis Mayor’s office told Fortune, but there are serious facts to back up Frey’s worry about the impact of remote work on Minneapolis’ downtown economy.
Minneapolis ranked 64th among 66 cities in downtown recovery from the pandemic, University of Toronto’s School of Cities reported in October. Visitors to the downtown area were 56% of what they were pre-COVID, according to cell phone use data collected through the study.