From CBS-Minneapolis:
Target announced on Thursday that the company is downsizing its Minneapolis office space by moving out of City Center, a move that decreases its downtown footprint by one-third.
In an email to corporate employees, Target executives said its post-pandemic “Flex for Your Day” policy—a hybrid model that will allow both remote and on-site work—requires less office space, driving the decision to stop its lease of nearly one million square feet at City Center. The
The 3,500 employees who worked at that location will be relocated to another Minneapolis location or Brooklyn Park. There are no lay-offs due to the move.
Target’s announcement is poised to have impact far greater than just shedding office space. Businesses located in the heart of Minneapolis rely on foot traffic of people working downtown.
“That’s definitely going to have an impact on us,” said Emanuel Sas, owner of Come Pho Soup and La Belle Catering, a cozy space on the Nicollet Mall. “I think that hybrid model is going to impact businesses like us that depend majorly on the businesses working downtown.”
Steve Cramer, President and CEO of the Minneapolis Downtown Council, said Target’s move to downsize could mean the beginning of a new normal for office culture, which has changed dramatically since the pandemic upended how Americans live and work—reshaping downtown as a result.
Target is the largest employer in Minneapolis with 8,500 corporate workers....
....MORE
Being a very woke corporation there was no mention of the exuberance of some of the Minneapolis Target shoppers last May:
More TGT pics at Business Insider.
In other Minneapolis business news:
Minneapolis real estate managers worry others will follow Target in exiting downtown
Angel Food Bakery is leaving downtown Minneapolis and relocating to St. Louis Park
The place is a pestilential cesspit.
Meanwhile in Minneapolis: City Council Votes To Dismantle Police Department
In The Midst of The Killings, Arson And Looting In Minneapolis There's Still Time For TheaterAmazon takes another major step to abandon Seattle" (AMZN)
Sooner or later the politicians in Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, Chicago and the rest of the northern cities are going to realize they've destroyed the goose that laid the golden eggs and in particular the last two cities, that they have been coasting on the fumes of past glory....
Seattle Real Estate Not a Good Bet
The news that the city is going to shut-down CHAZ CHOP is not going to be nearly enough to save Seattle.
Amazon and Microsoft have been the engine of growth, in a way similar to Silicon Valley where the whole world is funneling money into a small geographical area and in the case of Amazon with coronavirus we've just seen the high-water mark for this cycle.
Like so many societies throughout history getting wealthy means getting flabby, with politics and programs that a poorer, hungrier society can't afford.
Looking at a third metro area, Minneapolis' heyday was roughly 1880 - 1980 with the northern tier railroads, Great Northern and Northern Pacific and the heavyweight ag businesses, Pillsbury, General Mills etc. giving way to first round tech, Medtronic and St. Jude Medical, Control Data and Cray Research and then stagnation into a violent* little backwater, coasting on accumulated capital and slowly becoming irrelevant on the world stage except as a chokepoint for soybeans and corn being sent down the Mississippi or up to Duluth and eventually the Atlantic.
Seattle was touted as heaven-on-earth with the $15.00 minimum wage for restaurant workers but the touts never mentioned that it was only because of Amazon that it was possible.
And now those jobs are no more and 50% of them will not come back.
For a while Seattle had more construction cranes than New York and even London but those days are gone and here's the rest of the story from Phoenix's KTAR news:...
Re/insurance: "U.S. riot losses accelerated & worsened by pandemic..."
You may have seen the Governor of Minnesota gave the Federal government the opportunity to begin paying for the riot damage in Minneapolis, estimated by the Governor to total over $500,000,000 and climbing, and affecting 1500+ buildings and businesses. (letter after the jump)....
The last tally I saw had the damage the woke Mayor and woke Governor and woke City Council allowed (literally allowed) in Minneapolis at over $600 million
