{"id":47902,"date":"2022-08-04T23:30:22","date_gmt":"2022-08-04T23:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2022\/08\/04\/can-north-americas-downtowns-reverse-their-downturns\/"},"modified":"2022-08-04T23:30:22","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T23:30:22","slug":"can-north-americas-downtowns-reverse-their-downturns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2022\/08\/04\/can-north-americas-downtowns-reverse-their-downturns\/","title":{"rendered":"Can North America’s downtowns reverse their downturns?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Store owner Clay Simpson is confident adding a cocktail bar to his store will bring in more customers.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr. Simpson and his co-founder opened Clayton & Crume, an upscale leather goods store, in the city of Louisville, Kentucky, in 2019, six months before the start of the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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After surviving various lockdowns, the number of customers is still below the level of three years ago, he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I can’t say that walk-in and walk-in is really going to continue like it used to,” says Mr. Simpson. “So of course the pandemic has had an impact.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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His store is located in downtown Louisville, more specifically in the hip East Market, or “NuLu” neighborhood. Upscale restaurants, bars, art galleries and other boutique shops are located here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Clayton & Crume first began serving cocktails in June and Mr Simpson says the goal is “to make it a part of the experience”. He adds: “The area is starting to buzz again, but it’s not the best it could be.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr. Simpson isn’t the only one dealing with fewer clients. Inner cities in the US and Canada have been hit hard by the pandemic, and many are still struggling.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Remote and hybrid working means far fewer people have to go to inner cities to work or choose to live there. At the same time, tourist numbers remain below the level of 2019.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And while bars and restaurants are reopening, they’re having a hard time finding staff because people don’t want to do those jobs anymore. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Jordan Skora of Louisville Tourism, the city’s marketing organization, says a major employer, health insurance company Humana, has hit downtown particularly hard during the pandemic, allowing many of its roughly 10,000 employees to work from home.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“It hurt downtown shops and restaurants, which saw far fewer passers-by,” he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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At the same time, Mr Skora said the city had seen “mass layoffs” from hotels and museums, and many of those people had not returned because they wanted to work remotely. He says this has now led to staff shortages as tourists return.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A key factor in Louisville’s popularity with visitors is bourbon. Kentucky is the home of whiskey and Louisville is the state’s largest city. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Tourists from across the US and beyond typically come to Louisville to soak up the vibes at the nearly 50 bars and restaurants that make up the official Urban Bourbon Trail.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The city also draws visitors for the annual Kentucky Derby, America’s most famous horse race, held each May. More than 147,000 people attended the Louisville circuit on the day this year, up from 51,838 with Covid restrictions last year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr Skora says: \u201cIt’s one of the hurdles we need to overcome to get the hospitality workforce to match this pent-up tourism demand. However, we are lucky to have tourists back.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“We used to joke around the office that walking around with bottles of bourbon and Louisville Slugger would make the tourists back [baseball] Mini bats.” The latter are made in the city and are well known in the United States.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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About 75 miles away in Lexington, Kentucky, the hospitality industry there is also seeing a shortage of workers. “We lost so many [hospitality] employees,” says Mary Quinn Ramer, president of tourism organization VisitLEX.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cMany of them switched to other industries. We have to raise an entire population to get back on board \u2013 and in hospitality it takes a lot of energy to be gracious day in and day out. Why would I want to be on my feet? all day when I can stay home and sell insurance?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Down in New Orleans on the US Gulf Coast, Michael Hecht of the regional economic development organization Greater New Orleans Inc says the city has taken a major hit from Covid because of its large tourism sector.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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With visitor numbers now returning, he says the city also can’t get enough staff to fill hospitality jobs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“If you talk to the restaurants, they will tell you that they are two-thirds full,” says Mr. Hecht. “Not for lack of customers, but for lack of staff. If you look at the labor shortage, we call it the ‘Covid hangover’.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Referring to office and retail workers in New Orleans, Mr. Hecht adds that “a lot of people have decided they’d rather work for Uber and be in control of their lives… they’ll never go back to a retail or office job.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In the western Canadian city of Vancouver, business leader John Kay says inner city office firms continue to be impacted by a global phenomenon – “the great resignation”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Dubbed \u201cThe Big Quit,\u201d workers have quit their jobs in droves since the pandemic began. Typically, they are inspired to move away from the big cities and instead find new employment that allows them to work from home in a more peaceful and cheaper place.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr. Kay, the chief executive of management consultancy Realize Strategies, says this means some companies are struggling to hire new employees. “What I’m hearing is a lot of organizations and leaders pulling their hair out trying to fill this recruitment gap.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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New Economy is a new series examining how business, commerce, the economy and working life are rapidly changing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Because other Vancouver companies allow employees to work from home at times, it means they don’t need as much office space. As a result, says Mr. Kay, between 15% and 18% of downtown offices are now vacant.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhen I asked some real estate agents [estate agents] I got an interesting answer to that,\u201d he says. “It ranged from ‘it’s just a pandemic outbreak’ to ‘it’s a bit scary because we’re going to be putting a ton of floor space up and running in the next few years’.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe have companies that realize they don’t need an office. I think this will be a huge setback from the pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In Toronto, Canada’s largest city, Mayor John Tory told the BBC the challenge for his government is “to get people back downtown”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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With fewer workers commuting to central Toronto, ridership on the city’s public transit system is still only 60% of pre-Covid levels. He adds that this lack of traffic revenue is “a financial drain” on the city.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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However, Mr Tory concludes that “there is probably little the government can do” to boost city center employment figures.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He adds that like other major North American cities, Toronto is struggling with staffing shortages in restaurants, bars and hotels. But on a more positive note, he says the city’s tourism sector is experiencing a “strong recovery.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Store owner Clay Simpson is confident adding a cocktail bar to his store will bring in more customers. Mr. Simpson and his co-founder opened Clayton & Crume, an upscale leather goods store, in the city of Louisville, Kentucky, in 2019, six months before the start of the coronavirus pandemic. After surviving various lockdowns, the number […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"yoast_head":"\nCan North America's downtowns reverse their downturns? - Tahrir News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2022\/08\/04\/can-north-americas-downtowns-reverse-their-downturns\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Can North America's downtowns reverse their downturns?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Store owner Clay Simpson is confident adding a cocktail bar to his store will bring in more customers. 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