Visitors are flocking back to the Minnesota Capitol building after it was shut down for a historic 440 days, but numbers are still down from what they were before the pandemic hit.
Minnesota Capitol visitors are back but in fewer numbers
Visitors since the building reopened are about half of what they usually are.
July 16, 2022 at 7:00PM
Roughly 50,000 people have visited the building since it reopened in June 2021, and about 22,000 of them were children on school tours, said Administration Department Commissioner Alice Roberts-Davis. Before the closure, the Capitol typically saw 100,000 visitors during the same time period, roughly half of those school children.
The Capitol occasionally has closed to the public over the years, including during the 20-day government shutdown in 2011. But the more than yearlong closure during the pandemic was the longest in state history.
The building opened to self-guided tours last year on June 10, and Minnesota Historical Society tours resumed guided tours on July 12 last year. Saturday tours were added to the schedule in March of this year.
Some legislators want more outreach to boost the number of visitors to the building and to bring in the students who missed their sixth-grade visit to the Capitol during the shutdown.
"They are eighth graders, maybe ninth graders [now]," said Sen. Carla Nelson, R-Rochester. "It's important that we systematically reach out ... to those kids who missed their sixth-grade tour of the Capitol."
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