Through the past 30-plus years, Bob Greenberg has seen Nicollet Mall change, from the various names of Dayton's department store to the building of Gaviidae Common to the construction — and eventual demolition — of the high-end Conservatory.
"I have operated on the mall for a long time," Greenberg said. "I have seen a lot of these ideas come and go."
Yet if Greenberg — who took the helm of the Young-Quinlan building on Nicollet Mall with his wife, Sue, in 1985 — were to step out of the year-by-year oscillations, he'd see the mall, in some ways, has hardly changed at all.
For years, city advocates have debated its best use and possible improvements. Now in 2023, Nicollet Mall is again the epicenter of downtown's revitalization, this time with the added pressure of hybrid work having sapped much of the foot traffic and pushing last year's retail vacancy rate to about 39%, the highest since 2013.
"Everyone sort of looks at Nicollet Mall as the unsolvable puzzle. What could be done?" said Dan Collison, senior director of business development and public affairs for Minneapolis developer Sherman Associates. "It would be transformative for the rest of the downtown."
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Compared with the same time in 2019 pre-pandemic, foot traffic on Nicollet Mall was down nearly 30% in September, according to Placer.ai, a firm that tracks anonymized cellphone data.
Still, compared with 2022, foot traffic on Nicollet Mall has seen increases every month this year. In September, foot traffic was up more than 7% compared with last year, likely thanks to a surge in event traffic as well as some workers returning to the office, said Steve Cramer, chief executive of the Minneapolis Downtown Council. Cramer said he expected total attendance at conventions, sports games, concerts and other events in downtown this year to exceed what was seen before the pandemic.
"It certainly is feeding street traffic when those events occur, and there have been so many of them that it's been relatively consistent over the course of the year," he said.