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A2 THE BULLETIN • MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2022 The Bulletin LOCAL, STATE & REGION How to reach us CIRCULATION Didn’t receive your paper? Start or stop subscription? 541-385-5800 PHONE HOURS 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday 7 a.m.-11 a.m. Saturday-Sunday and holidays GENERAL INFORMATION 541-382-1811 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri. ONLINE www.bendbulletin.com EMAIL news@bendbulletin.com AFTER HOURS Newsroom ................................541-383-0348 Circulation ................................541-385-5800 NEWSROOM EMAIL Business ........business@bendbulletin.com City Desk .............news@bendbulletin.com Features.................................................................. communitylife@bendbulletin.com Sports ................. sports@bendbulletin.com NEWSROOM FAX 541-385-5804 OUR ADDRESS Street .............. 320 SW Upper Terrace Drive Suite 200 Bend, OR 97702 Mailing ........... P.O. 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The Bulletin retains ownership and copyright protection of all staff-prepared news copy, advertising copy and news or ad illustrations. They may not be reproduced without explicit prior approval. The new economy Downtown Seattle considers a future with lots of tourists, few office workers PAUL ROBERTS • The Seattle Times L ike many small businesses in downtown Seattle, the Pure Food Fish Market has had to adjust to an economy that’s still missing some of its pre-COVID-19 players. Those estimates are prob- While cruise passengers ably missing some returnees. and other tourists are back to snapping up Pure Food’s fresh The Placer numbers, for ex- ample, only count people in salmon and halibut and crab, the office workers who used to the office three or more days a week. But they do track with come to the Pike Place Mar- low office occupancy rates in ket fish shop before heading several other U.S. cities, in- home have been largely ab- cluding San Francisco and San sent. Jose, California, both of which So much so that owners were at 33.4% as of May 18, Carlee Hollenbeck and Isaac according to Kastle Systems, Behar have changed their a security firm that measures schedule. Pure Food, which office occupancy by employ- for 70 years stayed open till ees’ key card usage. They also 6 p.m. for commuter sales, echo national office occu- now closes at 5 because office pancy rates, which have hov- workers “just aren’t showing ered around 43% since March, up as often,” Hollenbeck says. Kastle data shows. Pure Foods’ changing cus- “Everybody’s trying to fig- tomer mix highlights an ure out, ‘What can I do to get emerging, not entirely ex- my people back in the office?’” pected pattern in downtown says Gurry. “And I can tell you Seattle’s pandemic recovery. that buying everybody lunch Early in the pandemic, some business leaders and ex- doesn’t cut it.” perts imagined a downtown Two different economies recovery led by returning of- fice workers followed by a re- To some degree, the split- surgence of tourism and other screen recovery between leisure seekers. tourism/leisure and the office But to some degree, the re- economy reflects the very dif- verse is happening. Even as the ferent drivers behind these repatriation of office workers two sectors. has stalled, downtown tour- The most obvious differ- ism and other leisure activi- ence: Tourism and leisure are ties, including sporting events pursued for pleasure rather and live performance, has than necessity, which may ex- steadily come back, despite plain why they’ve been fairly persistent stories of downtown quick to pop back up when- crime and a recent uptick in ever COVID-19 restrictions COVID-19 cases. are eased or case counts fall. Visits to Pike Place Market Consider: While national between late March and early office occupancy is 43%, at- May averaged 74% of 2019 tendance at NBA games is levels for the same period, ac- back to 95% of 2019 levels and cording to cellphone location the volume of passengers at data from Placer.ai posted by airport security checkpoints the Downtown Seattle Asso- is at 89%, Kastle data shows. ciation. Downtown hotel oc- (Passenger volume at Seat- cupancy in the March-to-May tle-Tacoma International Air- stretch averaged 84% of 2019 port is at 84% of 2019 levels, levels. according to Port of Seattle “The leisure comeback has statistics; Seattle doesn’t have been stronger than I think a an NBA team.) lot of us would have Another big differ- projected,” says ence: downtown Craig Scha- tourism and fer, whose leisure are two benefit- down- ing from town pent-up hotels, demand Inn by con- at the sum- Market ers who and Hotel postponed Andra, are activities in at around 80% 2020 and 2021. and 70% occu- “We didn’t go pancy, respec- Copper River salmon, even at anywhere for, tively, for May. high prices, is selling well at Pure like, two years,” After a slow says Denver Food Fish Market in Seattle’s January and resident Chad Pike Place Market. February due Chisholm, to omicron, he says, “March who was visiting Pike Place just took off.” Market in May. “We’ve heard a lot about Se- The impulse to make up for attle and we wanted to see it lost time shows up across the for ourselves,” said Shirley El- board downtown. As of May lis, an Ohio resident who was 22, roughly 155,000 cruise at Pike Place Market in May ship passengers had come with her family. through Seattle this season, They’re not alone, appar- up 50% over the same period ently. Seattle is the second in 2019, despite a COVID-19 most popular domestic desti- outbreak, according to Port of nation for Memorial Day trav- Seattle statistics. elers, after Orlando, Florida, Theaters, nightclubs and according to booking data by other venues, some of the AAA. hardest-hit businesses in the By contrast, downtown’s of- city, are also benefiting from fices are getting a lot less love consumers catching up. this spring. In January, the 5th Avenue Since late February, down- Theatre’s first show in two town office occupancy has years, “Beauty and the Beast,” stalled at around 33%, accord- drew 15,000 attendees a week, ing to Placer estimates, and more than 2018’s popular that’s despite efforts by many “Mamma Mia!” The first per- employers to lure workers formances of “Beauty” were back with everything from hy- “very emotional for the audi- brid schedules to free food. ences and for the artists,” says Some observers say it’s even Bernie Griffin, the theater’s lower. David Gurry, a senior managing director. vice president at commercial And, paradoxically, many real estate agency Colliers, of the workers who don’t want who covers downtown office to be back in the office seem properties, says office occu- OK resuming business travel pancy “on any given day is and conventions. The Seattle about 22% right now.” Convention Center, which lost Alan Berner photos/Seattle Times Joydie Ellis, visiting Seattle’s Pike Place Market, wanted to take a souvenir photograph at the Pure Food Fish Market’s stand on May 25. Co-owner Isaac Behar suggested adding a king salmon to the image. Carlee Hollenbeck is co-owner of Pure Food Fish Market in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. The fish market has seen an uptick in tourist sales but has basically stopped expecting the business it used to get from office workers. most of its bookings in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19, will be back to roughly 70% of its pre-pandemic numbers in 2022. All those returning busi- ness and leisure travelers have brought a much-needed boost for many downtown busi- nesses. Downtown hotels, for example, are seeing those higher occupancy rates with- out having to cut prices like they did in 2020 and 2021. In April, the average downtown room rate was $195, up nearly 60% from a year ago and roughly even with April 2019, according to Visit Seattle, a trade group. Although visitor-dependent businesses know those gains could vanish with another COVID wave, they’re “very cautiously optimistic” about 2022 and “bullish about sum- mer in particular,” says Visit Seattle’s John Boesche. “It’s go- ing to feel a lot like a pre-pan- demic summer.” But tourists aren’t enough Still, even if downtown tourism were to fully recover this summer, that won’t begin to compensate for the loss of office workers, whose length- ening absence creates more uncertainty by the month across the entire downtown economy. Many office landlords and developers aren’t sure what to expect from a downtown mar- ket with a 20% vacancy rate as of March, up from 11.4% in March 2020, according to Colliers. Many employers with expir- ing office leases “don’t know what they need long term,” says Colliers’ Gurry. Prospec- tive clients may ask to tour 50,000-square-foot spaces one day “and then a week later, they want to come tour 20,000-foot options,” he adds. Likewise, restaurants and shops that once counted on office workers at lunch or af- ter work have no idea when, or whether, to staff back up or return to a full schedule. That means even fewer workers coming downtown, which af- fects still other businesses, and further reduces the downtown workforce, which numbered 348,000 before the pandemic, according to Downtown Seat- tle Association estimates. Office workers ‘have considerable leverage’ Some employers cite safety concerns as a key reason downtown workers don’t want to come back. But another reason is that COVID-19 has undercut the case for being in an office at all. If the pandemic reminded tourists that things like Pike Place Market and the Space Needle are best experienced in real life, it also showed “a good slice of the American labor force, as well as the peo- ple who manage them, that work can be ... a digital expe- rience,” says Margaret O’Mara, a University of Washington historian who has written ex- tensively about tech hubs like Seattle. That discovery, coupled with the tight labor market, has given remote office work- ers leverage over their employ- ers that could last long past COVID-19, some business ex- perts and employers say. Eric Johnson, CEO of Nin- tex, a Bellevue, Washing- ton-based process automation company that often competes for talent with Seattle tech firms, says many of those firms have had to relax their return plans to avoid losing workers. Employers “who might want more people to come back have been a little reticent to re- ally push it,” he says. Some other observers think that leverage will fade if a re- cession comes and the job market cools. If employers start to rein in hiring or look for ways to cut costs, any attrition caused by a return-to-office mandate might come to be seen as “an approach to right-sizing head count,” Gurry says. That may be a conservative scenario, but it’s one many downtown businesses seem to be planning for. Back at Pure Food, Hollen- beck and Behar say they aren’t counting on a return of office workers. “There’s a lot of people that are going to be permanently work from home,” says Hol- lenbeck. “We’ve kind of ad- justed our business plan.” ❝ We received almost $8,000 from the ad campaign on the first day! The eblast was extremely effective; a lot of the donations were made through the linked page in the ad. In addition, many of the donations were from new donors so we are expanding our donor base as well. We are immensely grateful for The Bulletin’s support. THANK YOU!!! 541-383-0384 sales@bendbulletin.com www.bendbulletin.com ❞ — Gia Hartmeier Vice President Marketing Communications Assistance League of Bend www.assistanceleague.org/bend
