Target (TGT) -) is as much a part of the Twin Cities as the Minnesota Timberwolves and Twins. In fact, its corporate logo adorns the stadiums of those very NBA and MLB franchises.
The company celebrates its Minnesotan roots and is generally seen as a good city citizen as it's Target Foundation charity has been putting money into the community for over 60 years.
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But now some of the company's neighbors are asking Target to do more to revitalize the city it calls home.
Target headquarters headcount dwindles
Back in 2021, the company's corporate headquarters in downtown Minneapolis officially had 8,500 workers and that number dwindled to 7,100 in 2022. But even those numbers may be inflated as some of the businesses in the area have suffered due to dwindling foot traffic since the pandemic.
Some people blame this on Target's work from home policy, which they say has helped turned the area into a ghost town.
“That's a lot of lunches and cups of coffee and rides on the light rail and the bus [missing], and that is hurting us, badly,” commercial real estate broker Tom Tracy told the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal.
Target currently has a hybrid policy for its corporate employees that it calls a "flex your day approach." Workers aren't required to work at either of the company's two headquarters in the area a certain number of days a week, but managers can set standards for in-office days on a team-by-team basis.
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As the Business Journal points out, at the time Target announced its new policy, chief human resources officer Melissa Kramer said it was "a once-in-a-lifetime chance to rethink our headquarters experience in ways that will continue to propel us forward long after the pandemic subsides. Our team is designing the future of HQ work to be hybrid -- blending onsite and virtual work to give us flexibility in how we collaborate."
The change comes at a precarious time for the city as unemployment jumped from 2.7% in June 2022 to 3.3% in June 2023 (though the unemployment rate is still well below the national average of 3.8%), according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Foot traffic in downtown Minneapolis has been trending towards being back above pre-pandemic levels as visitors come to events in the area, but the downtown sector is still suffering from a lack of dedicated workers who show up five days a week and grease the engines of the downtown economy.
“It would be nice to have more retail open downtown and to be able to go to Zelo for lunch," Fitzgerald said. "And that could happen if Target was back in the office and there were 7,000 people who were looking for lunch options and places to go to get their nails and hair done during the day." downtown worker Rin Fitzgerald told the Business Journal.
Businesses in the area are saying that the city gets busy when there is an event, like a convention or sporting event, but Minneapolis is "steady to quiet" when there isn't a major event.
Meanwhile, Target told Axios that "thousands" of employees still work regularly in its downtown headquarters and "we stand strong in our longstanding commitment to Minneapolis, which has been our home for more than 60 years."
Relocated downtown employees
In March 2021, Target announced that it was shutting down its City Center location in downtown and relocated 3,500 employees to other locations around the city or in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park.
Business owners in downtown Minneapolis aren't the only people pushing for workers to go back to the office.
Everyone from Martha Stewart to Elon Musk seems to have a negative opinion of remote work, and big companies like Apple (AAPL) -), Google (GOOGL) -), and Goldman Sachs (GS) -) have really stepped up their efforts to get employees back in the office, even if they don't want to do so.
"It's time to face reality. We're getting back to a five-day week. That's what we saw before covid and that's what we're currently seeing," employment expert Jason Greer told CNBC this week.
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