Chad Davis / CC
MINNEAPOLIS (KFGO/WCCO) – A growing number of downtown Minneapolis business owners are asking Target to bring their employees back to the city.
Some business owners are saying Target isn’t doing its part to help revitalize downtown due to its lack of a policy that would require employees to come into the office at least a few days a week.
With 7,100 workers, Target Corporation is downtown’s biggest employer despite shuffling about 1,400 workers to other locations in the past few years.
Restaurateur David Fhima of Fhima’s Minneapolis is calling on Target to step up.
“You can’t say you’re part of the community – you can’t say you are a vibrant company supporting the community – and not bring your workforce back,” Fhima said.
Other large downtown companies do require workers to come into the office on certain days of the week.
“You can create, you can have big buildings, you can have beautiful restaurants, but where is the energy? Energy comes from people,” Fhima said. “And Target being such a great company and such a great leader, has to lead there.”
Mayor Jacob Frey said he’d like to see workers in their downtown offices Tuesday through Thursday.
“The kind of culture that you want in the workplace cannot be replicated from your computer screen at home,” Frey said. “You’ve gotta come in. I think more and more businesses are finding that out right now. They also find out if they commit to Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, you’ve got everybody that’s coming in on the same day.”
A Target spokesperson said “thousands” of their downtown employees do the same, and that the company stands strong in its longstanding commitment to Minneapolis.
“But in many, many cases, I really do think coming to downtown and working out of downtown while also creating the energy is part of what is the responsibility of a corporation, a giant like Target is,” Fhima said.
Statistics vary as to how many people are working downtown compared to pre-pandemic levels, but most keep the total numbers under 50%. The Minneapolis Downtown Council said around 216,000 employees worked in office in some capacity each week prior to 2020.
Target is still the biggest employer in downtown, followed by Hennepin Healthcare, Hennepin County, and Wells Fargo.
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