A growing cry from downtown Minneapolis business owners to Target:
Bring your people back to the city.
Some business owners are saying Target isn't doing it's part to help revitalize downtown due to it's 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.
Restauranteur 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 told WCCO Radio.
Other large downtown companies do require workers to come into the office 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," says Fhima. "And Target being such a great company and such a great leader, has to lead there."
Mayor Jacob Frey told WCCO's Chad Hartman at the State Fair Friday he'd ideally 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 told Hartman. "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 says "thousands" of their downtown employees do the same, and that the company stands strong in it's 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 explains.
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 says 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.