Office workers are starting their return to downtown Seattle, though the trend faltered last month, according to the Downtown Seattle Association.
As reported by KOMO4 News, the city of Seattle, as a whole, ranked near the bottom 57 out of the 62 cities included in the study from the University of California at Berkeley.
Narrowing the focus just to downtown, Seattle’s rank rose to No. 40 on the list, but that data is from March through May.
“Downtown Seattle from June onward—the summer recovery has been really strong,” said Jon Scholes, with the Downtown Seattle Association. “And, we’ve seen some of the top hotel occupancies across the country.”
Scholes says Seattle is outperforming many other downtowns, thanks to sports, concerts, and the arts offerings in its centralized downtown core.
Data from the Downtown Seattle Association sheds new light on feelings about the pandemic recovery and the return to work.
“When we look at our West Coast peers, San Francisco, LA, Portland, we’ve got more people coming back to the office in downtown Seattle than those peer cities,” Scholes said.
But the number of workers returning to downtown Seattle stands at just 42 percent of normal as of August 7, according to data the Seattle Downtown Association tracks.
