Director's Take

Slicing Data

10-19-2023

I’m feeling a lot of positive momentum in Downtown, maybe it’s because it’s my job or that I think about it every day, but I’m seeing a lot more people, there is more positive activity, and the numbers are SHOWING it.
 
We are at a turning point. Office occupancy isn’t as high as we’d like, but it wasn’t as high as we wanted pre-pandemic either. Rather, I’m hearing more companies asking employees to come back to the office, and – the real test – I’m hearing a lot of employees who are HAPPY being back and who see all the activity going on and want to be close to it.
 
There have been a couple of recent media stories talking about Downtown’s slow recovery, and that just couldn’t be any further from the truth. The statistics included in the article report the number of pings from cell phones reportedly showing how many people are in downtown. In fact, the numbers we ran in our subscription of the same online database shows that we experienced a 45% increase in the unique number of mobile devices that visited the location examined (we examined Central Business District v. the media article which examined zip code 40202).
 
I’m not sure how data can look so different, but I do know that people will see what they want to see. And there is no question that with media reporting a negative leaning story we see more negative leaning attitudes. I do not want to mislead anyone or report anything other than facts. I’m not talking about characterizing the glass being half full; I’m talking about all the things that are in that glass.
 
When I took this job nearly two years ago, I spoke about the need for this community to believe in optimism and positivity, and that we should be together in this effort to keep our Downtown an exciting and healthy center of our community. I still feel exactly the same.
 
Hope to see you on the streets soon!