Downtown Cincinnati recovering faster than most major metros, new data shows

Downtown Cincinnati is recovering its pre-pandemic foot traffic, new data from the School of Cities at the University of Toronto show.

Driving that recovery? Residents and visitors, not workers.

Changes in data collection make it impossible to say how much of total pre-pandemic foot traffic has returned. But it did show that the city boasted some of the fastest growth over the past year, based on mobile phone data used to track foot traffic at downtown points of interest in 66 North American cities.

Enquirer series: The Future of Downtown Cincinnati

Downtown foot traffic up 28% over past year

Cincinnati saw a 28% uptick in visits to Downtown from March last year compared to February, ranking the Queen City's business district No. 7 on the list of the fastest-recovering downtowns over the same period, according to researchers.

Overall, the median rate of change in activity for all 66 downtowns was 9.3% over the past year.

A previous study last fall from the School of Cities found Cincinnati was struggling to come back, ranking No. 57 on the list of fastest-recovering downtowns.

The two studies were based on different data sources, and the most recent study doesn't show where Cincinnati ranks in terms of the overall recovery of pre-pandemic foot traffic downtown, according to Karen Chapple, director of the School of Cities.

Downtown may have recovered 70% of pre-pandemic foot traffic

"All we know is that Cincinnati is on the upswing,'' Chapple said. "It had a ways to go, but Cincinnati is probably getting close to the 60%-70% range'' in terms of the overall recovery in foot traffic.

Foot traffic was at its peak over the summer months when people descended on Downtown for such events as the Taylor Swift concert at Paycor Stadium and the Cincinnati Music Festival.

Overall, most of the recovery has been driven by visitors and Downtown residents, not office workers, according to the latest study, which tracked foot traffic before and after typical daytime working hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Downtown sees most activity after business hours

"We found that the working-hours recovery rate was quite a bit lower than the after-hours recovery rate,'' Chapple said. "What is driving downtown Cincinnati's comeback is people living there, and people going there to eat and drink and for cultural events.''

The School of Cities' findings jibe with Enquirer reporting last year that found a surge of new residents moving into Downtown and transforming the landscape from mainly an office hub to a residential food-and-entertainment district.

To be sure, downtown Cincinnati remains a vibrant employment hub with the largest number of office workers in any Zip code in the Cincinnati region, according to the 2023 State of the Region report released earlier this year by the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber.

Office vacancies still high

Many workers continue to work from home or work hybrid schedules that bring them into their offices only a few days a week.

As a result, office vacancies remain higher than before the pandemic.

The total office vacancy rate for downtown Cincinnati was 16.8% in the first quarter this year, up from 16.6% in the previous quarter, according to the latest Cincinnati office market report from Colliers.

That's down from a post-pandemic high vacancy rate close to 20%, according to Colliers, but the most recent figures are still much higher than the 10.7% office vacancy rate for downtown Cincinnati in the first quarter of 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: How is downtown Cincinnati doing after the pandemic?