The COVID-19 pandemic and its restrictions changed life as we know it, including the office structure. Since the work-from-home shift, adjacent businesses that relied on that foot traffic have been left to hope that in-person work returns.
One of those businesses was Kyle Stewart’s Sagrati’s in Saint John’s City Market. His Uptown business relied heavily on nearby offices for his lunch rush.
With more offices returning to hybrid or full-time workweeks, his business has been using that to serve customers in the afternoons.
“Our lunch rushes have defiantly picked up,” he told Global News.
“Being in the City Market, with limited hours and without a night shift, you need that lunch rush. That’s what keeps you afloat.”
The work-from-home push left vacancies in the office real estate market in New Brunswick. According to statistics from Turner and Drake, based in Saint John, vacancies in offices continue to rise across the province.
In some areas of the province, vacancy rates have tripled since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, now hovering between 16 and 19 per cent in the metro cities.
The group estimates there are 8,272,330 square feet of office space between Saint John, Fredericton and Moncton, with growth on the rise.
“Our analysis of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) projections indicates GDP growth of 0.7% in 2023, contributing to an uptick in demand for office space 0.64%. The vacancy rate is expected to increase slightly to 17.85%,” the group said in the survey.
That strain was also felt in Fredericton, where the capital city’s chamber of commerce noted that the lack of traffic from office workers added to an already growing list of struggles for business.
“We’ve seen our businesses having some reduced hours, closing on certain days, not opening for lunch and in some cases closing altogether,” CEO Krista Ross said.
“Anybody who has day-to-day walk-in traffic is going to see benefit.”
Ross told Global News that nearly 75 per cent of Fredericton office workers have returned to in-person or hybrid working conditions, with another 3,000 Frederictonians working from home completely.
She compared having those workers return to the office to having a big event in Fredericton every day. She said 3,000 workers returning to the downtown core would do wonders for the business community with economic spinoffs.
She believes there are roughly 9,000 office workers in the city’s downtown core, with more offices set to return to in-person work.
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