Most city employees in Denver will continue to be required to work in person only three days per week, even as federal workers are being called back to the office under President Donald Trump, a mayoral spokesperson said this week.
While Mayor Mike Johnston said during his 2023 campaign that he would consider requiring full-time in-office work, the city doesn’t have any plans to do so, spokesperson Jordan Fuja said.
“We know that more workers downtown will help revitalize our city core and support local businesses,” Fuja said. “We are always exploring options to ensure we’re delivering high-quality services for residents while supporting our incredible city teams and fostering a more vibrant city.”
But the city government has had a hard time finding office space amid ongoing construction at its main office building. Its leaders are balancing the desire to bring workers back with an effort to “meet employees where they are at,” Fuja said — a nod to varying appetites for working in the office more often.
Downtown has struggled to recover from the pandemic even more than city centers in other Front Range communities, according to a Common Sense Institute analysis released last year.
“None of the attempts to rejuvenate have been, so far, successful in restoring the downtown Denver activity of 2019,” according to the report. “To restore downtown Denver, office workers need to either return to the area or be replaced by an equivalent number of visitors and residents.”
Prior to the pandemic, about 100,000 people traveled into the core of downtown for work on a daily basis, said Kourtny Garrett, the CEO of the Denver Downtown Partnership. Last year, that figure was about 60,000 people.
Foot traffic is higher in the middle of the week, during evenings and on weekends. While the area is seeing some growth — about 50 businesses opened there last year — it still shows signs of struggle, she said.
“The government sector, whether it’s local or federal or state, that’s a significant portion of our daytime population,” Garrett said. “The more we can bring employees back to the heart of the city, the better.”
The city’s thousands of downtown-based workers are among 25,000 employees in the catch-all government sector, the partnership has said.
The main reason private companies and public agencies struggle to bring workers back into the office is because of a fear of losing workers, Garrett said.
“It all comes down to talent,” she said.
When Johnston ran for office two years ago, he prioritized revitalizing downtown as a key part of his campaign. Part of that promise included bringing city workers back, he said in a Denver Post candidate questionnaire in March 2023.
“The next mayor needs to lead the charge to encourage businesses to return to working in-person by first doing the same with city workers and then encouraging other businesses to follow suit,” he said.
But since then, the three-day policy, which began under former Mayor Michael Hancock, has remained. As the COVID-19 pandemic began to subside in 2022, Hancock asked employees to return to the office at least two days per week and eventually bumped it to three.
In a letter to Johnston signed by more than a dozen downtown restauranteurs earlier this month, the business owners complained that the area was “completely falling apart.”
“You ran your entire campaign platform on restoring our Downtown Denver business districts. It has gotten worse since you took the position of Mayor,” they wrote.
The letter focuses largely on safety concerns, including a recent stabbing spree on the 16th Street Mall.
But some business owners say they’re frustrated the city isn’t doing more to bring foot traffic back.
“If we’re trying to rebuild the city, shouldn’t the city government be a model of good practices?” said Steve Weil, the president of Rockmount Ranch Wear, 1626 Wazee St.
Denver isn’t the only city weighing how to get its staff back working in person.
During a Feb. 10 Aurora City Council meeting, that body passed a resolution encouraging the city’s staff members to work in person for three days per week.
“The council believes that returning to in-person work benefits both employees and the community,” according to the resolution. “Operating empty city buildings wastes taxpayer dollars on utilities that could be better spent on community needs.”
On one of the first days of his second term as president last month, Trump signed an executive order mandating that employees of federal agencies return to in-person work.
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