The Decline of the Five-Day Commute Is a Boon to Suburban Retail

A growing number of retailers in city office districts are relocating their businesses to the suburbs, where visits to shopping centers are on the rise as fewer people commute to downtown workplaces. 

With average office usage rates still only around half of where they stood before the pandemic in many major cities, many bars, restaurants and other retailers that cater to the five-day-a-week office crowd have been reeling. 

Pedestrian foot traffic in U.S. urban downtowns was down about 25% in April compared with the same month in 2019, according to real-estate software provider MRI Springboard. Nordstrom’s announcement last week that it was closing two stores in San Francisco was the latest sign of retailers’ discontent with declining sales and rising property crime in big cities. 

“I think we’re in for quite a challenging time for downtowns and for retail in downtowns,” said Diane Wehrle, marketing and insights director for MRI Springboard.

Some restaurants and retail businesses are now moving from their once bustling urban locations to the nearby burbs. Several restaurant chains have expanded beyond office corridors since the pandemic, including salad shop Sweetgreen, which closed several locations in Los Angeles, Boston and New York City last year. While the firm said it isn’t abandoning cities, as of last summer, half of Sweetgreen’s footprint was in the suburbs, up from 35% at the end of 2019, the company reported.