Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin urged more office workers to return to the city.

Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin is urging businesses to bring employees back to downtown Hartford offices whenever possible, noting that about a third of telecommuters nationwide are working from home.

The study, released Thursday by the Pew Research Center, shows that these numbers have dropped from 43% in January 2022 and 55% in October 2020, but the most recent numbers are still more than 7% before the pandemic.

“We want to try to have as many people as possible in the office as many days as possible,” Bronin said Thursday. Because one of the biggest concerns that we have — and it’s important not only in Hartford, but in Hartford — is thousands and some days, tens of thousands, of people who normally live downtown, going to restaurants, going to bars after work or going to retail.

Bronin’s comments came during the mayor’s annual speech to the Metro Hartford Alliance, the region’s chamber of commerce, in Dunkin Park, attended by more than 100 people. In his comments, he said, “I understand that the pandemic has changed the nature of work for a long time, and that’s for the better.”

“Anything you do on the sidelines makes a difference,” Bronin said. “If you’re helping get your teams in three days a week instead of two days a week, that makes a difference. If you have a Thursday night happy hour for your team that helps keep people in Hartford, that makes a difference. I encourage and urge everyone to think about ways you can do that.”

While the Pew study indicated that full-time remote work has fallen as the pandemic has eased, the study has also shown that hybrid work — splitting time between the office and home — is on the rise. The survey found that 41% of those surveyed chose a hybrid program, up from 35% in January 2022.

Bronin, who is not running for re-election in November after eight years as mayor, recognizes that bringing employees back to office could be a challenge.

“I know there’s a lot of pressure on employees to work at least partially at home,” Bronin said. But I’m sure we’re missing something real when we shift a bit to remote work.

Bronin says what’s missing is creative and even spontaneous conversations that can spark new ideas and even mentor young people to develop the next generation of workers.

“All these things are true,” said Bronin. But I think we lose something if we’re not physically together just psychologically, we build those relationships face to face.

The union’s chief executive, David Griggs, said the issue is serious because it is faced by cities and metro areas around the country.

“The mayor was right: it’s bigger than Hartford,” Griggs said after Bronin’s address. “We know that the move to get people back into the office – let’s put it simply – was done nationally at a national level. And our employers must compete for talent in that national market. Our employers can now hire people in Chicago and not need them to be here, so it’s created a lot of flexibility.

In Hartford, the epidemic showed how dependent the downtown economy is on office workers, even though the city has worked for a decade to add more than 2,000 apartments. The goal was to better balance the residential and office population in the central district and the surrounding area, but the loss of office workers – and now their slow return – shows the need for housing to play a greater role, Bronin and others.

Realignment of Workplace Major Employer Reduces Rentable Space in Downtown Hartford That’s a concern for both commercial landlords and the city because downtown office towers are an important part of Hartford’s tax base. The price of office towers is very dependent on the lease contracts, so the more vacant space, the more valuable the buildings can be.

Declining office values ​​could shift the burden of the tax burden to other city taxpayers, including homeowners.

A recent report from commercial real estate services firm CBRE showed that overall office space for lease was 23%, or 2.2 million square feet, compared to 18% at the end of 2019. Space by the end of 2022 is up 34 percent, or 2 million square feet, from just 21 percent before the pandemic.

On Thursday, Bronin said he believes the impetus behind the city’s revival, which was hampered by the epidemic, is returning. But the consequences of the epidemic and the loss of office workers are now more important to create new housing.

Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at kgosselin@courant.com.