Despite the best intentions of local politicians and corporations, white-collar workers simply won’t save downtown Minneapolis. That’s one of the main takeaways from a new report on the future of downtown released this week.

Authored by the Minneapolis Foundation and titled “Downtown Next,” the report calls for a fundamental shift in thinking about the future of the city’s downtown core. To start, the report’s authors said it’s time to move from an “8-hour to a 24-hour downtown core.”

“Remote work has brought tectonic shifts to the daily office population,” the report stated. “While a large core of downtown tenants remain, it’s unlikely we will ever see them all in the office from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.”

With the exception of the Nicollet Diner, though, downtown Minneapolis doesn’t even have any 24-hour businesses, which raises questions about the report’s ambitious goals. Former mayor R.T. Rybak, now president and CEO of the Minneapolis Foundation, believes that more housing will pave the way for more businesses and services downtown.

“A 24-hour destination primarily means more housing, just like we’re seeing with the conversion of the North Star office building into residential,” Rybak said in a Wednesday interview.

He also thinks that downtown would benefit from bringing in a more diverse range of voices. “Downtown is now bigger than it used to be and more diverse than it used to be,” Rybak noted. “Converting the central business district to more of a 24-hour multicultural experience is going to take a much broader table. … It’s going to take a lot more alignment, especially if we want to bring in people who haven’t been part of the discussion.”

Another key element of the report calls for a fundamental reframing of skyways. In particular, the report advocates for moving all retail shops in the skyway to the ground level. “Upon returning skyways to a commuter function, [they should] transition to having destination services such as banks and medical offices in skyway spaces,” the report said.

Rybak put it this way: “If every business in the skyway moved to the street tomorrow, no one would be talking about vitality downtown. Having skyway and street compete for tenants makes it harder to create continuous vibrancy.”

To that end, the report suggests implementing public policies to incentivize retail at the street instead of the skyway.

The Minneapolis Foundation doesn’t commit any funds for these efforts in the report, but Rybak expressed openness to the idea, noting that the organization has funded other initiatives such as the launch of the Downtown Improvement District. “We are ready to help in many different ways, but no one should look to one organization, foundation, or individual to do all this work,” he said. “We’re calling on the broader community to recognize that everyone should have a piece in doing this.”

To be sure, there have already been several reports and task forces dedicated to transforming downtown. And concerns about downtown have been bubbling long before Covid-19 arrived. Rybak acknowledges the work that’s already been done, as does the report. He argues that the foundation’s new report simply builds on prior recommendations. “This needs to be an ongoing body of work, and it will take years to implement in different ways,” he said. “Some of it is already underway, and some of it is going to take a long time.”

Rybak, who served as Minneapolis mayor from 2002 to 2014, has certainly heard grim predictions about the future of the city’s urban core for years. “I’ve seen this movie before,” he joked. But he’s optimistic that there’s never been a better time to reposition downtown for a different future.

“Cities are evolving all the time,” he said. “Downtown has come back from predictions of death 20 times over this century.”