Pot, downtown Minneapolis, and retail. These were a few themes that drove traffic to our website over the past year.

This summer, Minnesota found itself in the national spotlight for an unusual new law legalizing the sale of food products infused with THC, the intoxicating component found in marijuana. As my colleague Winter Keefer has extensively reported, Minnesota lawmakers were simply trying to regulate a legal loophole created by the federal Farm Bill in 2018. In practice, though, they opened the floodgates for a widely unregulated market. No other state has attempted anything quite like it.

Meanwhile, the downtown Minneapolis story persists. Three of our top 22 stories pertained to downtown. The fate of our state’s biggest city has, of course, been a concern for decades. But it became even more pressing after Covid-19 prompted the mass exodus of white-collar workers from the area.

Remote work and the fate of downtown, of course, go hand in hand. Pundits and policymakers alike continue to debate the merits of hybrid work, and readers are evidently interested in finding out what happens next. Our April cover story, ranked 10th on this list, took a deep dive into the lopsided impacts of hybrid work on women in particular.

We plan to continue monitoring the impact of remote work in the new year. (My colleague Adam Platt recently penned a column firmly condemning the practice.) The implications extend far beyond downtown. In the era of hybrid work, what does it even mean to be a Minnesota company?

1. Making Sense of Minnesota’s Updated Pot Regs
2. Cancellations, Delays Harm Delta’s Longstanding Reputation for Reliability
3. Sixteen-Story Residential Tower Opens in Downtown Minneapolis
4. More Than Ideas Needed to Revive Downtown Mpls Retail
5. Amazon to Shutter Two Physical Stores in Minnesota
6. Taco Bell Defy Opens in Brooklyn Park This Week
7. City Eateries Feel Vax Mandate’s Bite
8. Uptown Looks Up from the Bottom
9. The Asia Mall Takes Root in Eden Prairie
10. Will Women Win in Hybrid Workplaces?
11. Upsie Founder Clarence Bethea to Step Down as CEO
12. Why Campus Tours Keep College Presidents Up at Night
13. Galleria Edina Sold to Local Investor Group
14. The Woes of the Restaurant Revitalization Fund
15. Daniel Del Prado’s Growing Culinary Empire
16. GaryVee Takes Minneapolis
17. Edina Theatre Aims to Reopen by Summer
18. Downtown Minneapolis Population Grows, Again
19. Dick’s House of Sport Concept Store Opens at Ridgedale
20. Hell’s Kitchen Founder Cynthia Gerdes to Retire
21. Residential Towers to Anchor Uptown
22. JohnnyPops Will Move its Growing Operation to Elk River