Downtown Allentown Market survives despite rise of working from home
Influx of residents has helped it find ways to succeed
Juan Cepeda nimbly assembled orders, as a long line of midweek lunchtime customers grew at his stand in the Downtown Allentown Market.
His staff ’s speed and the filling Latin food options have made his new Casa Criolla stand a popular choice for downtown workers looking for a quick lunch.
“The feedback has been great so far,” the Allentown restaurateur said. “Tuesday to Thursday we’re slammed at lunch and I added staffing.”
That three-day stretch — when workers fill downtown offices in the post-pandemic, hybrid work world — helps keep the vendors at the Allentown market thriving. But the market, centrally located on the city’s ArtsWalk, has had to adjust since it opened in September 2019, just six months before COVID-19 kept the workforce it was intended to serve in their own homes.
And while the market has seen nearly an entire turnover from the vendors who
were serving customers then, how it has adjusted, survived and even thrived is part of the story of the changing downtown Allentown.
“A lot of businesses in urban centers rely on the daytime office traffic,” said J.B. Reilly, president and CEO of City Center Investment Corp., the developer who has led the massive, multiyear redevelopment of downtown Allentown and manages the market. “There’s no question that the daytime office traffic is lower than it was from before COVID.”
A different downtown
For City Center, the Downtown Allentown Market was always meant to be an amenity to the business community and those living downtown.
When it opened on Allentown’s Arts Walk in fall 2019, the market had a popular TV celebrity chef as one of its vendors and an array of casual dining options. Workers at the brand-new office buildings that surrounded the market brought consistent foot traffic, especially for lunch.
“The Downtown Allentown Market is very much aligned with the office environment,” Reilly said. “It’s built to serve that daytime population.”
That flood of daytime population slowed to a trickle of course as the nation shut down during the early days of the pandemic. Fast forward to today, when City Center’s five office buildings are nearly fully occupied with tenants that hold longterm leases. But the actual utilization of those buildings is a different story.
Many of the firms who lease those buildings continue to allow hybrid work — a mix of working in-person and remotely — and as result the in-person use of the office spaces by employees is about 55%. Reilly said the utilization rate for Tuesday through Thursday is higher, about 75%-80%, with most employees working at home Mondays and Fridays.
What downtown Allentown is experiencing is very much in line with what what’s happening around the country, said Jeff Green, a partner at Hoffman Strategy Group, a retail consultancy.
“The fact that downtown Allentown is at an office worker ‘occupancy’ of 55% is very much in line with what other cities of its size are experiencing,” Green said. “Larger cities such as Chicago and San Francisco have seen numbers lower than that, which has resulted, in the case of San Francisco, in massive retail and restaurant closures.”
Environmental shift
While the pandemic knocked back much of the in-person work force downtown, what the city did see during that time period was a burst of people living downtown. Through the addition of 900 more City Center apartments during COVID, downtown Allentown now has nearly 2,200 new residents.
“As the residential side grows, our evening sales have improved considerably,” Reilly said.
The influx of residents pumped new business into the market. City Center added more events, hosted at the pocket park directly across from the market. Among the most popular: Rock the Walk, which runs 4-9 p.m. Thursdays and features live music from Lehigh Valley bands and pop-up vendors.
“On Thursday nights, the market has been hitting record sales numbers,” said Jill Wheeler, City Center’s vice president of sales and marketing. “There’s pent-up demand to come out and experience what the Downtown Allentown Market has to offer.”
Inside, the market is hosting comedian nights and karaoke to bring people in during the evenings.
While City Center has worked to bring more residents to the market, it’s also taking full advantage of the Tuesday-through-Thursday in-person workforce. Wheeler said City Center has been working with vendors to offer more grab-and-go items for busy workers as well as encouraging vendors to offer dinner specials.
As they track sales and measure foot traffic, Wheeler said they will continue make adjustments at the market, including potentially expanding hours to accommodate more dinner service.
New faces behind the counters
Of the market’s original vendors, only one remains, Zahra, which specializes in authentic Mediterranean cuisine.
“Is there really high turnover? Yes, but it’s not atypical for that type of facility,” Reilly said. “That space was designed so that spaces can be plug and play. You can move a user in there in a day’s notice. The infrastructure is adaptable.”
The openings have given the market the opportunity to welcome a wider selection of vendors, such as Casa Criolla, which specialized in Latin cuisine, and Thai eatery La Kang. It leaves the market with two vacancies and one of those has a deal in the works.
“We are very pleased with the market,” Reilly said. “It survived and thrived through COVID. We are on an upswing now and we are very optimistic.”
And as they look to the future, there’s much more potential for traffic for the market once two major projects open, potentially next year: Archer Music Hall, a 31,000-squarefoot, two-story music hall planned for 935-939 Hamilton St., and the Da Vinci Science Center, planned for Eighth and Hamilton streets.
“The world is changing,” Reilly said. “Everyone is trying to adapt and understand what the future is going hold.”