American restaurant jm Curley opened its doors in 2011 on Temple Place in Downtown Crossing, catering to office workers grabbing lunch and residents coming in for dinner and drinks. But in March 2020, that all changed.

When Covid shut down retail and restaurant businesses in Boston and around the country, jm Curley owner Babak Bina said his customer base “disappeared literally overnight.”

Bina was forced to adapt by ending its weekday lunch service. But now, six years later, Bina has seen daytime activity gradually increasing in the Downtown Crossing area, and he decided to reopen jm Curley for lunch in July. 

"I'm putting my money where my mouth is," Bina told Bisnow.

"At least once or twice a week, we're like, 'Wow, OK, this is better than last week,'" he added. "So we're slowly building it back to where it needs to be, and we're excited."

The pandemic devastated central business districts like downtown Boston, where monthly foot traffic plummeted from roughly 3 million visitors per month pre-pandemic to under 330,000 in April 2020, according to Placer.ai data provided by the Downtown Boston Alliance.

As remote work became a more permanent fixture in the years that followed, some questioned whether it would ever recover. 

"Immediately after the pandemic, there was real fear in Boston's downtown and in other places that the model of a work-heavy central business district might be something that would never come back again, and if not, an office-heavy district was going to struggle forever after that," DBA President Michael Nichols said.

The drop had dire consequences for the neighborhood’s retail sector. Out of the roughly 500 retail storefronts in the neighborhood, up to 150 of them were empty, Nichols said, with vacancy peaking at 30%.

But over the last two years, many employers have pushed people back to the office, and data shows a steady rise in downtown foot traffic — and in retail occupancy.

Downtown leaders, landlords and retailers tell Bisnow they expect this recovery to continue as more visitors and workers come into the city.

"The vast, vast majority of trendlines that we watch are all positive right now," Nichols said.  

The World Cup brought a jolt of activity to Boston, with an estimated 50,000 Scottish fans alone visiting the city, and other major events like America’s 250th birthday and the tall ship parade kept people coming downtown through July. City officials and downtown leaders are now focused on keeping that momentum going. 

Data shows it continued at least through August, with 2.76 million visitors coming downtown, up from 2.51 million in the same month last year, according to the Placer.ai data. 

Weekend foot traffic numbers are now above pre-pandemic levels, and weekday numbers are roughly 75% of where they were in 2019, Nichols said. While many employees still work from home on Mondays and Fridays, during the middle of the week, the Downtown Crossing area has been packed with crowds of commuters exiting the train stations, standing in line at coffee shops and filling up restaurant patios for lunch. 

That activity has translated to retail real estate demand: Since the pandemic, the number of vacant storefronts has fallen from 150 to 75, with 55 net new businesses entering the neighborhood, Nichols said. These retailers range from first-time business owners to chain expansions and nationally recognized brands. 

The neighborhood's retail vacancy rate is now down 44% from its 2023 peak, according to the DBA.

This year, two large Asian-based retailers — Uniqlo and Teso Life — opened on Washington Street. Other retailers were helped in opening downtown by the city's Supporting Pandemic Affected Community Enterprises grant program, which used American Rescue Plan Act funding to help small-business owners sign new lease agreements across the city. 

More than a dozen SPACE grantees signed new leases or have opened storefronts in Downtown Crossing, including hatmaker Elöre Hat Studio, Georgie's Wine Bar and escape room operator Boxaroo. The DBA has also launched its annual Downtown Boston Arts Market, which runs every Thursday and Friday until Oct. 24.

"Since the pandemic, Downtown Boston has been undergoing a transformation," Boston Interim Chief of Economic Opportunity and Inclusion Donald Wright said in a statement to Bisnow. "The City and other partners are reimagining Downtown by developing a broad series of strategies to support the mission of ensuring that Downtown is a vibrant, 24 hour neighborhood."

Boston officials tested several offerings during the event-filled summer, including social drinking areas at Temple Place, Union and Marshall Streets. Overall spending during that time period was 11% higher, with restaurant-specific spending increasing by 15% and bar spending increasing by 86%, according to Wright.

For retail landlords, the increased activity and steadier recovery have also been blessings.

Gazit Horizons CEO Zvi Gordon said he has seen tourism come back to his properties over the last two years. Gordon owns downtown property on Washington and Winter streets as well as Marketplace Center adjacent to Faneuil Hall. 

In 2023, the landlord secured a lease with urban footwear brand Snipes for a three-story flagship location. Last month, Gazit secured an 8,600 SF lease with Time Mission, an experiential, time-travel concept. 

Gordon said these businesses have been successful and are showcasing retailers' eagerness to come back to downtown. 

"[Retailers] saw the amount of footfall and the amount of activity in the downtown crossing market and said, 'This is a high pedestrian-activity market that should have significant recovery over the next couple of years, and that should give us the ability to get a lot of visibility,'" he said. 

Gordon said he hopes the city has learned lessons from this summer as to how to keep people coming downtown, from the social drinking areas to the later curfews for bars and restaurants.

"It's an amazing city, so once you live there for a number of years, you want to stay," Gordon said. "How do we convert more of those people to stay here? One of those things is creating job opportunities. The second one is making sure it's a city that's vibrant and fun. Young people want to be here because that's the lifeline of the city."

Another effort that is sparking hope in the downtown neighborhood is the city's office-to-residential conversion program, which could help developers convert roughly 2M SF of underutilized and vacant office space into new housing. 

Conversions have begun to take place or have opened downtown, including Suffolk University's office-to-dorm conversion project at 101 Tremont St., which turned the 11-story, 88K SF office building into 280 student beds. Students began moving into the property last week, with the full conversion set to be completed by 2027, the Boston Business Journal reported.

The university kept the ground-floor retail the same, as it is home to longtime tenants The Beantown Pub and Ziggy's Coffee Bar.

Colliers Boston Research Director Jeff Myers said office-to-residential conversions will help the downtown retail market over the long term.

"As these buildings complete over time, they will bring new populations into the downtown core that will then be able to supplement the visitors and the office workers, as well as just the residents of Greater Boston and other cities that are coming into Boston to do their shopping," he said.

And the office space that remains is being utilized more, as return-to-work mandates are gradually bringing employees back into the office.

In March, financial giant JPMorgan Chase signed a 250K SF lease at Hines' South Station Tower. CEO Jamie Dimon has pushed return-to-office mandates for the company's roughly 300,000 employees worldwide. Earlier this month, Fidelity Investments opened its new headquarters in the Seaport, where it is mandating that employees come in five days a week. 

"Each time a Fidelity or an Amazon or a JPMorgan asks their employees back five days a week, we see a jump," Nichols said. "Every time a new tenant comes to somewhere like Winthrop Center, we see a jump. It's steadily returning."

The city has also seen office vacancy begin to reverse, with the rate standing at 18.7% as of the second quarter, a decrease from 19.1% in the same quarter in 2025, according to CBRE. 

The pandemic wasn’t the first major downturn the city has faced, from the economic turmoil in the 1970s and '80s to the 2008 financial crisis.  

Jm Curley’s Bina has been there for it all and said he believes downtown Boston is set for its next cycle.

"I love history, and I love to keep things in perspective," Bina said. "We're at a juncture of, really, the next chapter, and it can be transformational.”