Infuse downtown Lansing businesses with COVID-19 funds before it’s too late

This month, we mark almost exactly two years since the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered the world around us. During those 24 months, communities across Michigan have struggled to ensure consistent levels of service, support and economic activity.

But no community has suffered in the same way as Michigan’s capital city — downtown Lansing.

When tens of thousands of state government employees began operating remotely, the downtown Lansing restaurants, shops and businesses that regularly serve these workers lost their primary source of revenue. Many of them were forced to close their doors within just months of the pandemic’s onset.

And, unlike other communities, many of our shoppers and diners never came back. Two years later, the situation has barely improved in downtown Lansing. Most state workers still have not returned, and many of those that have are only downtown a couple days each week. Many of our longtime enterprises have vanished. Others are limping along, waiting hopefully for the day when ‘business-as-usual’ returns once more.