losses they suffered during Operation Metro Surge<\/a>.<\/p>\nExcitement was everywhere Thursday with jerseys on every corner and businesses filling up as the Timberwolves took on the Denver Nuggets and the NFL draft took place.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Wild added to the buzz with a playoff game on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
For businesses, the difference is noticeable, the impact immediate.<\/p>\n
“It helps people have fun as far as coming out and going and having a couple of drinks, dinner. It helps the servers, bartenders and support staff support their families,” said Emily Crandall, a bartender in downtown St. Paul.<\/p>\n
Businesses say they see about a 40% increase on game day, something they said they truly need.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Grand Casino Arena has said that, per year, games and events bring in an estimated $383 million into downtown St. Paul. That’s especially important after Operation Metro Surge. \u00a0<\/p>\n
“Operation (Metro) Surge and ICE was as devastating or more so than COVID,” said Tim Mahoney, owner of The Loon Cafe in Minneapolis and Zamboni’s on 7th in St. Paul.<\/p>\n
An amended lawsuit claims there was over $605 million in lost business revenue between both Twin Cities; more than $440 million in the city of Lakes, and just over $165 million in St. Paul.<\/p>\n
Mahoney is a longtime business owner and believes city leadership needs to step up to help bring people back downtown or businesses might have to close.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We have great bars, great restaurants, great hotels,” Mahoney said. “Get down here and have some fun.”<\/p>\n
For now, he says it’s Anthony Edwards and the Timberwolves doing the heavy lifting and it cannot stop there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A comeback powered by sports and a reminder that more support is needed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Playoff games aren’t just exciting for fans; they have local business owners fired up as well. Having more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5118],"tags":[5,11865,161,38,5280,4,25021,6077,162],"class_list":{"0":"post-558572","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-wild","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-minneapolis","10":"tag-minnesota","11":"tag-minnesota-wild","12":"tag-minnesotawild","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-small-business","15":"tag-st-paul","16":"tag-wild"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116457548253936698","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}