Foot traffic in Manhattan surpassed pre-pandemic levels for the first time since the city shut down more than five years ago, according to Placer.ai, a firm that monitors pedestrian activity across the country.
The company announced that visits to office buildings in the city’s commercial districts were up 1.3% last month compared to July 2019, marking a milestone in the city’s slow and steady resurgence since the pandemic and placing New York at the forefront of major cities across the country.
“Call it a comeback,” the firm said in a statement announcing the findings, echoing the words of native son and rapper LL Cool J.
Some business leaders said they were celebrating the city’s newfound energy even as they cited rising uncertainty about the impact of the Trump administration’s tariffs and tough talk on tourism and economic activity.
Still, Placer.ai’s findings echo data from commercial real estate consultancy Avison Young, which said leasing activity in the first half of 2025 reached its highest level since 2018. R.J. Hottovy, Placer.ai’s head of analytical research, attributed the city’s success to tourism and return-to-office mandates instituted by the financial services industry in particular.
“We’ve seen in some cases new companies have moved into the market,” Hottovy said, “For those people looking at office real estate, it’s an encouraging sign.”
Office workers and longtime residents are feeling the spring in the city’s step.
Stuart Saft, a lawyer who heads the New York Real Estate Practice Group at the Holland & Knight law firm in Midtown, said he had noticed and was ecstatic about the area’s increased vitality.
One year ago, Saft told Gothamist that the streets around his Seventh Avenue office were “significantly quieter” than they had been pre-pandemic, leaving him “very concerned about the future of the city.” Saft said he had instituted a policy for all employees in his group requiring them to show up to the office a minimum of four days a week, largely because of what he said is the collaborative nature of the work. The policy, multiplied across countless firms, evidently paid off. Starting this spring and especially this summer, Saft said he noticed a turnaround, and now said New York feels just as vibrant as it once did.
“As a native New Yorker, growing up in Brooklyn and Queens, having worked in every borough, and living in Manhattan, it feels GLORIOUS!” he wrote in an email. “My city is back!”
Saft said he’s unclear how long the resurgence will last. Some businesses appear to be experiencing the city’s potential-possibly-maybe comeback and the halting effects of the Trump administration’s policy at the same time.
Sara Schiller, the co-founder of Sloomoo Institute, “an interactive experience centered on slime” on Broadway in SoHo, said “visitorship has stayed strong,” especially on weekends, but felt that weekday foot traffic wasn’t quite up to its pre-pandemic levels.
“We definitely have seen a softening in our international tourists who are coming into the city,” Schiller said, “and that has been made up in part by the tristate or drive-distance visitors that we have.”
Brandon Zwagerman, the deputy director of the SoHo Broadway Initiative, a neighborhood business group, said the organization did not measure pedestrian traffic prior to the pandemic, but that foot traffic had gone up close to 15% since 2023 at the corner of Broadway and Prince Street, just two blocks from Sloomoo Institute.
He said in an email that at peak times, “pedestrian loads are such that it can be a challenge to walk down the street in parts of our district.”
Schiller attributed some of the traffic to changing perceptions. She said as many as 30% of storefronts in the area had been empty post-pandemic, leading to concerns that the neighborhood wasn’t safe. Since then, however, she said many of those storefronts had since filled with businesses.
“There’s not as many empty spaces and I think there is a feeling that it’s safe and friendly,” she said.
That trend isn’t confined to SoHo. The Flatiron NoMad Partnership, a business group in Midtown, said that although foot traffic remains 5% below its 2019 levels, businesses in the district leased more than 1 million square feet of commercial space in the second quarter of 2025, for the first time since 2014.
The group said it was also committed to bringing more pedestrians into the neighborhood through innovative means, including with an inaugural NoMad Jazz Festival, which it said attracted “record-breaking crowds” to Madison Square Park last weekend. The festival’s musical acts included Ravi Coltrane and the Roy Hargrove Big Band.
Kathryn Wylde, the president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, said local policy had contributed to the city’s restored vitality. Citing a May 2025 survey conducted by Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office, she said pedestrian activity within the Congestion Relief Zone below 60th Street had risen 8.4% compared to May 2024.
At the same time, she said subway and ridership in the first half of the year had gone up 7% and 12% respectively, while Long Island Rail Road ridership had risen 8% during the same time, leading to “increased pedestrian traffic.”
All this translated into a revitalized retail landscape: Wylde said retail sales in Manhattan this year were expected to exceed last year’s by $900 million. She said that although New York City’s economy “has done better than most” in the past four years, “the question is whether we will continue to grow” or face decline.
“The loss of federal funding will cause damage over the next few years,” Wylde said, “but the bigger questions are whether our tax and regulatory regime will be competitive enough to continue to attract business investment and whether we will be affordable enough to continue to attract top talent.”
Others said they are savoring the city’s resurgence even as they take nothing for granted.
Jessica Lappin, the president of the Alliance for Downtown New York, said in a statement that “there is palpable energy on the streets of Lower Manhattan” despite the uncertainty over how the Trump administration’s actions could affect tourism.
“Commercial leasing is picking up, our hotels are full with room rates at a premium. Our restaurants are busy too,” Lappin said. “While actions in Washington are damaging to international tourism and the job growth and retail pictures cloudy, there is no denying the area is hopping now.”
Saft, the Midtown attorney, said he hopes the positive trend continues into the fall and winter, “so we know it is not just an aberration.”
“Having survived the near bankruptcy of New York City in the ‘70s, the storms, the crime, the grit, the strikes, the recessions, the terrorist attacks and now a pandemic, I always knew my city would recover. I just thought it would take longer.”
“A true New Yorker complains endlessly,” Saft said, “but, like Pandora, always has hope.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
