To Kickstart a Downtown Comeback, Cities Bet on Tourism
Like many midsize metros, Raleigh is hoping that a surge of summer visitors will replace office workers and speed the city’s economic recovery.
Raleigh, North Carolina, welcomed a growing number of tourists pre-Covid. The city’s economic recovery could depend on luring them back.
Photographer: Katherine Frey/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Barkeep and restaurateur Niall Hanley poured his first draft beer at age 10 in his home country of Ireland and found his way to Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1998. There, he runs the Hibernian Hospitality Group, a constellation of bars, beer gardens, and restaurants spread across Raleigh neighborhoods, including a mammoth beer hall boasting 369 brews on tap. One could say he’s comfortable behind the bar.
It’s a perch that’s given him plenty of insight into the economic challenges facing his adopted city, especially the slow recovery of businesses downtown as the effects of the pandemic recede. Bars like the Station, his location in Oakwood, just north of the central business district, rely on an ecosystem of customers and events, from business lunches and happy-hour gatherings to conventioneers and tourists, that was all but destroyed by Covid-19. Though North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper has announced that statewide Covid restrictions will end June 1, that ecosystem is still fragile, even fallow.