A letter was recently sent to California Environmental Protection Agency employees asking workers to return back to the office at least two days per week starting this spring.

The mass exodus of state workers from office buildings during the pandemic had a significant impact on Downtown's restaurants and businesses.

According to Mike Ault, executive director of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, the state of California owns almost 40% of the neighborhood's real estate.

Out of the roughly 250,000 state employees, around half of them are able to work remotely — and two-thirds of CalEPA's ~6,000 employees are fully remote.

So, what could this change mean?

Partial return of the workforce to CalEPA's 25-story building (1001 I St.) would bring back thousands in foot traffic — multiple times per week — to surrounding businesses.

This could also be a key decision that leads other state offices to follow suit, bringing more remote employees into a hybrid-style work flow + boosting the bustle of Sac's downtown grid.