# Jimmy the Greek Reopening Index

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) · 2021-09-08

business, cbd, central-business-district, covid, downtown-toronto, first-canadian-place, labor-day, lunch-line, real-estate, return-to-office

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https://twitter.com/donnelly\_b/status/1435641373487685639?s=20

Since the summer, I have been using the lunch line at Jimmy the Greek (in [First Canadian Place](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Canadian_Place)) as a crude measure for the reopening of the CBD in downtown Toronto. It is partially a joke. Those of you who know me will know I am a fan of Jimmy the Greek (and large filling lunches in general). But at the same time, it is a probably a fairly decent (but again crude) proxy for the utilization rate of the offices that sit above and around Jimmy. Pre-COVID the lunch lines were always long and there was usually nowhere to sit. In the spring of this year, I was often the only person there, single-handedly keeping Jimmy alive. But things picked up throughout the summer months and there was a significant spike this week, following Labor Day (see above tweet). This was the spike that many/most of us were predicting and it showed through in the Jimmy the Greek Reopening Index.

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/jimmy-the-greek-reopening-index)*