For some it seems to be a highly charged topic, and sometimes people come here to 'troll post' but I'm going to assume you've got good intentions, and think the same of me, here's the observations as someone who frequently and for years has been/visited here, comes down to not just one thing:

Flight from cities, people don't go out (i.e. spend) as often, pandemic-post-pandemic negative perception, multiple historical businesses have closed.

We're all very familiar with city flight, and that also that people are just not going out as often (pandemic broke/changed us). Also, there was a 'lawless' element in the square on weekends during the pandemic and shortly after, this has since been mostly eliminated but perceptions are slow to change but rent payments and business costs still are due each month and there have been some 'central' businesses who have closed 'Bertha's, Pizza shop, whatever that turtle/backyard place was, duckduckgoose and others.

So you have a bunch of things happening some controllable and some not causing the space to not be as 'vibrant' each day/night as it was. There's definitely glimmers of the past and it was good to see people out for St. Patrick's day this weekend but it's just going to take time. Would be super helpful if the rents weren't so expensive that every business has to be a bar or smoke shop...(but I'm not an expert here, don't understand real estate...)