Lockdown changes our shopping streetscape

This time last year many local businesses were struggling to survive and several ‘For Lease’ signs were appearing, especially along Errol and Victoria Streets in North and West Melbourne. Many local business owners cited the high rents they were having to pay that were throttling their ability to make ends meet.

Since the onslaught of COVID-19 and the two lockdowns, the pandemic restrictions have taken a sledge hammer to our shops and cafes, bringing many more shopkeepers to declare that their business has been ‘corona-ed’.

Hopefully, one silver lining to the pandemic crisis will be the return of shop rental costs to a reasonable level.

If after the virus, you were offered one of the vacant shops free of charge, how would you use it? Would you shift your cottage industry out of your backyard onto Errol Street where you would have more space, camaraderie with other budding traders and greater foot traffic? Some shops with upstairs and downstairs might have room for studio space to do the work and gallery space to display their wares.

Renew Australia is one such group filling empty spaces with potential traders seeking to trial a new business idea. They have partnered with the Docklands Spaces project to provide 24 new businesses the opportunity to try out their ideas across gallery, studio, office, retail and training spaces with minimal overheads. Renew Australia has also conducted long term projects in the dying shopping strips of Newcastle and Geelong. Currently Renew Australia reports there are 40 creative projects and businesses looking for space in the heart of Wollongong.

For new business owners, it gives them space to work and display their products with few overheads apart from paying the utilities and looking after the property.

For owners of the buildings, instead of their shops being closed, they are open and attractive. This overcomes the need to board up the windows and it reduces the possibility of vandalism, such as that suffered by the Royal Exchange Hotel on the corner of Victoria and Peel Streets, North Melbourne, which has had its windows smashed and the door broken down. The new business owners might be on a rolling monthly lease in case there are paying tenants who emerge wanting the space for the long term. The hope is that the new occupants trialing their business might enjoy success and become long-term paying tenants.

For our community, the presence of new businesses might spark a vibrancy to replace the doom and gloom that has been left in our shopping strips by the 2020 pandemic. Wouldn’t it be superb to witness an explosion of creativity and business confidence that brings about a sustained renewal of the shopping strips in North and West Melbourne?

Geoff Pound is a local resident and minister of the West Melbourne Baptist Church.

geoffpound@gmail.com

This article was first published in the North & West Melbourne News, Spring edition, p3.