International Cities and Towns

A tired prperty on Unley Rd

I had the pleasure to attend this conference on Thursday and Friday in Melbourne. As with all conferences the keynote speakers were inspiring and the workshops/ smaller sessions interesting. It brings my mind back to what we are doing well and we what continue to struggle with. to my mind the revitalisation of Goodwood Rd was as good, if not better, that the other studies I heard about. The amazing thing about Goodwood Rd is that it has few vacancies and keeping tenants in buildings and enabling these businesses to trade profitably is an issue that Councils across Australia are struggling with. I spoke briefly with a representative from Marion Council. If you’ve driven down Marion Rd anytime in the last year or so it's not hard to notice that the small groups of 6-9 shops are struggling. Her problem was that the landlords would rather they were empty as the long term gain for them is in the value of the land!  Luckily we have few of these in Unley. But I often hear that King William Rd problem is with the Landlords.

Some quick fixes would include more targeted consultation, trialling ideas on the ground before implementation of the hard infrastructure and tarting up shopfronts, particularly in some parts of Unley Rd.