Village of the Damned

Late last year, the City of Sydney convened a new retail advisory panel comprised primarily of large CBD corporate interests including Westfield, David Jones, the shopping centre owners IPOH, the Dymocks chain gang and their collective mega retail lobbying arms — the Australian National Retailers Association and the Sydney Business Chamber. In announcing the new advisory group, Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP said, “The City of Sydney led Retail Advisory Panel is all about delivering great outcomes for Sydney retail businesses,”

The panel’s formation follows the recent opening of a massive billion dollar Westfield shopping mall in the city centre, which poses a grave and serious threat to small businesses throughout the City’s village precincts. In order to recoup its investment into the Pitt Street mall, the retail behemoth seeks to suck even more trade from the surrounding precincts at the expense of small, independent retailers around the City fringe, thus posing a significant threat to the lifeblood of the City’s unique urban precincts.

Concerned about the threat that Westfield poses to small retailers on our village high streets in Clover’s purported City of Villages, I sent a letter to the Lord Mayor asking why the City was convening a retail panel made up primarily of traders from the big end of town (with a few token small businesses from the CBD thrown in for good measure). Shouldn’t a self proclaimed community activist like Clover Moore be representing the interests of the little guy? Five days before Christmas, I received a letter explaining the Lord Mayor’s trickle down theory of local economics: “A world class CBD draws tourists and visitors to our city, creating activity that spills over and animates surrounding areas, and our heritage, diverse and quirky village centres are an important part of Sydney’s appeal”

Tourists to a global city seek authentic urban experiences, not identikit retail outlets in multi story mega malls. The claim that putting resources into advancing the interests of major retailers will in anyway support tourism is misguided and ill informed. Retail chain stores in mega malls in downtown City centres are not draw cards for global tourism. There is no trickle down benefit to be had for small retail businesses who are being bled dry by mega retail interests. Sydney’s tourism numbers are substantially down in large part because of the Westfield juggernaut. International tourists used to spend three days in Sydney, now they spend less than a day and a half before they fly off to Victoria or Queensland to find an authentic Australian experience.

If you want a unique village retail experience, visit Melbourne, San Francisco, Boston, Paris or Milan. Here in Sydney, our unique urban villages are under threat. Small businesses from Oxford Street to Glebe Point Road are doing it tough. Not long ago, Glebe was a thriving urban enclave chock-a-block full of small shops offering original, non homogenised goods and services. Nowadays the Broadway Shopping Centre generates more revenue than the whole of Glebe. Across town, Oxford Street’s daytime economy has been sucked dry by Westfield Bondi Junction. And now with the opening of the Pitt Street mega mall, even more small retail businesses on all sides of the CBD are under threat. Many will go out of business because of Westfield — which delivers the same sanitised corporate consumer culture as chain franchise outlets all around the globe.

Rather than bless and support Westfield as it seeks to drain money from the surrounding precincts, the Lord Mayor should vigorously support, champion and celebrate the few remaining small businesses that create a unique urban village in what remains of Darlinghurst, Newtown and Glebe. The Lord Mayor has resisted calls to convene a Small Business Advisory Group to address the faltering local retail environment, while her nanny state imposes burdensome regulatory hurdles that makes it well nigh impossible for struggling small businesses to put tables on footpaths, retail displays in windowless shopfronts, or signage anywhere in eyesight. While she seeks to reduce “visual clutter” Clover has presided over the death of the City of Villages.

The Lord Mayor is wrong to think that by promoting the interests of mega retail interests, Sydney will compete globally. Residents and workers take pride in living in villages with some of the world’s best cafes, shops and high streets in the world. International tourists are attracted to a global city that has its own unique charm and authentic identity. Surely the Lord Mayor does not wish to preside over a City that shifts more and more retail trade into Westfield and surrounds. By not convening a Small Business Advisory Group at the same time that she has convened a group for mega retail interests, she is sending the wrong message at the wrong time.