City’s new heart

AFTER a day-long meeting at Deakin Waterfront, I needed to head to McKillop St.

Forget the car, methinks, a brisk walk up the Moorabool St hill would do me the world of good. So off I strode.

It wasn’t long before I encountered Geelong’s own new theme park — “High-Vis Safety Vest Land”.

Those orange-clad people were everywhere.

First contact was Malop St, noticing road diversion signs and a distinct lack of traffic.

Crikey, had the zombies taken over again? Was this part of some bizarre “dig-up-the-road-to-congest-traffic-plan”?

No, the ageing sewer is being replaced.

Barwon Water was taking the chance to do essential work before the much-anticipated Green Spine is built along that thoroughfare.

Fair enough, but those Malop St traders whose sales are affected by such works are in a tough spot.

Their fixed costs of doing business remain while passing customer traffic is significantly reduced.

As many CBD traders discovered when road traffic was severely restricted during the 2010 UCI Championships, there are no legislative mechanisms to assist busi- ness faced with these circumstances.

While the UCI was successful for Geelong at so many levels, some small traders never quite recovered.

Heading further up Moorabool St, I passed what was many moons ago the famous Murray’s Menswear store.

The Murrays were neighbours and let us kids spend many a happy Gala Day watching the parade and playing on the shop veranda — no safety rails of course. Ah, those were the days, although the new evening timeslot adopted by Barwon Health for the parade is a winner.

On the Little Malop St corner, the cheery Big Issue seller was spruiking his magazines.

Relocated from his usual Malop St patch, he was lamenting the roadwork’s impact on those businesses, including his.

“Necessary works — only be a few weeks — hard to do it any other way,” I tried to reassure him while handing over my cash.

But despite my best efforts, I don’t think he was convinced. As usual, that Big Issue edition turned out to be a rollicking good read — buy one whenever you can.

Looking west down Little Malop St was another bevy of orange vests and extensive roadworks — this time, The Laneways Project.

Now, I am all for city centre improvements but that particular small stretch of road seems to have had more makeovers than any other single carriageway in world history.

Laneways has the best of intents but this project needs to prove worthy of the disruption.

I sincerely hope this is the last time Little Malop St is rearranged for a long period.

Reaching Ryrie St, I was amazed to see the “always closing” rug shop is getting “new stock in” and about to move to a new location.

After all those years, we might even miss the trademark gaudy bright yellow shopfront . . . but not for long.

Further up, the long-shuttered Covent Garden fruit shop sported the sign of a well-known Geelong construction company and work is now happening there.

Very encouraging to see as the re-purposing of our older buildings is a critical component of CBD regeneration.

Even more vests and roadwork signs on the Myers St corner — something questionable was being vacuumed into a large truck so I refrained from asking exactly what was being sucked out!

Made it to the top — Top of the Town Pizza that is — but they were closed at the time, so no Margherita for me.

Walking the length of Moorabool St’s retail strip, there’s a mix of businesses of varying quality and appearance. There’s still a disturbing number of vacancies, a concern for one of our principal CBD roads.

Many shopfronts look underdone but wouldn’t take much to freshen-up. CoGG could well learn from the Newcastle City Council which, facing similar issues in its CBD, ran a successful scheme where owners could receive a small matching grant to assist in upgrading shopfronts. Simple, low cost … but very effective.

There’s no single silver bullet for our CBD revitalisation. This is a long-term undertaking. Repeopling is the prime objective through both greater work and business opportunities, together with diverse inner-city living options. I remain confident that we will get there, which will no doubt involve many more vests.