City’s shining star is cause for pride
HO, ho, ho! It’s an early Christmas for me to find out again what a winner Geelong’s Christmas celebrations are for the local tourism economy.
The news that the brilliant waterfront Christmas tree, along with lights, projections, displays, showcases and a host of other special civic treats, generates more than $13 million for local businesses, while drawing 216,000 viewers — not to mention at least 15,000 mobile devices on site — is great news.
It reinforces what so many people in Geelong already know — that the floating tree is a true tourism drawcard and the headline act of a fantastic Yuletide major event that highlights this great city’s fantastic bayside attributes.
And the fantastic reopening of Little Malop St — despite City Hall ignoring the traffic wishes of many traders — shows also that Geelong now has a new booming entertainment precinct.
Likewise, the Green Spine along Malop St — another project I championed — is now open as well and the city centre is well and truly firing, breathing new life into the CBD. Funny how they changed its name from the Botanic Walk. I wonder why? I suspect anything to get rid of the Lyons stamp on Geelong’s successes.
Now, if only we could get rid of the Moorabool St buses and turn the place into a promenade. It could be our Champs-Elysees.
Bruce Harwood, our new mayor, says Geelong’s Christmas celebrations rival Melbourne’s and draw visitors from across the state. I can safely vouch that people from interstate and overseas are visiting our Christmas celebrations.
Last week, I had people tell me they were photographing the tree and the light show for friends back in Ireland who’d heard about it. And if you remember, when the tree first arrived four years ago, we received mass global coverage from Europe to Mexico and the US to Japan and the UK.
The CBD crowds were even bigger than when the Cats won their grand finals.
What we’re seeing now is the product of that early investment, the determination to make something special of Geelong to show the world. But we can’t afford to sit on our laurels.
I still can’t believe there have been so many people opposed to all this — and some still opposed. It’s just incredible. They should be proud of what we have here. They should be shouting about it from the rooftops.
Instead we still have political naysayers. And worse, we still have council officers who ignore what traders want in this city. They’ll hear them out but the traders don’t stand a chance of getting what they really want from this council.
Grinches! Lousy grinches. What else can you call them? I hope Santa leaves a lump of coal in their stockings.
By the way, anyone playing Monopoly this Christmas? Here’s one present we need: free parking seven days a week. The city would boom as it has done on weekends, which already proves that it works.
When I started as mayor, Little Malop looked like a street in a ghost town.
Almost every business, including my own, was either broke or on the way out. But look at the revitalisation we put in place — with the Central Geelong Task Force that I led as chair and the council that Daniel Andrews sacked. It’s incredible.
The new council now needs to commit to upgrading the tree and continuing what its predecessors started. The figures I quote above from last Christmas, while commendable, were actually down on 2015, when the Christmas showcase generated $18 million and brought another 34,000 people into town.
Odd that the year it’s down is the year the commissioners were put in place at City Hall. Says volumes to me.
So next year the tree has to be bigger and flasher. It needs to grow another one or two storeys in height. It needs to be further lit up with floating presents all around it, which can be done quite modestly price-wise. It needs to get rid of the cheap plastic banner around its base.
It has to be treated like the respected icon it has become.
This will require a commitment by the new council, who should also be pushing for this to become not just a Geelong major event but a state major event; one where the State Government injects money to help grow our regional tourism economy instead of fighting to tear this whole thing down.
The State Government’s always wanted to tear up our Christmas. Its commissioners did an economic impact study which I’m certain the government wanted to return a negative picture so they could kill it off.
But guess what? It kicked off with a brilliant $20 million impact. It was the first time the city, with the help of an entrepreneurial mayor, had made such a positive impact. And the government would usually be making a $150 million loss.
I have to say the anti-success Labor councillors who voted against it have not been re-elected. Thank God for that.
There’s a sweet old tale that comes to mind at Christmas that never fails to remind me of the real message behind the festive season.
Merry Christmas, Geelong, and a special thanks to all those who have supported me with this column throughout the year. I hope you and your loved ones have a very happy and holy Christmas.