City CBD may need to adapt

IT would be easy to dismiss the ideas of Planz Town Planning managing director Nikki Huddy and former Cairns Regional councillor Richie Bates of increasing the population density of the CBD.

Wandering the streets of the Cairns CBD amid the COVID-19 pandemic, it is understandable as to why shops and businesses are closed and there is little foot traffic.

But this would be ignoring what was going on before the lockdown started in April.

Shields St - even with its rejuvenation - has not been a happy hunting ground for retailers in recent times. The shopping area at The Pier has also had issues while a number of empty premises dot the remainder of the CBD.

Richie Bates suggests the lesson of COVID-19 is that some retailers may not need a bricks and mortar premises to survive in a postpandemic world.

What does that mean for the Cairns CBD in the future once tourists (both interstate and international) return to the Far North?

Well in order to survive and indeed thrive, the Cairns CBD may need to adapt to the changing times and provide more residential accommodation either in the form of new developments (similar to the Nova proposal in Spence St) or repurposing existing buildings.

Cairns is never going to become a New York in terms of inner-city living but it also won’t be immune to a worldwide trend of increasing the density of urban areas that were once predominantly retail or commercial precincts.

Now is the time for stakeholders to be having a conversation on the sorts of issues that Nikki Huddy, Danny Betros and Richie Bates are raising.

Andrew Graham andrew.graham@news.com.au