We all agree there is a malaise hanging over Fitzroy Street.
I am very aware of it, having lived just around the corner for 35 years. It breaks my heart to see what should be my local shopping street decline into a wasteland. I would love to fix Fitzroy Street. So why is it like that?
Is it the Gatwick? I am constantly told that the ‘Gatwick people’ are driving visitors away, as if the solution to the problem was simply to remove them. I acknowledge their presence can sometimes be confronting, but as a ‘solution’, this is wishful thinking.
We forget that the ‘Gatwick people’ were there when the street was booming. The Gatwick Hotel has been there for decades – with the same number of residents, and issues, through good times and bad. In good times they were hardly noticed – just the expected unpredictable elements in the St Kilda crowd. But, when the crowds died away, the encampment at the 7-11 became almost the only face of middle Fitzroy St. Confronting, but not the root cause.
There’s a larger problem to worry about: When the crowds disappeared, the flimsy, one-track economy of the street was ruthlessly exposed.
My theory is that there are, in fact, two distinct economies waiting to be served. A tourist economy, which operates typically in distinct spikes of activity – usually on weekends and at night – and a local resident economy, which works through the year, through the week, and through the whole day too.
Fitzroy St has become almost totally reliant on the tourist dollar and has all but given up serving the daily needs of residents, the very people who do not move on when the wind changes.
Of course there are exceptions. I can think of half a dozen excellent Fitzroy St businesses that serve the locals (and visitors to the area) superbly well. Not just Di Stassio’s, at one end of a spectrum, but also our brilliant local milk bar at the other, run by Chris and Maria for the last 37 years. Solly Lew the chemist has been in the street since the late 1970s. All still here, serving us well, and still going strong.
But the critical mass of local shops that's needed to make a true local shopping strip work, just doesn't seem to be able to find a foothold here. Yet Fitzroy St is in the middle of one of Melbourne’s most densely packed residential areas – so the potentiality must be there.
I suspect rents on Fitzroy Street are too high for a local economy to take hold again and flourish. Landlords are just asking too much, and not getting it. Shops lie idle for months, even years, waiting to catch the high-rent fish. I’m not blaming the landlords entirely (though I will investigate whether unscrupulous ‘land banking’ is responsible for keeping so many sites vacant for extended periods).
Reducing rents, by itself, will not do -- without a deeper strategy, there is no guarantee of attracting a better mix. But high rents do favour alcohol-dependent businesses and franchises that can defray the risks across a wider base. Real retail variety, owner-manager individuality, and riskier start-ups, all require a lower rent environment to spawn and thrive. As is seen in all great cities around the world, low rent and an inventive mix are the drivers of a vibrant street culture.
Council has been exacerbating the problem by focusing on tourism as our economic driver. It directly (and exclusively) supports the tourist economy, through well-meaning initiatives such as St Kilda Tourism and Events. And it continually tries to ‘improve’ the look of Fitzroy St, re-presenting it as a more up-scale, more touristic street. This has led to a fixation on the ‘image’ of the street -- and the fantasy that by simply changing the look of the street we can revive its fortunes, even though it is the misfortunes that changed ‘the look’ of the street in the first place. Flying another flag from The George is no more going to fix the problem than is planting more palms trees.
Attempting to dictate the character of a shopping street too often produces a sense of try-hard artificiality. If the roots are wrong, business will remain moribund – as we can see.
A street’s character grows from its roots, not its outward appearances - certainly not from bought-in events and fanciful advertising. And the beauty of this is, that if we grow the local economy from its roots, the tourist economy will flourish on top of this healthy understorey!
So, what can we do?
We need to make space for a local resident economy, with all its culture and character, to resurface. The next incarnation of our shopping strips should evolve from the inventiveness of small business, encouraged but not propped up by Council, and supported by re-engaged locals.
My aim is to fix Fitzroy St, but it’s not as though I have all the answers myself. The solutions must come collaboratively from the people who best understand the questions themselves – the committed community of landlords, traders, residents. We need to develop a common vision of what our shopping strips could be, in say five years time, and agree to work together to make it a reality. I am proposing a productive process, not a PR bandaid or a reactive quick fix.
If elected, I will invite this ‘committed community’ — those who have invested in St Kilda, financially, emotionally, personally — to debate that future vision for the street, develop the picture in detail, and agree on the mechanisms to achieve it.
Let’s have a summit to thrash out the future of Fitzroy Street. Let’s come together for a debate, heated if necessary.
I don’t expect to fix Fitzroy Street in the very first year, but certainly in the following few. Anyone who tells you otherwise, is probably promising another short-term fix.