‘You could lie down naked in the middle of Norton Street’: Sad decline of Sydney’s ‘Little Italy’

One of Sydney’s iconic streets has been “destroyed”, with one business owner claiming there are now so few visitors “you could lie down naked” in the middle of the road.

An iconic Sydney suburb is at risk of “dying”, as a growing number of vacant shopfronts take over.

Leichhardt in the city’s inner west, once the heart of the Italian Australian community known for its vibrant and bustling restaurant scene, has been on a gradual decline since its heyday around the mid-2000s.

Now rising interest rates, electricity and rents, combined with cost-of-living pressures as shoppers cut back spending and eat out less, have further put the squeeze on local businesses.

Ernesto Meduri, director of sportswear retailer ItaSport in the Italian Forum shopping plaza, said his store does not attract as many customers as it once did, leaving him to rely on online sales. Mr Meduri said “99 per cent” of his business was now online.

“I can’t survive [without it],” he said.

The iconic Italian Forum on Norton Street, Leichhardt. Picture: news.com.au

Maria Saraceno, owner of The Merchant of Venice clothing store, also said it was “tough for retail because of online [shopping]”.

“Leichhardt in particular is doing it tough,” she said.

Mr Meduri agreed that Leichhardt in particular was struggling.

“It’s very, very, very hard in Leichhardt at the moment,” he said. “There’s a closed business every two to three months.”

The local community Facebook page is often flooded with posts and comments from residents expressing their frustration at the dire state of local retail.

“Have [the] council put Norton Street in the too-hard basket?” one person wrote recently.

“Embarrassing to see all these empty storefronts and doesn’t give much confidence to someone looking to open up when they see so many empty stores. Looks to me like it’s continuing the Norton Street trend.”

Norton Street is dotted with vacant shops. Picture: news.com.au

Other iconic shopping strips in Sydney are facing similar headwinds, including Oxford Street in the eastern suburbs and King Street in the inner west.

A tally conducted by The Australian Financial Review last month found more than one in 10 stores along Oxford Street between Darlinghurst and Paddington — the home of Sydney’s LGBTQ community — were empty.

Over on King Street in Newtown, Amanda Fisher, the long-time owner of books and homewares retailer Pentimento, chose not to renew her lease, shutting in May last year.

“I looked at current conditions and I thought to myself, it’s going to be quite difficult,” she told The Australian Financial Review.

“So I said, ‘It was a good run, get out now.’ It’s a perfect storm at the moment. We’ve got inflation. We’ve got higher rent prices, not just commercial rents, local rents. It all falls down to how much money people have to spend.”

On Sydney’s northern beaches, the famous Manly Corso is also struggling to recover from a “real kick on the butt” from back-to-back Covid lockdowns, local MP James Griffin told news.com.au in March.

‘There’s a closed business every two to three months.’ Picture: news.com.au

It comes after figures from the corporate regulator revealed the number of failing companies increased by a whopping 36 per cent in the nine months to March 31 this year.

During the period, 7742 companies entered external administration, according to the latest insolvency statistics from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), including a record 1031 in March.

“With only one quarter remaining this financial year, it’s expected that the number of companies entering external administration by June 30, 2024 will exceed 10,000, a level not seen since the 2012–2013 financial year,” ASIC said in a statement.

Some Leichhardt businesses believe there are changes that the local government can make to help address the issue.

“First important thing is the parking meters, we are the only suburb around here that still has parking meters, and that is affecting a lot of my business,” Mr Meduri said.

Others say the broader economic conditions are to blame.

“I would say it’s mainly the economy … people are having to be more conscious of money,” said Taylor King from Vintage Times, a jewellery store in the area.

Ms Saraceno said: “Retail is very tough … people got no money.”

Locals say conditions are ‘very’ tough. Picture: news.com.au

But one prominent local business owner and long-time Leichhardt resident, who asked not to be named, pointed the finger squarely at the Inner West Council.

“The council is your problem, and the parking,” he said.

“That’s what the [metered] parking is — you put a limit on something, you know someone goes to dinner, it’s not a two-hour activity, and you make sure you profit from it.”

The business owner said the Inner West Council, and before that Leichhardt Council, had been “so blindsided by green bullsh*t” it “destroyed the economy of Norton Street” over several decades.

“Since 1992 when these cockroaches put the parking in,” he said.

“In 1992 they imposed a parking tax on all the businesses, of which not one cent has been used for parking. It would be in the hundreds of millions [today].”

He said the lack of convenient street parking had decimated foot traffic, leaving many quality businesses — which in any other suburb would see “lines out the front until 11 or 12 at night” — unable to bring in enough revenue to even cover rent and “that’s why there’s so many vacancies”.

“You could lie down naked in the middle of Norton Street at 5.30pm on a Thursday night and no one would know you were there,” he said.

Leichhardt’s famous Norton Street Italian Street Festa in 2015. Picture: Simon Bullard

“I can’t go up the road and buy a pack of cigarettes without putting my number plate into a machine. Where do I stop to go to Chemist Warehouse? I have to park 17 streets away and pay $4 for parking to buy an item. Then I’m not going to go there, am I? I’m going to go to [Norton Plaza] to go to Coles. Norton Street at the other end doesn’t function. I can’t get down the street, between the buses and the pedestrian crossings in the middle of the road that stop the whole street.”

He scoffed at the Inner West Council’s official renaming of the Leichhardt central precinct to Little Italy in 2021.

“We’re about to have World Cup and we’re going to have all these tourists who pretend they’re Italian come to Norton Street — to go where?” he said.

“Bar Italia? They’re Greeks. There’s nothing left. There’s no identity. There’s a history here and this council couldn’t give a sh*t.”

Speaking to SBS in 2021, Italian Forum tattoo clinic owner Junie Ye said the area was not what it once was.

“I wish the Forum was still popular like it used to be,” she said.

“Many people remember how busy this place used to be, how busy the restaurants were there, about 16 years ago. Sometimes I’ve got people walking past, coming to my door and they get really passionate and say, ‘What happened to this place?’ And I say, ‘Sorry, there are not many restaurants left.’”

One real estate agent, however, suggested the impact of the parking had been overblown and that Norton Street had simply “lost its mojo”, lacking a clear identity or reason for people to visit.

“It needs to work out what it wants to be,” he said.

Inner West Council has been contacted for comment.

Originally published as ‘You could lie down naked in the middle of Norton Street’: Sad decline of Sydney’s ‘Little Italy’