Cairns CBD vacancies: City-centre business expansion mapped out
This astonishing map shows exactly how many vacant buildings there are in the Cairns CBD — but town planning experts have found a way to turn back the tide. PLUS: What our mayoral candidates say on the issue.
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THE sheer depth of commercial vacancies in the Cairns CBD has been laid out in a new study into how to turn back the tide on an inner-city exodus.
Cairns Regional Council commissioned town planning consultancy firm Urbis to undertake a commercial review to find out why the city centre was flagging and how to get wind back in its sails.
Researchers counted 101 vacancies within the area bounded by Aplin St, Sheridan St, Spence St and the Esplanade.
There were 162 retail operators in the area, 184 hotels, cafes, bars and restaurants, and a grand total of 686 businesses.
Division 5 Cr Richie Bates told yesterday’s council meeting the CBD should increasingly be looked at as an entertainment precinct and moves had to be taken to increase population density.
“There are some factors that are clearly out of our control … things such as stagnant wage growth in this country and low disposable income, these are having a dramatic effect on people’s spending power,” he said.
“You combine that with things like digital economy, where people are actually now buying goods and services online rather than walking into shops.”
The report threw up plenty of reasons for the city centre’s current state of lethargy – most of which were obvious – and ways to turn it around.
Encouraging student accommodation projects and university campus growth within the CBD emerged as a clear recommendation.
That advice fits perfectly with The Cairns Post’s Future Tourism demographer Bernard Salt’s recent call for ambitious tertiary institution expansion in the inner city.
It also lends weight to the Cairns TNQ Convoy to Capital Q’s push for funds to build a new CQUniversity campus and JCU’s Cairns University Hospital upgrade proposal.
The report found the Cairns city centre was home to just 1415 people per square kilometre – two-thirds of whom were owner-occupiers.
Newcastle’s CBD had 2029 residents per square kilometre, more than half of whom rented, and the Darwin CBD was at 2396 with a 79 per cent in rental properties.
Only three out of every 100 people living in the heart of Cairns were students, compared with 10 per cent in Newcastle and Darwin’s figure of 6 per cent.
Urbis issued an exhaustive list of recommendations, including working with police to reduce crime, securing state and federal funding for the Cairns Gallery Precinct project and providing incentives for building owners to fill long-term vacancies.
Division 6 Cr Linda Cooper argued one of the best things the council could do was to get out of the road and stop complicating matters with unnecessary bureaucracy.
She said it took one business owner six months to get permission to put on live entertainment in Shields St without asking for a cent.
“I do think that’s one of the issues as a council we struggle with,” she said.
“If people are coming to us with great ideas, let’s just give them every opportunity to explore it.”
Campuses seen as way to bring life to ailing CBD
Judith Carter went from one frontier to another when she picked up sticks and moved from Hobart to Cairns four years ago.
The climates could not be more different but both cities’ CBD ghost town troubles are cut from the same cloth.
Ms Carter was walking past one of the Cairns city centre’s notable dead spots yesterday – the vacancy-riddled stretch of Spence St between Lake and Grafton streets.
“I mostly just walk around the waterfront when I’m in town,” she said.
“It really needs a bit of a revamp here – probably some more trees and things to make it more inviting. “The Hobart CBD is pretty dead too, but it’s got a bit better since I left.”
Cities across the world are transforming their inner-city areas as consumers shift away from face-to-face shopping.
CBD university campuses and associated student accommodation are increasingly considered a perfect fit for creating the population density required to sustain vibrant hospitality and entertainment precincts.
The University of Tasmania has announced its intention to build a new $600 million “citycentric campus” rather than upgrading its existing campus out of town – a move with stark similarities to CQUniversity’s plan to construct a new campus in the Cairns CBD.
WHAT MAYORAL CANDIDATES SAY
Bob Manning
Economies can’t stand still — they either go forwards or backwards. At the moment in Cairns we’ve got an economy that is contracting. I think the driver of that contraction is the loss of our tourism numbers. We reverse that by getting out into the marketplace, selling our product and convincing people (this region) is still desirable — and it is desirable. It’s nowhere near as simple as it sounds, but that’s the key. If we’re going to wait for government assistance, I fear we all might die of hunger.
Georgia Babatsikos
We need to activate urban spaces by providing incentives for small businesses to go into shopfronts. We need an activation levy like the one that’s used in Darwin, for example, where landlords are charged a levy for shopfronts that are vacant for a long time.
We have to ease up on restrictive policies about not being able to put out a sign, hat rack or plant – because it looks dead.
And we need to have small events like the Christmas artisan fair that just floods people into the streets.
Jen Sackley
I really think what we need to do is create density in the city. Any vision we have has to be threefold – it has to be short-term, mid-term and long-term. Around that mid-term stuff, or something that takes a period of eight to 10 years, it has to be about encouraging industry; get those cranes back into the city. We need to be building high-rise buildings that are multi-dimensional in their capacity … The city must become liveable. It must be the hub and the heart of Cairns, and that means development.
Ian Lydiard
When the benefit of renting out a property outweighs the benefit of not renting it, then things will start to happen. If we can encourage owners to look at more reasonable rental rates, I think we will find they start to fill. Every time you give a discount, you have to find money somewhere — but I’m happy to have that conversation and see where it goes. If you’re fair dinkum about the inner city being vibrant and alive, it has to happen. Boosting the city centre will be a priority when I’m mayor.
Originally published as Cairns CBD vacancies: City-centre business expansion mapped out