Gladstone Newsagency closes in Goondoon Street after Gladstone Regional Council redevelopment works

A Gladstone business has made the call to cease sales after fighting an uphill battle and spending tens of thousands trying to keep the doors open. Find out what pushed it to breaking point.

The Gladstone Newsagency located on Goondoon Street will officially close its doors on August 31st after nearly six years of business.

In a Facebook post shared on Monday, August 1, store owner Sonya Sims announced her business would no longer be operating.

Since 2020, the newsagency has been fighting an uphill battle.

“Making it through the pandemic only to have the Gladstone Regional Council block off a major road that gave access to my store was devastating,” Ms Sims said.

“We just couldn’t make ends meet and there was little to no support offered by council during this time.

“When council first announced they would be commencing construction on Goondoon St they made multiple promises about working on ways to lessen the impact on businesses; it didn’t turn out that way.”

Ms Sims said she had put herself out of pocket by nearly $80,000 just to keep the store running and look after her employees.

Gladstone Regional Council said “while construction was underway work crews identified high voltage electrical cables that were both in poor condition and non-compliant with current building legislation”.

“These unforeseen major infrastructure works placed additional time pressures on work crews and project timelines needed to be extended as a result,” Gladstone Region Mayor Matt Burnett said.

Mr Burnett also added that we were seeing many news agencies close around the country in recent times.

“With the loss of a daily newspaper, more and more people are reading news online and at the same time finding different ways to access lotto and magazines,” Mr Burnett said.

Gladstone has also seen the closure of Harbour News and Sun Valley News, with the Kin Kora Newsagency significantly scaling back and diversifying its operations for customers.

Ms Sims is encouraging locals to pop in store one last time to “grab a bargain while everything is marked down” or to “make an offer on any or all shelving, fridges and computers”.