What COVID-safe shopping centres will look like
Chadstone, The Glen, Box Hill Central, Northland and Emporium are among the centres “on the blocks and ready to fire” as retailers get set to reopen. Here are the procedures put in place to protect you.
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COVID-19 safety crews, virtual queuing systems and hi-tech tracking hubs in major shopping centres are key strategies being implemented as retailers anticipate a gradual easing of stage four restrictions, to be announced by Premier Daniel Andrews on Sunday.
Chadstone, The Glen, Box Hill Central, Northland and Emporium are among the centres “on the blocks and ready to fire”, Vicinity Centres director of premium assets Fiona Mackenzie said.
“We’re optimistic that next week will see us open and I think that’s what we’re all hoping for and landing on, so like everyone we will be waiting with bated breath on Sunday,” she said.
“At Chadstone and every other Vicinity centre, we could just turn it on tomorrow. I walked Chadstone earlier this week and there was lots of very busy work going on in terms of getting stores ready.”
A raft of safety measures and procedures have been put in place including hi-tech hubs, which monitor real-time pedestrian and car traffic and predict congestion hot spots, which then allow new COVID-safe crews to act.
“The centres are going to look and feel different from what our customers have seen before,” Ms Mackenzie said.
“We will be actively managing the amount of people that are in the malls, where they’re congregating, how they’re moving, and then applying forecasting technology over the top of that, which allows our teams on site to be able to foresee where the particular congestion points are and deploy our COVID-safe crews, which will be on the ground.
“They will be a combination of security, cleaning staff and some of our management teams, and they’ll be deployed to go down to those areas and encourage people to disperse because we know that if people are moving around and engaging differently with our retailers, we can get back to the capacities that we’ve had previously.”
A colour-coded queuing system will be implemented to separate the centre into high and low density and traffic areas to help retailers manage numbers outside their stores.
Customers can also access virtual queuing app SocialQ, which will give them a platform to pre-book appointments.
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