A walk through Geelong’s ailing CBD gives us a better understanding of its battles and its future
“Sorry we are closed.” Shuttered shops, uncollected mail, cobwebs, litter, vape stores and massage joints. The writing is literally on the wall in Geelong’s CBD. But maybe hope remains.
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The future of Geelong’s CBD has been a hot topic, with community and business leaders, politicians, analysts, demographers and developers all weighing in. While big-picture discussions are undoubtedly valuable, sometimes they feel far removed, abstract, the stuff of roundtables and PowerPoint displays, often falling into jargon, salesmanship and politicking. Perhaps the best way to understand our changing centre is to simply walk through it and look. So, with camera in hand, that’s what the Addy’s SHAUN VILJOEN did.
WE live in a world where so much unfolds in the electronic ether, but it is not online where the story of Geelong’s struggling heart is being written – it is on actual pieces of paper.
It’s the long-unopened letters sitting behind the smudged glass of long-unopened CBD doors.
It’s the resume wedged under a table leg in a shuttered cafe, where the fittings and fixtures, cups and cutlery are still in place – like some hospitality Mary Celeste. The neatly typed CV surrounded by dead leaves that have blown in under the door.
It’s the A4 sheet taped to a window, announcing the appointment of an administrator or liquidator.
It’s the notes saying “we have moved” or farewelling and thanking customers for years of patronage.
It’s the poorly printed messages on the filthy window of a tobacconist saying, “Sorry, no glass pipes”.
It’s hard not to see these markings as the literal writing on the wall. Ballpoint pen, Sharpie, Times New Roman or Arial, these words seem to tell the same story. This city – like pedestrians coughing in the aftermath of a B-double hauling livestock down Ryrie St – is struggling to draw breath.
If you keep your vision broad, Geelong’s CBD looks like a place marching forward. There are new towers rising above the streets, a shiny skyline that seems to promise much.
But a closer look is sobering.
If you strained your neck glancing upwards, not to worry, there is no shortage of establishments offering a massage behind cheap flashing lights.
Walking through our city centre with an eye to the little details, one could be forgiven for thinking this is not a place headed for a happy ending.
Multiple shops sit vacant, cobwebs on the door handles. Litter in the alcoves.
A doorway holds a sleeping bag – a reservation placed by the battler who’ll spend the night there, trying to escape the icy June gusts.
Discarded “nangs” – small canisters of nitrous oxide used for a quick, cheap high – lie in the middle of the road.
In the centre of the city sits Market Square. A retail Titanic. The iceberg has struck.
Surely this part of our heart will not go on. Most on-board the doomed giant have already jumped ship. A few brave souls wait for a lifeboat that is likely never coming. Others seem resigned to their fate.
The mall was once thriving. Its levels humming with shoppers, its central foyer hosting screaming fans as the latest domestic pop star on a whirlwind promotional tour belted out their hit single and signed posters.
Now the only sound comes from the shoes of a solitary bored security guard, tapping out a sad rhythm that echoes through the emptiness – a funeral dirge.
Just outside is the city’s much-maligned bus stop. Local and state officials keep telling the public they are committed to a solution at the trouble spot … and then handball the hot potato to each other in what seems an eternal game of dodge ball.
The issue of heavy rigs in the city seems to be stuck in the same bureaucratic loop.
No one seems to be able to get trucks out of the CBD, so al fresco diners on Ryrie St are treated to the ambience of diesel fumes and the roar of giant engines.
Back at the bus stop, teens holding energy drinks large enough to fill a bathtub mouth off at one another. A man makes no attempt to hide the fact he’s drinking from a can of spirits. An elderly woman using a walker eases herself onto the space on the seat between an empty McDonalds cup and a discarded vape refill. Someone is passed out on a nearby park bench.
It’s not pretty.
But it would be unfair to paint a picture that is all doom and gloom. There is change here and success, too.
Just across the road from the bus stop is little Malop St’s dining precinct – fashionable, energetic, cosmopolitan. Stylish people sit on stylish chairs under stylish lights. It’s a very different place than it was a decade ago.
Yes, the cost-of-living crisis is biting even here – among the carefully groomed moustaches, designer coats and expensive shoes – but this stretch is a clear demonstration of the potential in our city’s middle.
So, too, is what’s happening just a little further west. Geelong’s arts and culture precinct is impressive. Striking architecture – big, bold, colourful – the iconic brutalism of the state government offices complemented by the library’s dome and the glowing revamped Geelong Arts Centre. The old courthouse, the gallery and City Hall add their historic weight to this hub, flanked by leafy Johnstone Park. It’s good.
Back to the east, things are happening, too. The vacated stretch in central Moorabool St is set to make way for a new development. A historic theatre on Little Malop – once a Reject Shop – is poised for a new life. There are pockets of positivity – boutiques, cafes, eateries, galleries, salons and exercise studios – making it work. They just need more company. For all the shining lights, there is a lot of dark.
So who’s to blame?
That debate often seems to fall very quickly into simplistic narratives, almost always aligned with pre-existing political views – which is how so much public discourse unfolds these days.
“It’s all council’s fault.”
“It was Dan Andrews.”
Yes, the choices of our leaders have undoubtedly factored into the city we have today, but so have much larger forces that are not under the control of any one person or jurisdiction.
Winds of cultural and economic change, a pandemic, a cost-of-living crisis, rapid growth, homelessness, a dearth of affordable housing, online shopping, complicated layers of private ownership and leaseholders, multiple levels of government.
The problems here are complex and nuanced and any solutions will have to be the same.
Heart health is multifaceted and heart surgery is no simple task.
Perhaps all the emptiness in the city is a pause.
Perhaps the optimist would like to think of it not so much as a city struggling to breathe, but rather one holding its breath before coming change.
What stories will be written after that exhalation remains to be seen. Yes, there are a lot of grim messages on the city’s windows and doors, but maybe a simple piece of vandalism on a pub wall, above a discarded syringe, across from a bulk discount pharmacy, offers a word worth keeping in mind.
“Hope.”
Originally published as A walk through Geelong’s ailing CBD gives us a better understanding of its battles and its future
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