Australia’s worst shopping centres are a sight for sore eyes

ONCE thriving shopping centres around Australia have been left abandoned. Locals complain of having to “eat service station food,” and being left in a “virtual community” where nobody knows each other.

ACT Labor politicians Yvette Berry and Simon Corbell had grand plans for the now-bulldozed former Giralang IGA site, but instead local residents have been left without shops for a decade while a legal stoush drags on.

HAS the death knell been sounded for Australia’s local shops?

Across the nation, for lease signs are multiplying while once-vibrant meeting places fall into disrepair — or off the face of the earth.

The Wonga Park Village Centre in Melbourne’s east was yesterday labelled a “ghost town” after a fish and chip shop moved on, leaving a hairdresser the only remaining tenant in the deserted centre.

But if you think this sounds tragic, spare a thought for the good people of Giralang, in Canberra’s northern suburbs.

Residents have had no local shops for the past decade, despite a determined grassroots campaign to win back their beloved pub, pizza shop, bakery, hairdresser, newsagent, community radio station, Vietnamese restaurant and video store.

“The whole saga is a complete balls-up,” said Stephen Toaldo, whose teenage children have never had the luxury of skipping down to the shops for an ice cream.

“Canberra’s a big country town, that’s why my wife and I came back from Sydney; but without a central meeting place, that disappears.”

Giralang’s dilapidated shops languished for years before finally being bulldozed, but plans for new shops and a Woolworths supermarket have been held up by a lengthy court battle.

Plans for a revival were put on ice while a legal stoush played out between Woolworths — which has plans for the 1500-square-metre site, once home to an IGA supermarket — and the operators of neighbouring IGA and Supaexpress stores.

The High Court has sent the case back to the Supreme Court of Appeal, where it will be heard later this month.

But local residents don’t care which supermarket chain wins — they just want their shops back.

Whereas once the school mums would gather at the local cafe after dropping off their kids, today their only option is McDonalds, or the petrol station.

“When you start eating service station food, you’re in trouble,” Mr Toaldo said grimly.

“We’ve become a virtual community; we don’t see each other face-to-face.”

The ACT’s shadow planning minister Alistair Coe recently tabled a petition in parliament, calling on the Labor Government to pass legislation heading off any further legal action, and allowing the new shops to be built.

“The residents of Giralang have waited far too long for shops in their suburb,” Mr Toaldo said.

“Years of mismanagement and meddling from the government have led to the situation where the owner wants to build new shops but is unable to.”

Meanwhile, news.com.au readers have weighed in with their nominations for Australia’s worst shops.

The former Kurim Shopping Centre in Orange, NSW is an eyesore, and has been dubbed a hazard by the local council. It remains derelict two years after its owner announced plans to turn the building into a child care centre.

Among the most compelling suggestions are:

Kurim Shopping Centre in Orange, New South Wales

In a lengthy saga dubbed “Kurim-gate”, Orange Council sparred with the owner of a dilapidated, long-abandoned shopping centre deemed a hazard to the public. Exposed wires allegedly made the unsecured site a risk to children, and at one point the council threatened to acquire the derelict property to safeguard the public, the Central Western Daily reported.

Bellbowrie Shopping Plaza in Brisbane, Queensland

The Brisbane suburb of Bellbowrie, battered in the 2011 floods, is crying out for a retail revival, but residents say a 10-year plan to redevelop Bellbowrie Shopping Centre by 2022 is moving too slowly — if at all. Reader Claire Pitcher said on Facebook: “Our centre in Bellbowrie is full of empty shops and black plastic, we occasionally get a great new shop only for it to close down a few weeks later.”

Boronia Mall in Melbourne, Victoria

Once a bustling meeting place home to thriving cafes and shops, the mall’s fortunes have fallen, with residents calling for an urgent facelift and new shops to replace those that have closed, the Knox Leader reports. Empty windows and two dollar shops abound, with readers calling for a refurbishment of the “dated”, brown-tiled centre, which had its heyday in the 1990s.

One of many vacant shops in Boronia mall, in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.

Roxby Central in Roxby Downs, South Australia

In an opinion piece published in the Roxby Downs Sun, local resident Jack McGuire described the shopping centre as being “like a ship run aground on a reef and all the lifeboats have holes in them”. Reader Millie Thomas weighed in on Facebook, lamenting the loss of tenancies. “At a guess I would say up to 10 shops have left the shopping centre in the last 24 months — without replacement,” she wrote.

Lexington Place shops in Maroubra, New South Wales

A Reddit user dubbed Lexington Place “easily the worst local shopping centre in all of Sydney”. “Almost all the of shops are vacant due to rampant theft, drug dealing and violent crime.” The area was notorious for gang violence in the early 2000s, and sadly the strip appears not to have recovered its vitality.

Graffiti-scrawled shops, many of them empty, are the legacy of gang violence at Maroubra’s Lexington Place shops.