By Cara Waters
Melbourne’s city centre has changed from a place people come to work to a place of play, as the pandemic and a shift to remote working has flipped CBD foot traffic on its head.
A record number of new restaurants, bars and other entertainment venues have opened in the CBD this year, with data showing weekend pedestrian activity recently exceeded pre-COVID benchmarks, while monthly office occupancy is only at 45 per cent.
Deborah McKay, manager of CBD restaurant Freyja, prepares for the weekend rush on Friday.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
Foot traffic near the Town Hall on the week ending Sunday, November 13, was up 9 per cent on the previous week, with activity topping pre-pandemic levels on the Saturday and Sunday.
Across the city centre, 123 new venues have opened this year, including 68 cafes and restaurants and 51 entertainment venues such as creative and performing arts sites, nightclubs and physical recreation sites.
These new venues are increasingly catering to customers who come into the city on the weekend to socialise, rather than during the week for work.
Freyja, a fine-dining restaurant on Collins Street, opened in June and manager Deborah McKay said it had changed its opening hours to accommodate lack of demand early in the week and a “huge uptake” at weekends.
“We’re attached to an office building at our venue and we noticed Mondays and Fridays are naturally lower and people are only in the office Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,” she said. “We were noticing a trend on the start of the week, a lot of people were saving their pennies more for the weekend.”
Freyja is now closed on Mondays and opens on Saturday nights for “Nordic nights”, for which McKay said there had been great turnout.
“Any time I am out and about [in the city], it is the weekends that are really popping,” she said.
The change in the city’s foot traffic comes as office staff continue to work from home, with the Property Council’s national monthly office occupancy survey showing occupancy in Melbourne was only 45 per cent in October, a slight increase from 41 per cent in September.
Theatre owner Jason Marriner said there had been an “incredible U-turn” in Melbourne, with a change in the way people used the CBD.
“Theatres have been well patronised, as have restaurants, as have the nightclubs, people coming out – the city seems alive and vibrant over the weekends and in the evenings as well,” he said.
“Thank goodness the Melbourne CBD has had a second dimension to it other than just a place of work, because if we didn’t have the leisure component, then, frankly, we would have a ghost town.”
Marriner said Melbourne’s theatres were full, with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, which opened at the Regent Theatre on Wednesday night, A Christmas Carol at the Comedy Theatre, Harry Potter at the Princess Theatre and Hamilton at Her Majesty’s.
Joesph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is among the shows drawing theatre fans.Credit: Daniel Boud
“It just feels like the city is buzzing,” he said.
Deputy Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece said Melbourne’s economic recovery had been patchy, but strong figures were coming from planning approvals, pedestrian activity data, retail leases and new hospitality venues.
“Melbourne has seen this phenomenon before,” he said. “The recession of the 1990s caused an enormous amount of heartache through business closures and job losses. But it was followed by an extraordinary period of innovation and new business activity.”
Reece said Melbourne’s status as a global city could be traced back to that period, when small bars opened across the CBD and inner-city living took off, with people moving into converted factories and office buildings.
Deputy Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece says Melbourne was reborn after the 1990s recession and can recover again.Credit: Wayne Taylor
“There is every reason to think Melbourne is going to see another economic renaissance like this,” he said. “There has been a record number of new hospitality venues open this year and there is a huge buzz around the business startup scene.”
However, restaurateur and chef Shane Delia warned a vibrant weekend economy was not enough to sustain city businesses.
Delia opened bar Jayda last month but said it wasn’t a good time to launch a new venue. “I think it’s a really bad time. I think we are in for a world of f---ing pain for the next few years,” he said. “It’s the third week of November and our restaurants are not even full – it should be bustling now.”
Delia said he opened Jayda despite his pessimism because he had been waiting for the space for 10 years and “opening restaurants is not always rational”.
Shane Delia at his new CBD restaurant Jayda.Credit: Kristoffer Paulsen
He said he and other city venue owners were struggling to cope with a reduced trading week because of people working from home.
“Everyone wants to come in on Friday and Saturday, which is great, but Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday is hard times at the moment,” he said. “I don’t think it’s great for restaurants, I don’t think it’s great for business. I think it’s going to be a tough couple of years ahead of us.
“We need the city and the city needs us, and we need to support it more than just Friday and Saturday when it suits us.”
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