Inside the decline of Brisbane’s only urban village at Kelvin Grove

Shops are closed, lease signs are plastered on windows and high-profile traders have moved out as hard times hit Brisbane’s once bustling urban village.

Inside the decline of Brisbane's only urban village at Kelvin Grove.

Brisbane’s first and only urban village, at Kelvin Grove, is battling a steep drop in overseas students and a lack of “buzz’’ which has seen a string of high-profile traders move out.

The latest are Domino’s and cult sandwich bar DannyBoys, which was the precinct’s long-running and perhaps its most successful business before founder Daniel McKennariey decided to pull the pin.

With no big attractor, the village has always relied on local foot traffic — thousands of mainly overseas students studying at the QUT campus.

Student numbers have run as high as 14,000 in the past few years, but a hike in visa fees and a crackdown on the boom in overseas student migration has hit the sector hard.

Real estate websites listed about 369 properties, including 311 units, for lease in Kelvin Grove, most of them in the urban village centred on Musk Ave, Blamey and Carraway streets.

Cult sandwich bar DannyBoys has moved out.

The median rent in the past 12 months was $595 a week, which has also hit traders because many students had little discretionary cash to spend.

A number of purpose-built student unit blocks including Iglu Kelvin Grove and UniLodge School Street Studios charge from $169 for dual occupancy bunk bed rooms up to $379 for single accommodation with shared bathrooms.

“We were coming up to 15 years when the lease came to an end and were the longest-standing business by far,’’ Mr McKennariey said.

“I’ve seen Nandos and others come and go, but ever since covid I’ve seen a decline in foot traffic.

“You can’t rely on uni students alone and student numbers are down.’’

A vacant shop in the mall near Woolworths Metro.

Mr McKennariey said it was sad to leave but he needed to be realistic about the future for his business, billed as the “rock star of sandwiches’’, which also has four other very successful outlets across Brisbane.

Domino’s declined to comment. It was understood the franchisee on Musk Ave had come to the end of its lease.

QUT retail expert Prof Gary Mortimer, who has lived in the area since before the pandemic, said it was heavily reliant on overseas students from countries such as Saudi Arabia, South Korea, India and southeast Asian nations.

Kelvin Grove Village Markets still brings some life to the area but is not as busy as it was pre-covid.

“They’re paying high levels of rent and many won’t have much to spend on eating out,’’ he said.

“The Saturday markets continue to do well but on Sundays the area is dead and after the morning work rush, when cafes are busy from about 7-8am, it quietens down during the week.

“It’s essentially a university campus underpinned by a large proportion of units.’’

Prof Mortimer said the village also was noticeably quieter during university and school holidays, when the Queensland Academy for Creative Industries (QACI) high school students were away and QUT students returned home.

“Brisbane’s original markets queen’’, Peter Hackworth, started the Saturday markets more than a decade ago.

The Kelvin Grove Domino's franchisee moved out recently after their lease ended.

There were about 150 people shopping or eating there when The Courier-Mail visited about lunchtime on June 14, a far cry from its early days when marketgoers jostled for space.

The Woolworths Metro recently finished a major refurbishment.

There were a number of vacant shopfronts nearby, including a space occupied by F45 gym before it closed several years ago.

Some locals said they often saw used syringes in the toilets or addicts waiting for a fix near the Woolworths, as well as frequent overnight disturbances.

Quiet times in the urban village.

The Queensland Police Service online crime map showed 138 crimes were reported in the hub in the past 12 months, about 10 times as many as in surrounding streets.

Almost 90 involved thefts, as well as 17 break and enters, four robberies, three assaults and arrests for trespassing, vagrancy and “good order’’ offences.

One local said their neighbour woke to discover a nude man had broken into their unit.

Complaints about crime from residents living in social housing dated back as far as 2018.

Students are struggling to pay the rent at Kelvin Grove Urban Village.

After an initial boom when Premier Peter Beattie opened the urban village in November 2003, property prices had dropped steeply a decade later.

By 2017, property researcher Terry Ryder named the precinct in his National Dirty Dozen of property markets in decline.

Nevertheless, despite the crime concerns and downturn in student numbers, unit prices have jumped 25 per cent in the past 12 months.

The $697,000 median price outstripped the Brisbane median for units, currently about $655,000.

Former Premier Peter Beattie confronts protesters at the opening of Kelvin Grove Urban Village. Picture: Glenn Barnes

Savvy investors have been betting the proposed main Olympics stadium and national aquatics centre at nearby Victoria Park would turbocharge prices ahead of the 2032 Games.

Local real estate agents also pointed out that commercial space was tightly held and often snapped up quickly.

University of Queensland urban planning Associate Professor, Dorina Pojani, said Melbourne and Sydney had well-defined urban “villages’’ because they were older cities than Brisbane.

WO2 Alan Hilton preparing to close Gona Barracks at Kelvin Grove for the last time. Picture: Bob Fenney

“These sorts of urban villages need foot traffic, a certain threshold (of locals), otherwise you need an attractor and have to provide a lot of parking to make them work,’’ Dr Pojani said.

“(Kelvin Grove urban village) is not designed like South Bank or the Queen St Mall — it’s meant to attract people from the immediate vicinity.’’

The village was a radical idea for Brisbane when the Queensland Department of Housing bought the Gona Barracks site in 2000 for affordable housing.

The old Brisbane College of Advanced Education had by then morphed into a QUT campus and the university was looking to expand.

Brisbane City Council controlled parkland and wanted to develop a Local Area Plan to activate the precinct.

And the Roundhouse Theatre, Australia’s only purpose-built theatre-in-the-round, was built in 2004, replacing the La Boite Theatre building.

The redevelopment won major planning and design awards.

Originally published as Inside the decline of Brisbane’s only urban village at Kelvin Grove