It’s early days, but the opening or renovation of 10 quality hospitality venues in St Kilda, plus an influx of high-profile property investors, suggests the suburb may be on the cusp of a renaissance.

Vacancy rates for Fitzroy Street dropped to 5.6 per cent in December 2022, according to local council data, down from the circa 30 per cent norm in the years preceding COVID.

“The construction of high-end residential and retail premises is exciting,” says James D. Field, co-owner of the newly renovated Saint Hotel that opened last month with premium food and cocktails.

Other new St Kilda additions include cocktail bar Lady Peacock, a revamped Post Office Club Hotel, Italian restaurant Abbiocco and Loti on the ground-floor of the luxury St Moritz apartments near the foreshore.

Similar residential projects are due over the next five years from upscale developers such as Fortis, who have spent $25 million on a five-storey mixed-use project, while a QT Hotel is also proposed.

Cafe Di Stasio, which has traded for 35 years on Fitzroy Street, reopened last October after a long hiatus, partly caused by staff shortages.

The St Kilda end of Carlisle Street was highly desirable to Michael Woods and his business partners who opened Latin American restaurant Rufio in January.

“It’s a central location and undervalued, I think, compared to Chapel Street and Richmond. We saw it as an area of growth post-COVID,” Woods says.

David Blakeley, president of the Fitzroy Street Business Association, describes the strip as “the street that had COVID before COVID came”. But a drying up of tourists due to the pandemic may have finally shifted the beleaguered boulevard away from backpackers and late-night revelry towards a place for locals.

Since 2020, projects such as Renew Fitzroy Street have helped fill empty shops with short-term tenants from creative fields. The next step would be daytime traders, such as butchers, that the local community can use, Blakely says.

Geospatial data gathered by Propella.ai from mobile phones shows only five per cent of visitors to Fitzroy Street live in St Kilda.

Real estate agent Tom Larwill of Colliers, who has worked in the area for six years, is part of a new project to improve this. Under High Street CPR, Colliers will be the sole agent for a strip of Fitzroy Street shops, hand-picking retail tenants that complement each other.

“The attitude of just putting any tenant in because you’ve had a property vacant for a long time needs to change. It needs a bit of thought,” he says.

Rinaldo Di Stasio and Mallory Wall of Cafe Di Stasio say bold ideas are needed in St Kilda, such as converting vacant shops into residences with retail at the front, similar to Naples’ bassi. They also want City of Port Phillip to improve street cleaning, remove bike lanes that affect car access and to present a vision for revitalisation.

“It’s all up to individuals and private money,” says Wall. “There has to be some sort of support and gameplan from the council.”

Di Stasio agrees. “We just can’t roll the dice and hope that it works,” he says.

Port Phillip mayor Heather Cunsolo sees a change in the conversation in local residents’ Facebook groups, with more enthusiasm about hospitality and fewer concerns about safety.

“I think we are starting to see [the rebirth]. It feels like murmurs, but it feels really like it’s coming. But it doesn’t mean we stop,” she says.

Among the reasons for St Kilda’s upswing, she identifies private investment and the council’s own efforts, such as improving safety and supporting events and trader associations. The council’s St Kilda Strategic Plan is also being implemented over 20 years to improve the businesses along Carlisle, Fitzroy and Acland streets.

The council is currently considering two high-end developments, she adds.

Woods, who lives in St Kilda, says the signs are positive, with cleaner streets, an improvement in the quality of venues, and more late-night trade on Carlisle Street compared to 10 years ago.

The rebooted Prince Hotel, with its newly hatted Dining Room, is held up by many locals as a symbol of St Kilda’s potential.

“The sticky carpet days are long gone,” says Blakeley. “They’ve repositioned the pub. It reflects the demographic of now, not the demographic of 30 years ago.”

He believes that Fitzroy Street’s failure to move with the times contributed to its demise.

“The perfect Fitzroy Street would be a mix of the old, something contemporary, and a bit of a daytime trade with the night-time trade … There’s nothing like it in Melbourne: it’s not northside, and it’s not Brighton.”