By Cara Waters
The neglected southern side of Bourke Street Mall is undergoing a transformation with new hotels, shops and “the Mecca of all Meccas” getting closer to completion.
The $150 million Melbourne Walk hotel and retail development in the former Walk Arcade building and Mecca’s giant flagship store in the former David Jones building are both on track to open next year.
Mecca founder and chief executive Jo Horgan is opening what she believes will be the biggest beauty store in the world in Bourke Street Mall.Credit: Louise Kennerley
Bourke Street Mall, once a prized shopping strip, experienced some lean years after Walk Arcade closed in 2020 and was left empty, and then David Jones shut its menswear store in 2022.
Jo Horgan, founder and chief executive of Mecca, said she believed the Bourke Street Mall Mecca store would be the biggest dedicated beauty store in the world when completed and would become a destination in its own right.
“Twenty-seven years later everything we have done before has culminated in us opening what we hope will be the Mecca of all Meccas,” she said. “I have always been foolishly optimistic and I totally believe in people and consumers and I think if we build it, they will come.”
Mecca’s store will span three floors and 4000 square metres stocking more than 200 beauty brands.
Advertising firm Clemenger will occupy the floors above Mecca.
The store will house a perfumeria dedicated to fragrances, an apothecary wellness hub, a salon for make-up, hair and nail services and “Meccaversity” – a 150-seat educational space for Mecca staff and customers housed in a suspended pod installed on the first floor of the building.
Horgan said signing up in the middle of COVID lockdowns to a very complicated project came with its challenges, especially with an “old, culturally significant building”.
The site first housed the Coles Book Arcade, a three-storey book store that was once the largest bookstore in the world.
The former David Jones store is being transformed into a Mecca store on three levels. Credit: Justin McManus
“We fell in love with the site, Coles was the largest bookstore in the world, there was a romance in going from the largest bookstore to the largest beauty store,” Horgan said.
However, Mecca’s redevelopment is running behind schedule with a key permit only lodged with Heritage Victoria this month.
Horgan said her team got handover in September and “we are now like women possessed to launch it within the timeframe allowed to our build”.
“The driving sentiment of the whole team is: how spectacular can we make it, how can we imagine the future of beauty,” she said. “We are so motivated to create an ode to beauty or a Mecca to beauty which will really compel people to make the pilgrimage.”
Teck-Lay Tay (left), from developer Steadfast Capital, and Hayden Djakic, of architecture firm Buchan, inside the Melbourne Walk development. Credit: Simon Schluter
Next door, on a walk through of the Melbourne Walk site, project manager Michael Jansen from builder Hickory said the majority of development had historically always been on the northern side of the Bourke Street Mall.
“This is the first time that we’re seeing multiple developments, redevelopments, repositioning of assets on the southern side of Bourke Street Mall,” he said. “It’s actually bringing the southern side of the Bourke Street Mall back into play. There’s always been retail over this side, but all the big new shiny objects have always been on the northern side.”
Jansen said David Jones moving its menswear department across the road to the southern side of the Bourke Street Mall had opened up the precinct for redevelopment to occur.
Melbourne Walk will house two hotels, Hotel Indigo and a Holiday Inn, alongside several stores, including flagship tenant JD Sports.
Hayden Djakic, associate at architecture practice Buchan, said the design team wanted to introduce something “quite different” to Melbourne.
An artist’s rendering of the Melbourne Walk redevelopment in Bourke Street Mall.
“This is really the melting pot of Melbourne, the fine-grain retail itself, where an arcade really celebrates a part of our city and the larger retail of the north amongst Myer, Emporium and David Jones,” he said. “The arcade itself is really a nod to the arcades of old, the likes of the Royal and Block arcades, by taking a modern approach to the classical formation architecture.”
The Melbourne Walk team had to remove layers of “pigeon guano” (excrement) from the site before construction could begin.
“The building was not occupied from the ground floor up, [since 1980] so we had 10 storeys of pigeons,” Djakic said.
Hayden Djakic (left) and Teck-Lay Tay outside the Melbourne Walk site in the Bourke Street Mall.Credit: Simon Schluter
Teck-Lay Tay, executive director of Steadfast Capital, said the new developments turned the mall into more of a precinct.
“If you look at the next development that’s next door to us [Mecca], David Jones and St Collins Lane, the vision is to have a shopping precinct,” he said. “We invigorate Bourke Street Mall and when the tenants all come in … it’ll be a very attractive destination for everyone.”
Lord mayor Nick Reece said the mall had its ups and downs over Melbourne’s history, but it was now on the up again.
“Bourke Street Mall is the most central block in the Hoddle grid, and since the earliest days of Melbourne has been a focus for retail and city life, and so to see it taking on a new lease of life now with these new projects coming online, is a fantastic milestone for Melbourne,” Reece said.
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