CHURCHILL fellow Sarah Booth has released the findings of her international research into empty commercial buildings and met with WA planning minister John Carey as momentum builds for a new strategy to revive Perth and Fremantle.
Ms Booth’s report, Finding Solutions to Commercial Vacancy and Reimagining Life in Our Cities, comes after her overseas fellowship studying how other places have tackled empty shopfronts and declining city centres.
She said the timing aligned with growing concern among property owners and government about Perth’s struggling CBD, with its vacancy rate hovering over 20 per cent.
“It’s well aligned the release of my report, because John and many property owners in the CBD and the city of Perth are all wanting to move the city forward,” she said.
Ms Booth was part of a group that met last week under Activate Perth to discuss creating a business improvement district, or BID, for the city.
by STEVE GRANT
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BID plan for CBD
WA PROPOSED business improvement district for Perth’s CBD could play a key role in collecting data, coordinating action and advocating for the city, Ms Booth says.
“So we had a presentation from a BID in Sydney, and one of the key things they did was set up an organisation that was able to track data and provide metrics so they knew where they were at and where they wanted to go,” she said.
Flying blind
“At the moment, we don’t really know… we’re kind of flying blind.”
She said there was growing support among property owners for the BID model.
“I think it has legs,” she said.
“They were major property owners that were there.
“We’ve consistently for a decade now had one of the lowest performing CBDs in Australia, and given that we are the most prosperous state, that needs to change.”
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Freo needing an escape from restrictive rules
FREMANTLE’S empty floors are a “lost opportunity”, Ms Booth says.
“What is the cost of the empty properties on Collie and Nairn Street in Fremantle?” she said.
“It’s not just lost rent, it’s so much more than that; lost opportunity and also just how many tourists walk down that street to get down to the Esplanade; what is their experience.”
She said heritage rules and building codes often made it difficult to reuse upper floors, leaving them empty when they could house residents.
“Why not use existing fabric and, if not creatively, find ways to get around it,” she said, noting New York’s solution to the difficulty of retrofitting firewalls to old properties was to allow owners to install fire escapes.
“There’s no ability to be creative, which means all those first floors sit vacant, or they sit underused when they could all be housing people.”
“There’s this idea of a kind of WA exceptionalism; that things can happen anywhere else on Planet Earth, but it’s not possible here,” she said.
“I do feel like we need to really refresh our thinking if we’re going to meet the future in the way that we need to.”
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