No longer Myer; no longer the Centre?
Is the retailer's move evidence that the CBD is not where the action is in Brisbane?
News that Myer is to close its store in The Myer Centre says something about the way the city of Brisbane and the business of retail are evolving.
Exactly what I’m not sure.
My comments on social media when the news broke was that it was a symptom of the change in the way we do our shopping. Downtown areas/high streets have been suffering globally, first as people began doing their shopping in suburban malls closer to home and now as online stores like Amazon take a bigger share of the retail cake.
This seems to be a preemptive move by Myer, which will remain its suburban presence and is said to be looking for a smaller CBD location. The company is actually doing quite well, defying the expectations of some, and made a healthy profit last year.
But there’s no escaping that big bricks-and-mortar stores are becoming a thing of the past — even in the burbs. The decision not to reopen Toombul shopping centre after last year’s floods — its owners Mirvac are now looking for suggestions about “renewing” the site — suggests we are following a worldwide trend.
Google “abandoned shopping malls” and see what could be in the not-too-distant future.
As far as the CBD goes, it’s unlikely that the number of office workers will grow, as companies downsize and decentralise and offer more workers the opportunity to work from homemore often.
What does the future hold for the Myer Centre with such a huge amount of retail space to fill? Will the owners decide to redevelop the site? If so, into what? Accommodation, either a hotel or a residential tower, would seem to be more likely than retail or commercial options.
In searching for reasons for Myer’s decision it could be argued that the Myer Centre is simply in an unfashionable part of town.
And the thinking in some quarters is that inner-city residents, workers and visitors will be more interested in high-end experiences, rather than the mid-market retail mix at the Myer Centre.
Which might be good news for Queens Plaza, the soon-to-open Queens Wharf and whatever development rises from the ashes of Eagle Street Pier.
Asked about the Myer closure, Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner said he saw it as an opportunity. Of course, he’d have to say that.
The question remains: when that huge retail space goes dark in July, what will replace it?
ON THE MAP
Meanwhile, Brisbane has been named one of the world’s great places by Time magazine.
I’m not sure why it took them so long to catch on.
SEE ME, HEAR ME
Just a reminder that I’m making a diverse range of videos over at Radio Bert on YouTube. The latest is a silly thing about celebrities with names that sound like places:
TUNING IN …
Survey 1 of the GfK Australian radio ratings snuck up on me last week. Other preoccupations meant I wasn’t on top of them when they were released on Thursday (not the usual day), so my habitual social-media comments were absent.
You can find more detail and more thorough analysis elsewhere (try radioinfo.com.au and radiotoday.com.au for starters), but I will say that the Brisbane results reflect both changes in the local market and in radio listening overall.
Every young person (those in their teens and 20s) I ask tells me that they don’t listen to broadcast radio, having long ago switched to streamers and podcasts.
I’m not convinced that’s true for the entire cohort, but it’s true enough to say that — except perhaps at night — the FM music stations are skewing older. And the AM stations, which are trying to appeal to a broader (read: younger) audience than the 65+ demo they currently own, would prefer that not be the case.
Nova 106.9 is the overall winner, overtaking B105 in the people 10+ race, with the two neck-and-neck in audience share by session. KIIS and Triple M are not far behind. The results in the all-important breakfast shift are similar.
Although still a way off the pace in the middle of the pack, the station to watch, as it has been for the past six months, is 4BH. It has torn up the charts, beating AM rival 4BC overall and breathing down its neck in breakfast.
That’s a heck of a good result for a station that is mostly on relayed from an interstate hub apart from the presence behind the mic of long-time Brisbane radio identity “Barbecue” Bob Gallagher in the breakfast shift. (Industry lore has it that he does it from a studio at home, possibly in his PJs.)
His former colleagues from the now-defunct 4KQ, Laurel Edwards, Gary Clare and Mark Hine, are hanging on in the commercial AM breakfast race at 4BC, but only just.
It will be interesting to see how things pans out over coming surveys (and whether the Nine Network regrets its decision to lease BH to Ace Radio, or it’s just happy to pocket a share of the revenue while somebody else manages a business it will one day reclaim).
Both BH and BC are being beaten in breakfast by ABC’s Loretta Ryan and Craig Zonca. Overall, however, publicly-funded Aunty is still recovering from its worst-ever survey numbers late last year and is lagging behind its commercial rivals.