Retail Strategy Still The Key To New Development

Pressure created by proposed large commercial and retail developments has prompted further calls to review the Greater Geelong Retail Strategy.

The main purposes of the strategy are to ensure that the retail sector focuses on the needs of residents and visitors to the region, is efficient and viable for the retail traders and contributes to net community benefit. The last review was done in late 2001 and there have been suggestions that it should be reviewed again to take into account the latest shopping trends, consumer demand, innovative retailing methods, and the like.

However, the Chamber contends that the 2001 review is still current in its thinking because it fully examined the earlier retail strategy in detail and looked closely at these other aspects and it projected retail space needs as far ahead as 2011 based on anticipated population growth.

More importantly, the last review proved that the rationale and methodology used to create the earlier retail strategy in 1998 were still very much current and did not need revision other than the update of future floor space requirements.

But this line of thinking does not always fit with the developers’ view particularly when they are proposing large free-standing complexes which need land rezoning to accommodate them.

It is true to suggest that each new development can devise spending projections that predict little or no impact on existing retailers selling the same types of goods and commodities, or that their new operation will be filling a gap that exists in the local retail sector, or that they will reduce the amount of escape-spending lost by Geelong to other centres, and so on.

But what is inescapable is that the retail space needed still relates to the spending power of the region’s population and its visitors unless there has been a demonstrated change which conclusively suggests otherwise.

For this reason, the Chamber strongly holds that all major retail development and rezonings of land for this use must accord with the retail strategy and the City is well aware of this viewpoint.

Put simply, the Chamber believes that no new rezoning should be approved unless the new retail space being created accords with the overall space requirements and projections of the strategy. It believes and supports that, as far as possible, all new development, including retail development, should be beneficial to the community and is carried out in an orderly manner and with minimal adverse impact.

It accepts that this does not necessarily mean that new development will not create additional competition in the market place. The Chamber is certainly not anti-competitive. It fully supports genuine competition in all business sectors.

But it does “draw the line” at really aggressive and unfair competition that will put a number of previously-viable businesses “out of business”!

Lawrie Miller
Executive Director