City Hall is on the nose for ‘fresh food people’

City Hall is on the nose for ‘fresh food people’

BY CHRISTOPHER HARRIS

Woolworths supermarkets have abandoned plans to open on Oxford Street in council owned property on Monday.

The council had previously announced that Woolworths would occupy the property at 56-76 Oxford Street, but the council was behind on promised capital works which lured the international chain to the street.

Across the road in the Oxford Square Centre, Aldi recently replaced Duffy’s supermarket.

The council had agreed to invest $750,000 in the building, which would have paid for an upgraded power supply for the supermarket.

According to a council document, the City had spent $3.7 million in capital works for the dilapidated building.

Earlier this year, a 400kg stone piece of façade of another council owned building fell onto the footpath below.

Woolworths were to be the “anchor tenancy” that would bring activation and more commercial activity into the lifeless City end of Oxford.

The document said that the expected completion of the store was due either late last year or early this year.

But with the council behind on the promised work, the saving grace for the ailing high street backed out of the deal.

Sydney Matters Councillor Edward Mandla said that the demise of Oxford Street over the previous two years at the hands of the City had made the supermarket unviable.

Clr Mandla said it was a perfect storm of conditions, on top of the expensive rent on the building, which had made the project impossible compared to two years ago.

“Having an allowance for subsidised rents, which isn’t attracting the right foot traffic, the site was extremely expensive, I challenge any supermarket to make a dollar out of that site,” Clr Mandla said.

He said the fitout for the supermarket would have been very expensive.

“It is not an ultra-modern building– it is a dumpy old building which The City of Sydney have botched up to rent out.”

Liberal Councillor Christine Forster said Lord Mayor Clover Moore had failed Oxford Street once again.

“The City of Sydney owns a valuable property portfolio on the north side of Oxford Street, but Clover Moore’s failure to implement any overarching strategy for the assets has left many of them empty and rundown, and meant the street’s economic viability has been in a steady downturn,” said Liberal Councillor and Lord Mayoral Candidate Christine Forster.

“Clover Moore’s answer has been to pretend Council’s Oxford Street buildings are a ‘creative hub’ and to lease the shopfronts out at peppercorn rents to pop-up retailers. Meanwhile, parts of the properties’ upper floors have been left to fall into such disrepair that they are empty or uninhabitable, with a 400kg lump of stone recently falling off one building onto the footpath below,” Councillor Forster added.

“The Lord Mayor’s so-called plan to fix Oxford Street was supposed to have been implemented by 2014, but at the end of that year and after my calls for decisive action, the completion date was pushed back by years and it is now expected before 2018. And still Oxford Street remains a shadow of the vibrant destination it was before Clover Moore took the reins.”

A City spokesperson was quick to attribute to the decision to Woolworth’s recent woeful stock performance.

“Woolworths has informed the City of Sydney that due to changing circumstances within their business they do not expect to proceed with an agreed lease of City property at 56-76 Oxford Street for a new Metro store.”

“This is a commercial decision taken by Woolworths, and follows its recently announced national store network review. The City will not be commenting on Woolworths’ changed business priorities.”

A spokesperson for Woolworths said the company was in the process of exiting a number of its metro stores.

“We announced recently that we will exit a small number of Metro store leases early, including one that we will not be opening, which is the Oxford Street site”.

“We currently have 32 Metro stores and it is an evolving format which we will continue to test and improve as we go along, and this includes ensuring the sites we operate in are best suited to meeting our customers’ needs,” the spokesperson said.