Mackay CBD humming as major city-centres turn into Covid ghost towns

Metro CBDs around the country are suffering after so many Covid lockdown as workers prefer their work-from-home arrangements but businesses in one regional city say foot traffic is returning to pre-Covid levels.

Small business operators across Mackay’s CBD continue to enjoy relative prosperity amid the turbulence of the Covid era, even as fluctuations in foot traffic and empty shopfronts shadow the district.

Mina Dang, owner of the popular Flavours of Vietnam restaurant on MacAlister Street, has been in business three years, struggling through the dark months of March and April 2020 before blossoming into a “flat-out” restaurant at full capacity across 2021.

Two months after the surge of Omicron into Queensland, she says she is at 80 per cent capacity.

“Not as busy as we used to be, but we always busy,” she said.

Ms Dang said health restrictions such as mask mandates had dampened foot traffic, but she still picked up enough business to thrive.

“It’s slowly getting back, I think it’s just a Covid thing. Wearing masks, people scared.”

Ms Dang is optimistic about the future of Mackay’s CBD and expresses confidence she can return to the near 100 per cent capacity she enjoyed before Omicron.

“Probably close to it, I think close to it,” she said.

Jan Simpson of M’Lady’s on Wood Street has operated in the CBD for more than 25 years and says the district is in a comparatively healthy position.

“It’s been worse,” she said.

“It could do with a lot of improving, but I think it’s coming back.”

The district’s reputation for stagnation can be seen by the empty shopfronts that still blight its streets.

City leaders are laser-focused on rejuvenating the CBD and have zoned the waterfront as a priority development area to do just that.

In January, the council awarded local construction firm Woollam Constructions with a $5.5m contract to revitalise River Street, part of a broader vision to reorient the CBD to the Pioneer River.

The firm will build a 4m-wide shared path to link to the Bluewater Trail, a pavilion to house activities, seating pods and stage platforms, new green spaces, a toilet block and landscaping architecture to open up river views.

Alongside redevelopment, there are a range of programs and events all designed to ‘activate’ the district and keep its prospects humming.

The award-winning Mackay Laneway Project, for one, has reimagined Wood and Gregory streets with murals from 21 Mackay artists and the popular Italian Street Festival returns to Wood and Victoria in mid-May.

The relative strength of Mackay’s CBD contrasts sharply with the bleaker position of some of Australia’s major city centres.

CBD office occupancies remain at record lows, with the vast majority of white-collar office workers still working from home, either by choice or government request.

In Melbourne office occupancy is at just 4 per cent of pre-Covid levels, while Sydney is not much better at 7 per cent.

Brisbane’s offices are at 13 per cent and Adelaide at 11 per cent. Pre-pandemic in 2019, most offices were running at about 90 per cent occupancy, Property Council of Australia surveys found.

Despite an end to lockdowns the major eastern seaboard cities still resemble ghost-towns, with isolation requirements, Covid infections and work-from-home arrangements keeping hundreds of thousands of people out of the CBDs.

The myriad small businesses which service the office towers are struggling to survive, with cafes, coffee carts, dry-cleaners, flower sellers, taxi drivers, newsagents and bars unable to turn a profit now that Government funding has ended.

Mackay has partly bucked this trend.

Since the on-set of Covid, cafes and other businesses have moved into the CBD and opened their doors.

The Willow in Bloom flower shop on Wood St is one such business.

Owner Hope Callander opted for the CBD 14 months ago because no other florists were in town.

A substantial portion of her business is now online deliveries, but in the initial months, she was propped up by foot traffic.

“We relied on foot traffic at the start, but we do a lot more online now,” she said.

“We were pleasantly surprised.”

She continues to thrive despite Omicron.