OUR SAY
The mood among inner-Fortitude Valley traders affected by the Walton’s walkway closure is getting very dark indeed ... so much so that I have a simple piece of advice for politicians on either side of the fence and at any level of governance: stay the hell out of the place unless you’ve got something really, really useful to offer about their plight, like in a solution to it.
On a drizzly early afternoon on a recent Friday Lord Mayor Graham Quirk came down the Valley to engage in a spurious piece of PR fluff obviously organised in mind with the fact that his job is on the line in late April. Exactly why his minders chose just outside the main entrance to McWhirters for this piece of PR puffery is unknown but it was so, so wrong, for so many reasons.
Rightly or wrongly, traders in McWhirters who got wind of the visit naturally thought it was to be about the almost seven-week-long closure of the Walton’s walkthrough that is sending some of them to the wall. Their jobs are just about gone. Some have built up their businesses over a decade or more ... and in a few short weeks all that hard work might come to nought when their doors close for good. Now it’s true that the traders were not exactly expecting great news.
The Lord Mayor has made it clear that the City Council is powerless to force a private building owner to reopen a passageway at the middle of a dispute over maintenance and public liability issues. But their businesses are foundering on the rocks of that cruel closure.
They are in imminent danger of drowning, and were hoping nevertheless that Captain Quirk might just throw them a lifeline of any size, shape or form. These are desperate people who will grab at anything right now. Their jobs and livelihoods are at stake but unfortunately for them, so is the Lord Mayor’s.
They fumed from the sidelines as Councillor Quirk played with a piece of pavement-cleaning machinery. He donned gloves and pretended to drive it while a snapper took pictures.
That’s right ... Cr Quirk pretended to clean up while some McWhirters traders have already begun cleaning out their stores because they won’t be in business in the very near future.
Grinning along with the Lord Mayor was his candidate for Central Ward Vicki Howard. The snapper clicked away and they posed, while Corey Hamilton, who is running down his Autographed Memorabilia shop, fumed. His face was as cloudy and unsettled as the sky above.
As a PR exercise it was a disaster. They should just be hopeful that only a few traders witnessed it. If all of the business people in the Happy Valley and McWhirters buildings had gotten whiff of their stunt, the ruckus at that Ca
Onberra restaurant on Australia Day might have looked like a sunday school picnic. Captain Quirk and his motley crew didn’t even have the good sense to do the stunt at the top end of the mall well away from McWhirters. They owe struggling local traders an unconditional apology for their insensitivity and downright stupidity in staging a PR stunt where and when they did.
