NEWS
A bid to give outdoor dining and cooking a greater focus in the Chinatown Mall appears doomed. Seven local restaurants first set up stalls to cook and sell Asian food in the mall seven weeks ago. Last Saturday, three operated – and one of those has also now called it a day.
And local councillor David Hinchliffe (Central Ward) has called on the City Council to subsidise the food outlets to try to keep the concept going. Lord Mayor Campbell Newman in launching Chinese New Year in the reopened mall earlier this year urged the mall to experiment more with outside cooking and dining, and waived outdoor dining fees for a year to help achieve this.
Tom Tran from the Green Tea Restaurant on the mall congratulated the city council for giving the idea a trial, but said last Saturday’s markets would be his last.
He is pulling the pin after running a stall for the entire seven-week trial, saying the setup costs each weekend, additional labour and wasted food simply made it uneconomic. He praised the council for at least giving it a try adding that “it was better than doing nothing”.
Cr Hinchliffe said: “In view of the declining activity at the Saturday Chinatown markets, I’m calling on all stallholders to be exempt from fees.
“Clearly there’s not sufficient marketing and therefore insufficient customers to make it viable for stall holders,” he said.
“This market is a good idea, but good ideas need good execution to realise their potential. There should have been a decent marketing budget.
“The council is pouring truckloads of dollars into King George Square to try to conceal its abysmal failure – and with miserable results.
“A portion of that money could be much better spent on promoting the Valley and Chinatown markets.
“The local traders shouldn’t have to pay a cent to occupy stalls; not after what they had to put up with for 10 months while the mall construction lurched from fiasco to disaster.”
