NEWS
More than a month after a vital Fortitude Valley pedestrian walkway was closed abruptly for maintenance that has never taken place, desperate nearby businesses face the prospect of closing their doors for good.
Hardest hit by the shock closure on Monday 12 December have been Cheung’s Cafe and Cakes and Loc Discounts in the Happy Valley building right beside the barricaded and locked walkway, and a host of McWhirters traders who have also seen their passing potential customer trade reduced from some thousands a day to just a small fraction of that. Other businesses beyond that have also suffered losses. As the walkway closure – on a 20-metre section in the old Walton’s Building – drags on, shops have cut back their trading days and hours and some have already begun to shed staff in a bid to stay afloat.
One major McWhirters businesswoman says the losses incurred over the Christmas period will never be recovered and she has decided to shut when her current lease runs out, regardless of when the walkway opens up again.
Another McWhirters trader has put an ultimatum to his landlord – rent relief of 50 per cent for the duration of the closure and then for another month after it reopens – or he’ll have no alternative but to break his lease and leave.
A meeting of several dozen disgruntled McWhirters traders on Tuesday 10 January voted to investigate the options of a class action law suit against those responsible for the closure (see story opposite page). That meeting heard that the management firm that runs the McWhirters Body Corporate had accepted the task of revitalising the Happy Valley Body Corporate – or indeed starting one if one rumour that it has never existed is true – as a first step towards finding the funds to fix the floor in the blocked off passageway and pay public liability costs for the passageway.
In the weeks since the closure, traders have shown remarkable restraint as hopes for a breakthrough were first raised – and then dashed – over time. Just before Christmas, a deal had reportedly been struck among the relevant parties with hopes that the walkway would reopen the following day. Long-term local councillor David Hinchliffe is at a loss to explain what went wrong with that deal.
The efforts to get the Happy Valley Body Corporate up and running appear to confirm the situation as The Independent has always understood it to be – that that building’s owners have had a long-standing and legal responsibility to maintain the walkway. With a non-existent or non-functioning body corporate, that task would appear to have been beyond them.
Surprisingly, a number of nearby traders have expressed some sympathy for the decision by Mount Cathy Pty Ltd, the owners of the Walton’s building, to close the walkway after reportedly being sued several times for falls people have allegedly taken over the uneven walkway.
As this whole sorry sage unfolded, local traders offered to pay for the retiling of the closed walkway but that was not accepted. What will cause traders even more angst now is the possibility that the walkway maintenance needed goes far beyond replacing some damaged or missing tiles.
There are suggestions that the walkway surface is structurally unsound and in need of major repair work that could see the section closed off for an extended period. That outcome could possibly see, as one trader put it, the McWhirters centre reduced to a “ghost town”.
