I refer to the recent Australia Day public holiday when every coffee shop in Armidale Mall was closed while the owners and their staff enjoyed a hard earned and well-deserved day off.
So, with only a nippy breeze to accompany me in my futile search for a warming caffeine hit, the Central Mall was a lonesome place.
My thoughts turned to the impression such a vacant central plaza would have on any travellers passing though our beautiful town.
The only thing that they could admire was the growing number of empty shopfronts unwanted even as commercial premises.
All the customers had been sucked into the shiny bowels of retail shopping centres on the fringe of the CBD. Even the discount reject shops had premises elsewhere.
The only things missing from the complete demise of the Mall were the tattoo parlours, loan shark offices, pinball joints and shady premises.
During the last decade our retailing guru, A/Prof Robert Baker, had warned Armidale Dumaresq Council of this likely consequence of their decisions.
But learned academics have low credibility among retired shopkeepers, technical assistants, graziers, earth moving contractors and truck drivers.
Then there was the costly rehabilitation of the former Gasworks site developed into a shopping centre so that parked cars would not get cancer from carcinogens washed out of the soil profile by floods during the 30 years since town gas production ceased.
What a change has occurred over the last decade.
The bustling retail Mall, touted as the “Jewel in the Crown of Armidale” in 2000 has slipped to become the emptying “Dead Heart of Armidale” in 2012.
Jack Arnold,
Armidale
