While business improvement districts have been widely used in global cities such as New York and London for decades,Stokes said they had not been introduced in Sydney because the city had not historically faced the same urban crises as those places.
But because of the pandemic,“we have got that effective crisis now”.
“We don’t like to call it[a crisis] because we all want to be positive about the future of commercial real estate... But we need to help breathe new life into that,” Stokes said.
He also said many high streets across Sydney’s suburbs had been “quietly decomposing for decades” as malls came along and public transport directed people out of their local areas.
“We saw the green shoots of recovery,ironically,during the pandemic because as the big city CBD shut down,these local town centres sprang back to life. It’s about nurturing that new growth.”
Business Western Sydney executive director David Borger said there was dire need for the reform and that western Sydney in particular stood to benefit,such as in town centres of Liverpool,Campbelltown and Harris Park.
“There’s a massive amenity gap between the west and the east in terms of the quality of main streets and high streets,some of them are struggling. This is a way of sort of attracting investment and upgrading the look and feel of those places,” he said.
“I really see this as a chance for western Sydney ... It’s ridiculous that this has been prevented in the system[until] now. What we need is a flexible system that allows businesses and councils to work together to recreate their town and city centres.”
Stokes’ proposal has attracted broad support among councils and the business lobby,but stakeholders with experience in previous trials warned the system must be flexible and districts needed support with administration tasks and mentorship on how to effectively spend money.
Geoff Parmenter,chair of the New Sydney Waterfront Company – Sydney’s first and only business improvement district,which spans Barangaroo,Pyrmont and Blackwattle Bay – said districts needed to be “really precise” about the problems to which they were responding.
“Business improvement districts aren’t for everything. And it’s really important that[they] don’t let the local authorities off the hook for something they’re supposed to do ... Districts must add a layer of value over and above what’s available elsewhere,” he said.
Newcastle Lord Mayor Nuatali Nelmes – who has trialled four business improvement zones in her city – said Stokes’ discussion paper was welcome,but it needed to take on lessons from her experience,which found districts initially spent 70 per cent of the funds they collected on wages and administration.
She said councils should step in so that administration tasks and governance oversight were not shifted onto a district’s volunteer board members,who should be there “for their ideas and their passion”.
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Sarah Duignan from professional services firm EY,which has been involved in establishing a micro-district of large landowners around Wynyard Park in the CBD,said businesses had been “crying out” for this type of model and wanted to co-organise and invest in the area.
“These private sector owners are not afraid to co-fund. They’re not afraid to pay. We just need[to] relinquish,” she said.
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