One in four shops on St Kilda’s Acland Street has been empty in the past 12 months, even as suburban retail strip vacancies declined across Melbourne for the second consecutive year, with clothing and footwear stores increasingly pushed out.
The vacancy rate on Melbourne’s prime strips has fallen from 12.8 per cent to 11.3 per cent over the past 12 months, but only two strips recorded vacancy rates below their 20-year averages, according to data from property consultancy Plan1.
Acland Street has the highest retail vacancy rate in Melbourne, with one in four stores empty.Credit: Eamon Gallagher
The first, High Street in Armadale, had its vacancy rate fall from 10.3 per cent to 3.6 per cent, while Church Street in Brighton had the lowest vacancy rate at 0.6 per cent.
Chapel Street attracted an influx of clothing tenants encouraged by lower leasing terms, which has helped the strip to achieve its lowest vacancy in nearly a decade. However, the 11.3 per cent figure was still higher than the street’s 20-year average of 5.5 per cent.
Plan1 director Richard Jenkins said the pandemic had ushered in a re-evaluation of real estate strategies for many stores, as well as identity issues, wreaking havoc on some of Melbourne’s main shopping strips.
“Acland Street has replaced Bridge Road as the ugly duckling, recording the highest vacancy of any retail strip in the past two decades with a staggering blowout to 27.5 per cent,” Jenkins said.
Owners of shoe outlet Globe posted a sign on their old storefront in Acland Street pointing a finger at the government for the store’s decline in sales and its decision to move to Port Melbourne.
“Customers loved this location but reality is this location died on Monday 8 August 2016 when it became a dead-end street,” the sign read, referring to a redevelopment of the street that closed one end to traffic. “That was the day our store became unviable. The decision by the government and its officers to create the dead-end at that time ended the store’s business.”
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