Urbis Think Tank
What happens when the community decides who gets to lease retail space
What is the role of a council in determining whether landlords will renew retail tenancies? Generally they have no role at all, but in the unusual case of the City of Port Phillip, the council is also the landlord of the South Melbourne Market.
The South Melbourne market is managed by a committee which receives its delegated authority from the Council. However, this committee also conducts monthly public meetings – not the sort of way most businesses would operate. In April, the committee developed and published a new stall mix policy, with some elements remaining confidential. It’s just what you would expect from a professionally run retail centre. And soon after, some tenancies were terminated by the market management.
When this announcement was made, “Acting mayor Judith Klepner said the evictions were “a commercial decision because the market competes, especially with the supermarkets. A clear focus for the market has been to retain its market character and develop its retail mix to stay relevant and fresh,”
However, the stallholders have since rallied local community support, and this week “Mayor Rachel Powning said due to community concerns about licence terminations the council was “reviewing these and have deferred any stallholder terminations until the review is completed and councillors have had the opportunity to consider the results of the review”.
Yesterday at the public meetnig of the market committee, 3AW reporter, Florencia Cavallo noted that “South Melb markets stallholders are accusing the Port Phillip council of bullying them. They say they’re being evicted with ‘no notice’”. It will be interesting to see the final outcome.
These negotiations illustrate the complexity of the stakeholder issues when combining commercial considerations and local government ownership and control, which need to be considered in unusual circumstances such as these.
For further information on the South Melbourne market, refer to the council page here.