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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Just taking your cross to a story in the NT
News today and it's one that I am really not
surprised by, one by Thomas MacLean and fear Walsh. Now
they've spoken to a number of the retailers and shop
owners along Smith Street and those owners and operators are
not happy with the City of Darwin's three million dollars

(00:23):
Smith Street Streetscape project. It is something that we spoke
quite extensively about when it was underway, spoken on a
couple of occasions to jewels at mccarnstop whose business was
severely disrupted by the work that was underway. But it
sounds as though things really aren't any better. Joining me
on the line right now is Sean from Salvatore's Get

(00:45):
a Sean.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Good morning, Katie, How are you really good?

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Lovely to have you on the show, Sean. I tell
you what these works that have happened along Smith Street.
I mean, first off, what do you think of it?

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Well? I think, and I may hate my days wrong,
but I thought we were supposed to be completed around
until June sometime May. We would have lost sort of
one third or of our dry season trade with the disruptions.
But you know, what could we have done? And now
we're you know, we're still kind of mucking around with it,
and we're in October. And there was lots of times,
you know, and I have to bet our retail association

(01:22):
kept reaching out to the city Council voicing our concerns.
So there was that feedback happening that it felt like
there was never anybody. It was very low attendance of workers.
Some days the fences were all up, but there wasn't
a lot of action happening. It kept getting delays and delays,
you know, even from the onset. I mean, I was up.

(01:43):
I'm not the one to winge about something and not
try to be proactive. I was up the mall when
they had the original presentation on the two outlines, and
I said, you know, my personal opinion was both of
them were kind of ridiculous, not what I would do,
and I let them know that. I also let them
know that doing this anytime in the dry season would
be detrimental to any business around this area, if not
in the CVD, because this is our time. Yeah, And

(02:06):
so anyway, it went ahead, And of course I can't
confirm this, but I'm pretty sure in the drawings. There
wasn't a lot of car parks lost, but we've lost
a lot of car parks. Yeah, and you know, I
even gave it the benefit. Okay, maybe when everything comes
down and all the paints dried, maybe there's going to
be some benefits. While I'm still not seeing the benefits.
And for anyone that's driving up from the roundabout on

(02:27):
the Smith Street roundabout all the way up to Knuckie Street,
I mean, just have a look some of the things
that have come about this. If nothing else, there's three
boulders in front of City Hotel that have taken up
a couple of parks, and I just can't figure out
why we need those boulders, not the car.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Parks same here. Look, I noticed those a long, long
while ago, and I actually asked the former Lord Mayor
about them, and also asked the CEO. I was told
it's artwork. I was. I was in Smith Straight last
weekend with my family, and you know, I was like,
I was having a bit of a laugh about it.
In the role why not only you know the fact

(03:04):
that they're there, but also the green strips along the
road that are meant to I was like, what is this?

Speaker 2 (03:13):
I Look, I've watched people park over top of the
so called bike lane. I've watched people open the doors
onto the bike lane. I've watched people run over those
new whatever they're going to be, planter boxes or whatever
they're going to be. Because the way they're set out
in the car parks, it's kind of tight that people
I'm watching them just run over the things. I'm concerned

(03:33):
about those boulders. I mean, you imagine some people kind
of coming in between the boulders ready to go across
to where Edmond Street is, and they're going to get
cleaned up because there's not a lot of you for
drivers to see someone sneak out from the boulder. Yeah,
so I can see that being a problem. But at
the end of the day, I just think we've lost
the plot as far as what does the CBD need.
It needs, it needs attendance, it needs shoppers. Yeah right, Yes,

(03:56):
we are a residential CBD. We have a beautiful mall
that we would have spent where it was budget on
this thing. Two to three million could have been spent
on the mall. And I understand there may be some
friction between the actual landowners and the mall and the
council and they're just not able to do things they
want to do well. The councilor is just going to
move forward and do some stuff because ye spending it

(04:17):
on something like this is just counter productive. And I
just as a business owner, I know what the value
of money is and I would have you know, I
would have thought that someone might have said, listen, you
know what, if this is the only thing we can
do with these funds, then you can have it. It's
not going to make us better, I mean making us
you know, hypothetically one way from from the roundabout up
to Knuckie Street and providing some angle parking might have
been a better option, giving us more parking, But this

(04:41):
is just And as I said, anyone drives up they
can see it for themselves.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
Well, this is the thing, and I have I would
imagine that it's had an impact for you in terms
of business. I mean, have you, like over the last
several months, what kind of impact has it had.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Well we've asked obviously, we you know, we reach out
and say, you know, this is bothered you. It could
be anything from even myself. If I've got to quickly
drop something into the cafe, I've got to struggle to
find the place. We've got our delivery drivers and Uber
drivers that just have trouble finding a place. Then we've
got just your customers. And just even yesterday, I had
a fellow. He's a he wears the high Viz stuff.
I'm some sort of job like that. He pops in

(05:19):
three or four mornings a week, grabs a coffee and
a sandwich. He said, Look, I don't always come in
because I'll have to drive around two or three times.
I can't. I don't have the time to park on
Kavanaugh Street or in one of the car parks. I've
got to pull in within you know, day a few
hundred meters and I can come in, but I can't
park that far away. And even my bookkeeper who works
out and Winnell, he said, I went in there and

(05:39):
I had to drive around three or four times. Yeah,
and I just didn't have time to park and say
the Mitchell Parker or the West Lane, and so I
have to come back and get my paperwork later. So
that's that's just some of the feedback we're getting, and
it's you know, over the drive season, we dare say
it had a decent effect on us. We can't get it.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
Back absolutely in terms of you know, the work that
he is underway. I'm just reading in the NT News
report this morning that you know that the other area
that obviously is receiving work at the Moment's Chapel Lane.
Now again, you know, I know that a lot of
the retailers sort of or a lot of the business
owners go Okay, well, this seems like a great idea
in theory, but the owner had said that while he

(06:20):
supports the project, he was frustrated to see just two
days of work being done while the business had suffered
for weeks. Now, this is something that i'd spoken to
Jules from McCarn stop about as well. You know, she
was saying, Katie, we've got a situation here where businesses
are impacted and then you've got you know, the workers

(06:41):
only there for certain hours of the day. They're not
there on the weekends. Now, I would assume that when
they've tended for those projects, they've been maybe able to
go in at a bit of a lower cost because
they're not going to do weekends. But for the council,
you've got to go what impact is this having on
the businesses and do we actually need to pay a
little bit more money so it happens faster.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Well, I'd even argue that, saying, yeah, I get that,
and maybe I can even subscribe to that thinking. But
during the monthday to Friday, then we need to see
we need to see shovels and boots and things. And
we weren't seeing that in the time that we were here.
And you know, I must say, I got I got
a bit frustrated. There was there was decent communication back
and forth from our retailers and the city council people.

(07:25):
But one of the one of the delays, and I
kept arguing, why did you choose to do this right
at the beginning of the drive. Why didn't we wait
till at least late August or early September, all because
the wet season would have impacted us. Well, if it
had been done in the timeframe we were talking about,
we wouldn't have had a worry about that. And here
we are. And they said, one of the and I'm
quoting this exactly, one of the delays was remember the election,

(07:46):
A couple of shops down for me. We had that
it was a polling boot yep that was claimed to
be one of the disruptions, and I'm saying, hey, on
a second, it's a shop. Yeah, it got tenanted. It
doesn't matter what's in it. It's not like the shop
needed to spill out onto the row, didn't block you.
It was a shop, So please don't use silly things
like this to justify the delay. Yeah. Yeah, And I'm

(08:08):
sure there has to be somebody, a project manager, someone
who has to be saying we had a timeframe set aside. Yeah,
and if this is going to go over, there's got
to be someone's got to be held accountable for this.
And I don't know who that person is, but someone
should be saying, hey, listen, i'm catching the flag here.
I need some answers as to how come it's taken.
What are we now? Maybe three months later or something
like that.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah, so surean have they've given you an idea of
when this is going to be totally complete? Now? I
mean we're months late, but when is it going to
be totally complete?

Speaker 2 (08:39):
Honestly, the bar keeps getting moved, though, I couldn't tell you.
Every time I asked the question Athena from our retailers,
I said, hey, listen, have you heard anything. Yes, it's
been to this play and then it's been to this
and so to be honest, even if they told us
right now October thirtieth, I wouldn't necessarily believe it yet.
I just don't know it. It keeps moving, but I

(09:00):
can understand or whatever.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
Yeap, Oh, it's disappointing that.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
You know, it's got a nice place and you know,
and then part of the when the INTI newspeople were here,
they asked me, what would you like the government to do? Well,
I know, we just spent a few million dollars, like
you know, we discussed the Trelli silver on KAVANAUGHH Street.
Now happened to be done something and that was money
that was wasted. So what do you want me to
say about this? Oh, go ahead and you rip off
the green stuff and undoble you'll take.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
That's the thing. You can't reverse it because it's already
done and you don't want to waste money. Man.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah, you know, it's just just a waste of money
in a way like we could have done something else,
but you know, there is no remedy in the sense that, oh,
you know, this would make them all happy. No, it
wouldn't have made happy to get it right the first time,
or get closer to right than this.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
Yeah. Well, Sean, look, I really appreciate you having a
chat with us this morning, and and I know you'd
be bringing a smile to everybody's face this morning with
the coffees that you're dishing up. So thank you for
everything that you do, and really appreciate your having a
chat today.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
No, and thank you very much for giving the voice
to us as the community. We really appreciate. I do
listen when I'm in the car, and I really appreciate
your stance and a lot of things.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
Katie to thank you anytime, anytime. Thank you, Sean. We'll
catch up with you so you too.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
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