Buy local: it is a smart move

Peter Farago
A CAMPAIGN to encourage residents to keep their shopping dollars in the city is a great way to support Geelong businesses.
The buylocal campaign is heading toward a May start line, with organisers signing up new businesses each week.
But the need for the campaign has called into question’s Geelong’s structural ability to hold onto that retail spend leaking out of the region, especially to western Melbourne.
Letters to the editor have questioned the ease of shopping in Geelong and also City Hall’s policy on fostering the local retail industry.
The retail sector, especially in central Geelong, has been placed under enormous pressure in recent years as investors splurged on a string of socalled bigbox developments that cater for homemaker centres.
Pressure has even been brought to bear on City of Greater Geelong to review its retail strategy.
But recent investment decisions should help secure more of Geelong’s potential retail spending.
Building sites around the city centre are testament to the potential Geelong retailers can use to keep locals’ money in town.
The council, too, is doing its bit in terms of easing traffic congestion.
After a somewhat disastrous redevelopment of central Geelong arterial roads for what was later described as aesthetic reasons, City Hall last year relented to residents’ wishes to lay more bitumen for cars and place less emphasis on wide, grassed median strips.
That’s why road workers are widening Mercer Street and have reopened Myers Street to Ormond Road at East Geelong.
Parking still remains a concern.
But the jury will be out until a construction boom that started in the city this year comes to fruition.
Until then it’s unclear whether city shoppers, a majority of whom still prefer to use their cars, will have an easier time loading up locallypurchased goods.
But at some point government’s responsibility to foster the local retail industry ends and the role of businesses themselves begins.
And that’s where locallydriven campaigns like Buy Local can be so important.
It’s because local business operators, whether they are owners or franchisees, can work harder to attract residents to stay in the city to do their shopping instead of heading up the highway.
Editor’s note: The Independent is a member of the Buy Local campaign.