EMPTY shop faces in Wodonga’s High Street could be covered in giant decals to brighten the strip, a city councillor believes.
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Danny Lowe has been inspired by the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda where the Port Phillip Council has plastered vacant windows with what it calls art skins.
They feature old black and white images as well as contemporary photographs and have been placed on empty shops on Fitzroy Street.
Cr Lowe, who runs Albury’s Wayne Ritchie’s ski shop, learnt of St Kilda’s approach at a Main St forum in Melbourne last month.
“What we need to do is make sure that all the shopfronts (in High Street) are dressed up and look good,” he told this week’s council meeting.
“A store’s soul is seen from the outside so the body of work we see from the outside will tell what sort of description is inside that store.
“If you’ve got a store with a really good body of work on the outside, a really good soul on the inside, it’s going to mean nothing if it sitting next door to an old boarded-up place.
“There’s some cheap ways to (improve), with using decals and stuff on the front of buildings to tell stories.”
Wodonga Retailers president Greg Haysom said he had spoken to Cr Lowe about the idea which he welcomed.
“If we can’t fill them, if the shop’s not doing anything, if it’s blacked out and if you can put something in an empty shop it makes it look like it’s doing something, it’s terrific,” Mr Haysom said.
Vacancies in High Street between the newsagency and Woodland Grove have recently risen with businesses moving into the new Wodonga Central shopping centre.
Port Phillip mayor Bernadene Voss extolled her ‘decorative skins program’.
“The feedback has been positive, with property owners congratulating us for the….skins, and telling us that people are now staying longer rather than walking straight past,” Cr Voss said.
“The skins are applied to the outside of the window so no internal access is required and the design allows for leasing information to be incorporated if required, so there is no loss (there).
“Another advantage of the skins is that they are easily removable, so again there is no barrier at all to placing a tenant in the shop quickly.”
