DFO wins the war

an update on the slow death of Brand Depot: The Cheap Shop has finally gone. Still open: the perfume shop, the memorabilia shop, Parliament, Arpelle, and the Carpet Shop. Pauls has notices up saying they’ll keep trading until the doors are locked on them (and they haven’t been given a date). I think Fossil is still there too.

Oh, the atrocious furniture shop is still there too, the place with the blue velvet couch frogged with plastic crystal buttons. You know the one.

Food Court: The Asian food place has gone, as has the coffee/cafe place, but Jesters, the Doughnuts and Subway are still going. The coffee place that opened up where Starbucks was is still there too.

Luggage shop is just about gone, 2 tables of stuff and a cash register only. The 2 childminding places are still going. And that’s it.

The kitchen shop (Sauvage Urban, stupid name) is telling people that it plans to re-locate to next to Jim Murphy’s, which sounds like it will take up some of the Supa Barn lease, which suggests that Supa Barn will be gone fairly soon?

This is going to hit quite a few people pretty hard, the food outlets for instance. I think they are either franchises (doughnut place and Subway) or actual small businesses. I hope they have options. Also the coffee place that opened up near the front door recently, that seems to be a small business.

The asian-y homewares shop (Loot, I think it’s called) is a small business, the owner works there most days… I’m wondering what options they will have. I’m wondering if some of them are planning to take the Supa-Barn tenancy and run their shops out of there?

JC said :

Pommy bastard said :

The big downfall for Brand depot was the lack of big name brands they attracted.

Hardly surprising considering DFO had all the big names signed up before hand. Brand Depot was just built as a spoiler because Snow didn’t get his hands on the DFO site.

It is true that Brand Depot failed to actually attract any substantial factory outlet stores (likely due to DFO), but your comment about Snow seems pretty baseless. Snow had already built Brand Depot before DFO was finished. His sour grapes manifested in legal action against them for a exceeding the zoning allowances for retail space in what was intended to be a bulky goods handling precinct.

EvanJames said :

The kitchen shop is the best in Canberra.

Actually, this is true – at least from a value perspective. Hopefully they’ll relocate somewhere a little closer (to me).

So we went out to Bland Depot, with a view to getting a few prize entrails from the steaming carcass that remained.
We were however surprised. While a number of shop fronts were empty, there was enough life in the old girl to kick me in the hip pocket.
A couple of shops said they had long term leases and were not intending on going anywhere. Another had a sign in the window saying they were moving in April.
One shop said they were definitely not moving.
What is happening out there? Who knows. But there number of other vultures (aka bargain hunters) out there, The traders may be able to pay their rents for this month.

Brand Depot always reminded me of a freight hub.

DeadlySchnauzer said :

– brand depot. fail.
– majura park offices. fail. (Massive overcapacity, lots of empty space).

honestly the airport must make an absolute bucket load to subsidise these monumental failures. but don’t worry, the upcoming freight hub and international airport will be fine. just look at the snowsters brilliant track record.

But if you listen to the people who run the airport the airport side of the business makes nothing, hence why they have no option to build shopping and office space. Makes you wonder what effect all this has had on developments where developers have had to play by the rules, whereas at Snowtown these have been able to get away with massive developments without any consideration for the territory as a whole.

Pommy bastard said :

The big downfall for Brand depot was the lack of big name brands they attracted.

Hardly surprising considering DFO had all the big names signed up before hand. Brand Depot was just built as a spoiler because Snow didn’t get his hands on the DFO site.

midnight said :

Ikea should open up there given it’s about to be empty.

Agree! Ikea is a fantastic idea, and the capital city should have one!

Such a shame. If Brand Depot had only been built in a different location maybe it would have done better. DFO is good but at least Brand Depot had a variety of different shops and was cheaper for low income earners.