Over the last few days, attention has turned to Victoria Square with the type of pitchfork-wielding fury that only election rhetoric can inspire. Things boiled over when outdoor furniture was discovered in the vicinity of food trucks on Victoria Square last Tuesday.

The Square has become a focal point for a larger tug-of-war between young mobile businesses and established bricks-and-mortar offerings. Royal Croquet Club was named by Lord Mayoral candidate Martin Haese as an initiative that comes in and “take[s] the cream off the cake” prepared by year-round businesses.

We spoke with Adelaide City Council, Gareth Lewis (Council candidate and proprietor of speakeasy-style bar Jack Ruby), and Stuart Duckworth (Royal Croquet Club, Little Miss Mexico/Miami, Crab Shack and more) about the issue.

Read Part 2 with Gareth Lewis (representing established business) here. 

Public consultation continues

Stuart Duckworth, responsible for all manner of pop-up venues, festivals and events, but also a bricks-and-mortar business owner, is ‘extremely concerned’ by the attitudes being presented towards new business.

“It’s extremely concerning to me!” he tells Rip It Up. “And, to be honest, it’s baffling. I find it really, really disheartening when we’ve got to justify activations that we do, and when we have to see people justify the activations that they do, to people who are so ill-informed, [to people] who should be in positions where they’re completely informed if they want to [influence] those who make those decisions.”

As for Lewis’ concerns about public consultation, Duckworth is intrigued.

“That’s a very interesting comment from someone standing for Council, and it couldn’t be further from the truth.”

Consultation is a long and complex process, that Duckworth says is still ongoing.

“Even after a successful application through ROI [Registration of Interest], that’s not a signed, sealed and delivered event, and the consultations are still continuing. So to consider that there’s no consultation being made is crazy and that’s completely not true.”

Duckworth lists local businesses in the Vic Square precinct, SAPOL, Adelaide Central Market, public transport divisions, Council and “other traders of the CBD” as among those they’ve consulted in preparing Royal Croquet Club for next year. Beyond that, negotiations with AHA (Australian Hotels Association) have seen RCC cut back trading hours and capacity for next year’s venue.

They’ve also had to explain that entertainment in 2015 will be much more fulfilling, with 518 (compared to 184 in 2014) performances across 28 days of operation. Last time, Duckworth says, RCC had their event approved after the Fringe registrations had closed, so most artists already had venues lined up; since Victoria Square hadn’t been finished, either, it was difficult to program the entertainment without seeing the facilities. For 2015, they are in a much better position and are able to make it an entertainment-/performance-focussed venue.

Insurmountable risk

“We’ve got a bricks-and-mortar venue and we’ve fought tooth and nail to get that,” says Duckworth. He and his business partners are in a unique position – along with Dan and the Burger Theory team – of straddling the mobile and immovable business models.

With both perspectives to go on, Duckworth finds conditions favour stable ventures, rather than the high-risk gambles of mobile and pop-up trade.

At the bricks-and-mortar, Duckworth says, they face “issues such as trade in the middle of summer versus that trade during winter; staff wages you incur, the Council rates, the overheads, the lease agreements, all those sort of things”.

“I can whole-heartedly say that that is a much easier, simpler and more straight-forward process than it is to put on an event such as Croquet Club, where the risk is insurmountable by comparison and you’ve got such a small window of opportunity to get a return on your investment. [Plus] you’re completely dictated by whether the weather’s good, whether there are people around, whether it’s the right timing, whether you’ve got a good offering.

“The costs that are associated with all of those things don’t go away just because it’s good or bad weather, you incur them no matter what. The risk associated with food trucks and new innovations and events … by comparison they’re so much higher, and I think that’s what people fail to understand.

“Sure,” he continues, venue-manager hat back on, “if there’s competition and loss of trade there’s angst that comes about as a result of that, but that’s fair, that’s normal and that’s honest.”

“We’ll go backwards five years”

Duckworth, naturally, sees the use of our public spaces as an overwhelming positive, even as an owner of a bricks-and-mortar venture himself. However, he recognises the economy of scale (Adelaide’s population can only support, sustain and fill a limited number of spaces) and agrees that everything must be handled in moderation – by limiting the number of permits, making sure trucks operate within the guidelines, and not booking outdoor events every week for the entire year.

He is still happier to see an Adelaide with innovation than an Adelaide without it. If the brakes are put on small business development, Duckworth says, “we’ll go backwards five years”.

“We’ll go backwards to where we were five years ago, and that’s exactly where Adelaide doesn’t want to be.

“If you ask the greater population of South Australia whether they enjoy, support and like the changes we have seen in the last five years, I guarantee you’ll get an overwhelming “Yes”.

“The vibrancy – and I hate to use that word, as it’s been a buzz word of the last five years – but the vibrancy of Adelaide over the last five years is growing astoundingly,” he says, “and it’s amazing because of these initiatives, but not these initiatives alone.”

He tips his hat to the hospitality, retail and events industries who have really “upped their game” in recent years, creating an evolving ecosystem of encouragement and development.

No free ride

“One thing I’d like to make really clear,” says Duckworth, “is that no one gets a free ride from Council. No one.

“Council charge for everything, and they need to. That’s what makes it fair. You use Council and you’re getting a service: not only the use of their land, but the use of the people you deal with, the people who give you permits, the leases, and the people you deal with on an ongoing basis. With Croquet Club, for example, it’s 12 months of the year that you’re working with Council. So the cost you pay is paying for those people to work with you; it’s not a free service which the general public needs to pay for. It’s a service, and you pay for that.

“So that,” Duckworth continues, “by comparison to what someone would pay for a lease, is substantially more. I know it is, because I know what the lease agreements are.

“When people make negative comments or make judgements based on incorrect information, I actually get quite offended, because we’re not doing this for the wrong reasons, we’re in this because we want to do some great activation for the city because we love Adelaide, and that’s what it all boils down to.

“For people to question the validity of what we do makes me really quite frustrated. If I could just run a venue for 52 weeks of the year and be content, I would, because it’s a much simpler life. You get a lot more sleep doing that. But events are a lot more tough and a lot more interesting, so that’s why we do it.”

Read Part 1: Adelaide City Council

Read Part 2: Gareth Lewis (Jack Ruby owner and Council candidate)

Photo

Andreas Heuer