Who wants to shop at a construction site?
As part of my trip to Melbourne, I had to sort out the purchase of a Mac laptop for my father so that he can continue to work while he is in hospital. While there are plenty of Apple Resellers around, the Apple owned store is located at the suburban shopping centre of Chadstone. The fact that I had a $50 Chadstone gift card given to me at Christmas that would expire soon sealed my fate. That is where I was going.
I jump in the Jeep. Most of you know how feel about driving at the best of times. The most direct route is on the M1 motorway. Despite only being upgraded from an arterial road to a 6 late freeway a little over 10 years ago, it was being widened again, no doubt at great expense. I know that Melbourne’s population has been growing quite quickly, but at a rate that would justify a 33% increase in freeway capacity after just 10 years? Surely this is the wrong way to be going. I digress, this post isn’t about freeways.
I arrive at Chadstone, the first thing you have to deal with is the car park, of which there are many. Some surface level, others multi level. Finding a park can be difficult. Despite the fact that I am being propelled by a 4.0L engine, I feel like there is a physical effort involved in actually finding that mythical empty car space. In reality there is no physical effort there, but it feels like a hell of a lot more than than the 3km bike ride I usually go on to get to my local shops. Finally a car park, and only about 300m walk to the entrance of the mall. Who says that suburbanite slobs never get off their lazy ass?
I have a bit of a wonder round first. Trying to work out where to spend the $50 voucher. Note that its one of the most annoying things to dispose of as a number of chain stores don’t actually accept them. Of course you don’t find this out until you are almost committed to buying something. Cheeky little strategy they have going. There are signs telling me to be careful to look at the map and determine which shops I want to go to before walking, as a large section of the mall is under redevelopment. This particular section was the last bit left over from the first major redevelopment of Chadstone back in the mid-1980′s. It was tacky from day one. Full of faux stone, plastic plants and water features. However interesting that after such a short time, they have felt a need to completely demolish it, rather than refurbish it.
A 23 year lifetime for a building is not great. Some of the stores in Melbournes CBD would probably be approaching 150 years old. This constant demolition, construction, renovation in shopping centres must cost a fortune, which is obviously passed on to the tenants of the stores, and then on to consumers. Given most national retail chains have pricing parity between their stores, this affects everyone as they have to charge enough at the store at Chadstone and its ilk to ensure they are not loosing money elsewhere.
Cost aside, it is a highly annoying place to shop. The shopping centre is so large, it needs a map to tell you where everything is, and how to get there. However, due to the constant renovation and relocation of tenants, the map is usually out of date. I noticed this time they had a “Citizens Guideâ€?, with a more updated map and list of tenants. It was different to the one I had used at Christmas, only six months earlier. Only the major anchors are where you would expect. Everything else is subject to change. There is no sense of history or permanence about anything here. We will sell you a fridge today, can’t guarantee that we will be here tomorrow. The only good thing about it is that since a large portion of the mall is blocked off, people are forced to walk around the deep excavation given them some (sorely needed if the people I saw were representative of the typical Chadstone shopper) extra exercise.
Lets hope I never have to go there again.