Armidale's mayor and council have been thinking of ways to jazz up the use of our pedestrian mall in the heart of the town's Central Business District. Originally the heart of retail sales, the mall has been losing customers and pedestrian flows for many years as the town's planners have allowed no less than three indoor shopping precincts to emerge! This is in a town whose population is about 25,000. What towns in Britain with a similar population now have three competing indoors shopping plazas in the middle of the town? In Armidale's case there are at least three other scattered retail spaces located away from the town centre. Also, of course, quite a bit of retail trade is being siphoned off by various kinds of on-line retailing, making things even worse.
Council's latest attempt to re-invigorate the town centre involves staging regular - once a week I gather - food fests, where a wide variety of different ethnic foods are sold. That, in itself is probably not difficult. Our regular farmer's markets provide a large array of foods associated with such countries as Turkey, Bhutan, Nepal, India, and Germany. Dot and I attended the first such food event last Friday and the mall was humming with large numbers of people. Again, let my pictures tell the story.
As you can see from these first three pictures, the mall area became quite lively after a slow start and, by the time we sat down to eat our interesting meal, the seats and tables the council had provided were fairly full.
The council also wanted to attract a wide range of households and play facilities were provided for kids.
The Tattersalls Hotel staged a bar on the adjacent pavement so that people could readily purchase wines, beers, and spirits to go with their food. They did a roaring trade that evening.
Council also provided a performance awning - below left where musicians could play their instruments. The lady on the right, whose name I do not know, certainly did a good job with her country-music songs.
Dot and I saw the stall on the left providing Corn Flower Pockets and we investigated what was on offer since we didn't want anything too large of filling. You'll never guess what national dishes were being provided here! I'll take that back and give an hour to come up with the right answer - Venezuela! Have any of you ever eaten Venezuelan food? I doubt it.
One of the trucks in the mall - allowed in because they stored food and often had cooking facilities - belonged to grill monkeys. This took me aback and I went to ask which country supplied the monkeys and which parts were being prepared for eating. I felt queasy about being something of a cannibal! It turned out that the owners just grilled the usual parts of sheep and cattle.
The final picture shows the tables and chairs provided by council at an early stage in the event when not many people were around.
AS
Council's latest attempt to re-invigorate the town centre involves staging regular - once a week I gather - food fests, where a wide variety of different ethnic foods are sold. That, in itself is probably not difficult. Our regular farmer's markets provide a large array of foods associated with such countries as Turkey, Bhutan, Nepal, India, and Germany. Dot and I attended the first such food event last Friday and the mall was humming with large numbers of people. Again, let my pictures tell the story.
As you can see from these first three pictures, the mall area became quite lively after a slow start and, by the time we sat down to eat our interesting meal, the seats and tables the council had provided were fairly full.
The council also wanted to attract a wide range of households and play facilities were provided for kids.
The Tattersalls Hotel staged a bar on the adjacent pavement so that people could readily purchase wines, beers, and spirits to go with their food. They did a roaring trade that evening.Council also provided a performance awning - below left where musicians could play their instruments. The lady on the right, whose name I do not know, certainly did a good job with her country-music songs.
Dot and I saw the stall on the left providing Corn Flower Pockets and we investigated what was on offer since we didn't want anything too large of filling. You'll never guess what national dishes were being provided here! I'll take that back and give an hour to come up with the right answer - Venezuela! Have any of you ever eaten Venezuelan food? I doubt it.
One of the trucks in the mall - allowed in because they stored food and often had cooking facilities - belonged to grill monkeys. This took me aback and I went to ask which country supplied the monkeys and which parts were being prepared for eating. I felt queasy about being something of a cannibal! It turned out that the owners just grilled the usual parts of sheep and cattle.
The final picture shows the tables and chairs provided by council at an early stage in the event when not many people were around.
2 comments:
Are you doing anything special to avoid catching the Corona Virus? Richard Snow.
Our household is not doing anything special concerning COVID-19 other than stocking up on food and hand-washes and that sort of thing. Our bridge club has cancelled events for 4 weeks, but many players are in the 80s and 90s, age groups that are particularly harmed by the virus. Otherwise, I'm leading a normal life and attend several gatherings each week. One adverse event has been the cancellation of our holiday trip to Norfolk Island. This is an Australian territory in the Coral Sea. Visits to the island have been halted to protect their fragile economy (90% tourism) from the virus. Here in Armidale, no virus infections have been announced. That's not surprising as we're over 300 miles from both Sydney and Brisbane where the nearest infections are located.
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