Local big box HW store (but one of their smallest stores) has closed their front doors on main street Monday to Friday. You know the doors near all the nice footpath seating.
Car brains ruining everything, and particularly main street.
Time for a letter to the council.
Out of all the ‘we must go back to the fifties’ screeching I’ve hears… none of it has been towards how cars destroyed mainstreet and how people could used to go to a corner store run and owned by a guy everyone knew. Hell, my grandad ran a store literally on the square for thirty years and not one mention at how the big box trends have destroyed that alongside zoning preventing suburbia from legally having those corner stores. I mean, christ-almighty. Suburbia wouldn’t be quite so bad if yo ucould have some light commercial in there. Not a lot, but enough where every mile or so were the kind of places one could walk to.
@singletona I’ve heard plenty about car centric design killing main street. Interesting what different parts people hear.
Helps to remember I live in DEEEP Qanon Trumpistaan. So while they do acknowledge these things if pointed out, it’s never a voluntary talking point. To me suggesting it isn’t a priority.
I’m astounded at the amount of opposition in the comments.
Closing your storefront on Main St and rerouting people through what I can only assume to be the entrance near the parking lot is pedestrian-hostile behaviour. When I go downtown, it’s to shop, not to know which stores have parking lots nearby.
Yep and a street with dead storefronts increasingly becomes a dead street.
There is some context here that I feel like you’re not adding.
@GeneralEmergency probably, but it can be hard to see that context when your in it :)
Maybe it’s the general idea that main streets are dying in the concept of people should drive to every store, and stores that do this take away value from being able to walk between stores.
This is probably because of theft. Cheaper to have staff at the carpark entry. Looks like it’s pretty easy to wander into the Bunnings and grab and run.
Edit: Based on the information provided, this is the Bunnings in Lilydale. Having a look at Google Maps, given the Maroondah Highway traffic and the lake of Main Street parking, this is probably a request from the neighbours or the council to park around the back to avoid overcrowding the street on Monday to Friday. I see there’s a medical clinic next door, I wouldn’t want Bunnings customers parking in the available spots to prevent people getting in in the morning.
Cheaper to have staff at the carpark entry.
Why do you claim closing the main street entrance and keeping the carpark entrance staffed is inherently cheaper than closing the carpark entrance and keeping the main street entrance staffed?
- Bunnings is a hardware store. The vast majority of patrons would get there by car. Throughout the week tradies use the store, and their work hours are Monday to Friday. Closing the car park would definitely result in fewer customers.
- thieves are probably less likely to use a car, since stealing by car is slower and more identifiable. A lot of these kinds of Bunnings too have car parks with barriers that they can use to stop cars getting out.
@Pregnenolone Then don’t have a shop on main street
I’d argue that’s victim blaming.
Look I don’t like corpos and car brains either but it’s called Main St for a reason.
@Pregnenolone I have trouble seeing the giant corp as the victim
Would you prefer they just close entirely and only sell online, maybe on Amazon?
@jaybone I’d rather not have a 40m gap of nothing in the middle of main street.
Look, I’m 41 and have chosen to have never even had a drivers liscense. I’m the most fuck cars kinda guy you can get.
This is a stretch. “CARS ARE RUINING OUR NEIGHBORHOOD BECAUSE STORES USE DIFFERENT SET OF DOORS DURING THE WEEK!”
C’mon man. Cars cause cancer. Theres drunk drivers. There’s text and drivers. Distracted drivers. Idiot drivers. There’s global pollution. There’s wars fought over oil to power cars. There’s planned economic blight as cities are designed to keep nondrivers seen as low class. Like they can’t afford to drive, or they had their liscense suspended, and thus should be looked down on, and not given career opertunities. Thus being forced into low income neighborhoods.
All that to chose from for why fuck cars…and you went with “I have to enter from the other side of the store now”???
There’s planned economic blight as cities are designed to keep nondrivers seen as low class.
A city that allows pedestrian-oriented entrances to be closed like this is an example of that.
Meanwhile i’m 43 and have never been ABLE to drive because of vision issues, and moving the entryway in this manner essentially is a giant middle finger to me. ‘Here we’re shuttering the entryway that has nice safe walkable areas in and out and GO TO THE LOADING DOCK.’
