Zink & Sons has made bespoke suits on Sydney’s Oxford Street for 130 years. For most of that time, the family-owned men’s tailoring business has resided at number 56, halfway between Hyde Park and the street’s LGBTQI heart at Taylor Square. Today its director, Daniel Jones, is looking for a new base after a rent increase he says is unaffordable.
His shop is located in a development project that has been almost six years in the making. Oxford and Foley, a commercial strip of renovated heritage buildings, has been touted as key to revitalising the storied and colourful street, bringing new retail, hospitality and creative spaces, upmarket tenants and an injection of fresh energy. Three weeks ago, Golf Wang, the much-hyped fashion store of the musician Tyler, The Creator, was the first shop to open in the refurbished section of the commercial strip.
But the development has casualties, with its hoardings dominating the street for years and decimating foot traffic, according to one local operator. Then came construction of the City of Sydney’s $18.5m bike path running from Hyde Park to Taylor Square, further putting off customers.
A block away from Zink & Sons, Terry Daly is celebrating 40 years at the helm of Daly Male, a sequin-filled menswear store and stalwart of the gay scene. Despite regular customers and massive sales each Mardi Gras, he has asked for a rent reduction for the first time in four decades. Daly says “no one” wanted the bike path. “We’re watching it daily and looking at how empty it is.”
Stretching from the city to Bondi Junction, Oxford Street has long weathered change, but some locals are concerned high prices and the influx of international brands will change the character of their neighbourhood for the worse.
“The new shops will be good for business eventually – but we don’t need Louis Vuitton, we want little designers, we want independents,” Daly says.
A series of setbacks
Stephan Gyory from the Darlinghurst Business Partnership says the street’s western strip has seen disruption after disruption in recent decades, beginning with 2005 road upgrades, then the arrival of two Westfield malls close to each end, one in Pitt Street and one in Bondi Junction. In 2014, lockout laws delivered a blow to its colourful nightlife. Then came Covid and the cost-of-living doldrums.
AsheMorgan in partnership with The Toga Group leased the strip from the City of Sydney in 2019 on a 99-year basis. Approved in May 2022, the $200m project has overshot initial timeline forecasts by two years, with the first fully restored block due to open by November and the final block next June.
Among its challenges were the pandemic, a review into development control plans and a change of builder that led to legal action.
Today, though, Gyory is cautiously positive.
“There’s a palpable sense that it’s turned. It’s cool,” he says. “It feels like something is happening – but people have less money, so they’re spending it more carefully.”
There are also fewer shoppers, says Ken Holmes. The owner-operator of 41-year-old men’s swimwear purveyor Aussie Boys says he vacated at short notice to new premises in April 2020 after the City of Sydney leased his old building to Oxford and Foley. It took more than two years for any work to begin, he says.
He once sold $999,900 worth of swimwear and underwear in Mardi Gras season. For three days last week, he did not make a single sale.
City of Sydney council minutes indicate Oxford and Foley was originally slated to be completed by 2023, and Holmes says he understood it would definitely be open by the time Sydney hosted World Pride in February of that year.
“In the last six months, it’s probably been the worst it’s ever been,” he says. “It’s not that I don’t have the stock – I don’t have the customers. This should be gay Disneyland but the City of Sydney has killed it.”
AsheMorgan, the leaseholder and investment company behind the project, says Oxford and Foley “is set to become a flagship of urban renewal with a bold vision for adaptive reuse – honouring the past while shaping a lively, creative future for Sydney”.
Among the tenants preparing to move in are Sony Australia, the luxury cycling brand MAAP, late-night eatery Big Poppa’s, gelato bar Mapo, Mecca Coffee and Paulie’s Pizzas.
AsheMorgan says Jones’s claims about an unaffordable rent rise are “completely incorrect”.
Bike path disputes
Further up the street towards Paddington, a tired, once-thriving strip now sports a row of empty, graffitied shopfronts.
Jim’s Butchery, which operated nearby for almost 100 years, closed its doors this month. The Bookshop Darlinghurst, an independent queer bookshop operating since 1982, has announced it will close at Christmas because repeated delays for the full opening of Oxford and Foley had postponed its planned move to larger premises in the new development, imposing unsustainable costs.
But there is a more hopeful sign in the arrival of a new 109-room hotel, due to open on 9 October on the former site of the Grand Pacific Blue Room nightclub and Academy Twin Cinemas, which has sat empty for a decade.
“I’m excited,” says Simon Fowler, owner of Simon Says Juice, across the road from the hotel. “It’s nice for someone to see potential in the area and invest in it. It could be the first domino, leading to much bigger things.
“What’s been discouraging is a lack of interest to fill empty spaces. It’s not an attractive option to do so because rent is astronomical.”
Fowler’s rent is almost $90,000 a year, an amount that has doubled in six years, he says. He believes some shops lie empty because owners can claim a tax write-off against untenanted property losses.
On this section of the street the cycleway is a hot topic.
It’s early days for traffic on the Darlinghurst section, which opened in July.
Clover Moore, lord mayor of the City of Sydney, says she expects businesses will start seeing the benefits, “because more people walking and riding along a calmer street will encourage visits and money spent with those hard-working owners along Oxford Street”.
But the middle section of the cycleway, connecting Taylor Square with Centennial Park, remains to be built.
Peter McLean from Bicycle NSW says the missing section is a “gaping gap” in the east-west corridor. The path’s eventual completion is a question of when, not if, he says.
Fowler hopes the next section of the bike path will run along his cafe front, bringing with it a buffer from buses and possible alfresco dining.
“It’ll be a positive to my business I can’t quantify – but it’s going to cost a bunch and people will fight it the whole way,” he says.
One of those is the former City of Sydney councillor Kathryn Greiner. She is one of three Paddington locals who is taking the City of Sydney and Transport for NSW on in federal court over the path’s “floating” bus stops – on islands between the bike path and bus lane.
Greiner claims they contravene the Disability Discrimination Act’s design guidelines and public transport standards, given the speed of cyclists and how pedestrians need to cross their path at zebra crossings.
“Our argument is against the design, which does not give equity of access to people who are ageing, or have a visual impairment, or who are deaf,” she says. “It’s a nice idea, but it’s not well thought-out.”
A Transport for NSW spokesperson said the department was developing a design that “balances the needs of all users” and that no decision had been made about the future of the project.
Preserving a diverse soul
Beyond the bike path, Greiner says the Paddington part of the street is “just starting to come back” after a tough decade or so, while Paddington Town Hall is to be revamped, with community consultation now open.
Moore acknowledges the “significant challenges” the street has faced in the recent past, but says the “stars are really aligning to see Oxford Street reach its full potential”, with investment guided by the council’s Australian-first LGBTIQA+ Social and Cultural Place Strategy.
“There’s no silver bullet to ensuring our high streets thrive in the face of changing consumer behaviour and demographics, but the City does all it can to protect and enhance these important commercial spines. Oxford Street’s success depends on all of us, from state and local government through to community groups, businesses and landlords,” she says.
“We love Oxford Street. It’s one of our greatest and most-loved streets and we’re committed to building on its reputation as an iconic LGBTIQA+ and creative precinct, buzzing with activity day and night.”
Despite the obvious positives of the street’s revitalisation, Gyory still worries about the area’s diverse soul.
“The more pragmatic people are saying if richer queer people want to come here, that’s good, but we also don’t want them to displace the people who are here,” he says.
Marc Kuzma, AKA drag queen Claire de Lune, will serve his last souffle to a dinner and cabaret audience on New Year’s Eve at Claire’s Kitchen. Last week, the owner of the restaurant at number 35 Oxford Street announced the venue would close after 14 years and 950 dinner shows. The entire block, which includes the heritage-listed site of NSW MP Alex Greenwich’s HQ, is to be redeveloped. In a sense, the timing is good, Kuzma says.
“It has been a dreadful, dreadful winter. Since we opened I don’t think we had a worse time than this winter,” he says, noting the wet weather and reduced spending habits of even his most faithful clientele.
“Oxford Street has lost a little bit of shine because of the development across the road and the bike path took a long time, too, but now that it’s open, it’s quite pleasant.
“You cannot always blame the street. You need to make your own luck and we had 14 wonderful years.”
