By Jessica Micallef
The Sunbury Business Association is concerned the Gap Road level crossing removal project will harm local businesses and ruin the “momentum” shop owners gained prior to Christmas.
Association president Michael Osborne said after a tough year of COVID-19 lockdowns, Sunbury businesses saw a “mad rush” of shoppers enter their stores as restrictions relaxed and the ‘ring of steel’ dividing metropolitan Melbourne and regional Victoria came down late last year.
“Leading up to Christmas, businesses were kept quite busy,” he said.
“As a whole, the Sunbury business community has been a resilient bunch.
“Hospitality struggled a bit but the community rallied pretty well and filled up quite a lot of shops in the lead-up to Christmas.”
“This upcoming rail crossing removal has the potential to disrupt any form of momentum that small businesses have.”
The Gap Road level crossing removal project in Sunbury is expected to start this year, after the project’s start date was brought forward.
Mr Osborne said the project had the potential to harm businesses.
“We cannot afford this. I wouldn’t want to see small businesses run into more brick walls.
“We saw consumers change their spending habits and go online during lockdown. That is a concern as an association and our main aim is to get people walking and get back in the community.
“For some businesses, Christmas was their first opportunity to open their doors to more people.”
Mr Osborne urged the community to shop local first and to change their shopping habits to in-store, rather than online.
“Shopping locally is the best way to have a strong business community to ensure we can provide employment for future generations to come,” he said.
“We encourage people to shop local first to satisfy their shopping needs.
“We cannot afford to have another thing thrown at us.”
