Displaced workers at the Lewis Bros Mitre 10 in South Brisbane will start working at the Kenmore site, located at the Kenmore Village Shopping Centre, after the 23-year-old Cordelia Street outlet closed down for good on Sunday, 6 Sept 2020.
Deliveries from the shuttered store will now come from the inner west site as well, which means there will be no job losses or halting of services from the former outlet.
Brett Richardson, the manager at the handyman store on Cordelia St, said that the rents were “unrealistically high” thus they decided not to renew the lease. Warwick Lewis independently owns both the South Brisbane site and the Kenmore store under the Mitre 10 brand.
Currently, the Cordelia St site has no existing development application. With the current public health crisis, the building might remain closed for a long time.
“Sadly this is a common phenomenon in the inner-city… Even when a property owner has no immediate plans to redevelop a site, they often prefer to keep properties empty because they can claim it as a tax write-off. They advertise it for lease at an unreasonably high rent, and when they can’t find any takers, they leave it vacant and declare it as a loss for tax purposes,” Councillor Jonathan Sri posted on Facebook following the business closure.
“The loss of retailers like this means that residents have to drive further away if they need hardware supplies, which in turn generates more traffic, and makes it harder for people to live a car-free lifestyle.”
Kenmore’s Mitre 10 outlet is 12 km off South Brisbane or a 21-minute drive on Milton Rd. The Elizabeth St outlet is closer but it’s owned by a different independent entrepreneur.