We live in Sunrise Beach. Our kids go to one of the local schools and we love to walk and cycle for transport. We are fond of our local shopping centre and support the baker, butcher, pharmacist, bottle shop, dentist and doctors. Unfortunately the little supermarket has been a bit of a let down. Over-priced and underwhelming it passed for emergency items and the occasional chook, but not for general household shopping.
Many students from adjacent schools, and those arriving on school buses from further afield, would drop in and buy fairly unhealthy packaged treats, drinks and food and litter was spreading far and wide into the bushland.
Anyway the super market has recently closed it’s doors for good, alongside the hairdresser.
2017: A pop-up sustainable activity centre
We believed our local shopping centre could do much better. Around a year ago we had approached council, who own the land and shops, with a proposal to activate the centre with a pop-up community hub – we called it the Sunrise Sustainable Activity Centre or SSAC. Our proposal was to create a walkable/cycle-able point of interest as a compliment to the existing shops. We wanted to set up a demonstration site and collection point for waste recovery, a composter, sell plastic alternatives, have a little maker space and so on. You get the idea. This was our original presentation.
As locals and creative behaviour change professionals we basically wanted to take practical action to give live to Council’s various social, economic and sustainability plans including Zero Emissions Noosa, Noosa Council’s Towards Zero Waste policy, Plastic Free Noosa and NICA’s environmental weed invasion and degradation of Wetlands of National Importance.
We never got a chance to discuss our proposal with council. We received a note saying that Council thought it was a good idea, but that “there was further discussion to be had about the site in regard to objectives for the land from a broader organisational perspective.”
2018: Hair dresser gone, supermarket gone – a new approach
Then the hairdresser and the little supermarket closed a couple of months ago. The issue made it onto the front page of Noosa News last week too. We’ve heard that the leases were too high and profits too low. We were also sad to hear that the supermarket proprietors were victims of racial abuse and there really is no excuse for that.
However, the situation was now more dire than before and we really would love to see this shopping centre fulfil its potential. We were putting our thinking caps on again. We thought we’d adapt the proposal and have another go.
Food, glorious food!
We came up with this cooperative shop proposal. In any event, we want a good food and essentials shop in walking/cycling distance. Just think how many cars this would take off our increasingly congested roads? This is even more important considering the rise of AirBNB and other holiday accommodation on the Eastern Beaches. What’s not to like?
We’ve had much interest and a few businesses keen to set up a great people’s super market in the old shop’s space.
We are keen to hear from you, the Sunrise community and other stakeholders what you think about it. What other ideas have you got?
It would be fab if you would add your thoughts as comments to the slide deck or below this post. Share this post with anybody interested in making this a real place of value and interest for our community.
Thank you.
