President’s Report
Happy New Year to all! 2010 is shaping up to be a big year for all the businesses in Glebe. Over the last few years we’ve all spent a great deal of energy building up commerce infra- structure in an effort to revitalise Glebe. We’ve helped address many social issues that affect us, with our crime rates dropping substantially. Big thanks to Veritiy Firth for helping get our case management system under way and to the police for their truly commendable efforts. In partnership with City of Sydney, we’ve finally completed our upgrade. Our brand is complete and implemented. We’ve had the best year for the Fair in memory and introduced a new event called the Grand Tour Gallery – the highly successful 150 Locals exhibition. All very positive. Consequently, word on the street is that trade is at long last picking up. While we will miss a few of the traders who are no longer with us, we’ve seen the introduction of some fantastic new businesses that will help continue our march to an increasingly vibrant trade.
Over the next year the Chamber intends to continue driving forward with our economic development strategy. Aside from maintaining last years work, we will introduce two main innovations. First, we will deploy a visitation web site, glebe.com.au that will prove a terrific way for our commerce community to communicate with those wishing to come into Glebe. After two years of research we believe we have a winning formula that will set a new benchmark for precincts. The plan is to release it around June.  Secondly, we are making an important shift in the way we intend to coordinate the retail trade of Glebe. We want to finally get organised enough to compete with shopping malls properly. In order to get informed on how to do this, we will engage a consultant this year to do a strategic planning document that will map out how to go about it. It will include discussion around things like tenancy mix, arrival points and parking, precinct zoning and all the other things the malls do to compete with us. Ideally this will allow us to offer a option of choice and a unique value proposition and bring us all together into one forward moving community.
Also, just a quick to reminder to all of you that we are a non-profit organisation reliant on volunteers. Your contribution of membership and time are welcome and highly valued. Truly, the more of us that stand together the stronger we all are! Please remember to join and meet a few of your mates at our next network meeting!
Happy Trading!

 

Paul Angell