It's also beneficial to look at the many differing approaches taken to the vexed history of Bridge Street, which it must be remembered was one the main thoroughfares into the city and had a tramline running through it long before Sturt was the main drag.

It's a history of woeful, short-term planning, ad hoc responses and populism.

READ MORE: Plan to re-develop Norwich Plaza in the pipeline

The Norwich Plaza building itself is a good example of bad 1970s design: an attempt to reuse the building after its 1960s redevelopment into a Coles New World supermarket.

The problem for the development of the Plaza building was the attempt to reinvent an open-floor single-occupier supermarket into a multiple-occupier retail space.

It was essentially a makeover, not a redevelopment. Examining the profile of the Coles supermarket and Norwich Plaza reveals the tin cladding was either simply replaced or repainted and an awning added - and of course the famous clock. The building underneath remained the same, open spaces which resisted conversion to any kind of workable store experience.

Peel and Bridge streets were once major shopping thoroughfares in Ballarat. Long before Sturt Street had developed, the good people of the city would promenade through Bridge Street, which had a slightly more genteel reputation than Main Road, its reputation still hindered somewhat by the existence of dubious hotels, wild theatres and other establishments which seemed to do a much better trade at night than during daytime.

It had a gaslight concourse and a boardwalk, made of actual timber, which traversed the Yarrowee River running across its length.

Herein lay another of Bridge Street's fatal flaws as a retail district: flooding. It was prone to devastating and fast rising floods following heavy downpours, courtesy mostly of the Yarrowee spilling over, but also due to the runoff from the steep ascent into Sturt Street.

One of the worst floods was in 1869. Some of the extensive reporting from the Ballarat Star caught the extent of the losses

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"Bridge Street and its vicinity, as may well be imagined, being the centre of the business population of Ballarat East, as well as the central point of the flood-current, sustained more damage than any other part of the town. The damage done at the coffee mills of Mr Joseph Jones, Grenville street north, was very considerable. The most of his valuable stock was on the ground floor, and was exposed to the action of the first brunt of the flood.

"Messrs Morris and Sleight, undertakers, had just a few weeks ago taken up as a business site a shop close at hand, next door to Messrs Bryce and Chalmers, and the water came in there about three feet, sweeping away and destroying a large lot of goods, which are estimated by Mr Sleight to be worth between £100 and £200."

In 1909 the Yarrowee reached the highest level recorded, part of a statewide deluge. Combined with a wild tornado, three people died in Ballarat: two men drowned and the unfortunate Mrs Odgers, killed when the chimney of her home on the corner of Queen and Otway streets collapsed, bringing the roof down as she sat on the couch.

Flooding was a curse well into the 20^th Century. In each decade substantial inundations have taken place, although the widening, deepening and channelling of the Yarrowee River has reduced the impact of flooding substantially.

Nevertheless, by the late 19^th Century Bridge Street was so well established as a retail precinct (Sturt Street at the time was the preserve of banks and churches, law firms and the more expensive hotels just beginning to find their footing) that investors decided to construct the marvellous edifice that became, in turn, WM Bean and Son, then Robert Nicholl and Co Drapery, also later known as Nicholl and Allen.

One marvellous image from 1856 shows the Bryce and Chalmers store, a single-story building, at the bottom of a still unsealed Sturt Street, just beginning to be filled with the multiple-storey post-gold boom edifices of bluestone and cement-rendered brick.

Bryce and Chalmers were grocers and wine merchants from the early days of the gold boom, but did not survive beyond 1872. A listing in the Ballarat Star of May 28 of that year proclaims:

"John Bryce, of Ballarat East, grocer, trading as Bryce and Chalmers. Causes of insolvency - Depreciation in the value of stock-in-trade, falling off in business and inability to collect debts. Liabilities, £1364 6s 11d; assets, £701 17s 9d; deficiency, £662 9s 2d.

The building survived for a few years longer, but it may have been engulfed by a fire in 1879, when the importer and marvellously named William Moxon Bean was using it as furniture storage. According to newspaper reports, the rear of Mrs Brindley's Hotel in Grenville Street went up, destroying "the adjoining premises belonging to Mr. Retallack, formerly known as the Big Wheel Factory, but recently occupied by Mr. Bean."

At any rate, by the 1890s a veritable phoenix had arisen from the ashes, with the huge W.M Bean and Son (soon to be Robert Nicholl and Co Drapery after the early death of Mr Bean in 1887) building replacing the former premises. A massive three-storey furnisher's store, eventually richly decorated with cast iron posts, verandahs and finials, it was a stunning assertion of Ballarat's strength as both a regional capital and a vibrant centre of commerce.

Sadly the ornate facade fell out of favour with the fickle favour of architectural taste. By the 1920s Morshead's Department Store owned the building; by the 1940s it had been stripped of its Victorian magnificence and parts curved back to a modern Deco style. By the 1950s the curves had in turn been replaced by a stylishly simple brick facade, remnants of which may stand beneath the current tin cladding.

Morshead's was lost in 1967 when its parent company Cox Bros took a substantial loss in selling out to Woolworths, which was undertaking an aggressive expansion into retail purchases. It was not uncommon for the chain to purchase entire blocks and level them in order to crush any sales opposition.

Now a new proposal to demolish the site entirely is before council, to replace it with mixed retail and accommodation, and soar higher than the Nicholl's Drapery ever did. A design by Bayleyward architects would see a 10 to 12-storey building on the corner of Bridge and Grenville streets.

According to the architects, "the heavier ground plane design draws influence from the proportional systems of Ballarat's key civic buildings (City Hall, Train Station etc.) whilst the lighter element above focuses on the temporary mining structures which were dotted throughout the landscape of the Victorian era.

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