The proposal ignores what the market has been telling us for 50 years.

The Bridge St area's down-market spiral is an inevitable consequence of powerful and continuing economic, cultural and technological "disrupters".

CBDs and shopping strips everywhere reflect the impact of these forces.

Cosmetic change in the Bridge Mall will not only be wasteful, it misses a once-in-many-lifetimes opportunity for a genuinely transformative CBD re-development to redress two big, past mistakes.

Past mistake #1: Something in Ballarat's urban psyche has abhorred open space.

From Peel St to Pleasant St, from Mair St to Eyre/Grant St, apart from streets, there is no public space.

Nearly every square inch is fenced or built-on.

Most cities around the globe have at their heart one or more spacious squares, plazas, places, piazzas, parks - the name varies with the culture.

Not so Ballarat. To provide a popular ice-skating facility for a few weeks each winter, a city street is closed off.

We have no identity-giving, central-city community space in which to congregate, recreate, celebrate, demonstrate as befits the moment.

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Past mistake #2: Ballarat has a river.

It is no Danube, not even a Yarra.

But the Yarrowee has been a feature of this region's natural environment for 20,000 years.

A few hundred metres strip of the ancient river were ceremonial ground for the Wadawurrong people and were the cradle of Ballarat in the 1850s.

That ground and cradle have been obliterated. And we claim to be a heritage-proud city?

Local governments started it.

Competing East and West Councils, separated by the Yarrowee, wanted a big hall in a hurry for the 1867 visit by Prince Alfred.

In an act of historic folly, they built the Alfred Hall over the river.

Those two Councils merged in 1921 but the "build-over-the-river" mind-set lived on.

The 4000 seat Coliseum auditorium, built in 1906, burned down in 1936. The Alfred Hall was demolished in 1957.

These were opportunities to reclaim the river but shops and car-parks replaced them.

By happy circumstance, we could in this decade, in a single transformative project, give our city such a public space, revitalize the Bridge St precinct and recover some of our natural heritage.

Like the Norwich Plaza clock, the latest Bridge St proposals are frozen in a past era of work, cultural norms and modes of transaction.

CBDs flourished when people had to take the tram into town for almost every purchase and service. Now, centres like Delacombe Town and Stockland pull shoppers and foot-traffic away from the CBD; out of CBD "big boxes" like Bunnings, Officework and Harvey Norman supply the goods that used to make myriad small and mid-size CBD shops viable.

Nearly everyone now carries in the palm of their hand a device giving them instant access to media, gambling, movies, music, banking, buying, selling, meal-ordering - you name it.

The Covid pandemic has accelerated the change process, normalising "work from home" and on-line shopping.

Reality is that the CBD's supply of shops and offices exceeds demand. Where you see a "for lease" sign in place for years, you are not looking at a "retail opportunity", you are looking at a "stranded asset".

Empty premises abound, nowhere more so than at the river end of the Bridge Mall.

Over the last 50 years, this cradle of Ballarat between Mair and Dana Streets and east to Peel St has declined into a socially and economically depressed precinct.

Little Bridge St provides a dreadful first impression for visitors entering Ballarat.

The economic and social disruptions outlined above are driving urban transformation in cities around the globe.

Many are engaging in what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called "creative destruction".

Paris is beautiful because in the late-19th century it widened avenues, created many of its great public places and its distinctive architecture.

All was made possible by a lot of creative destruction.

Twice in my lifetime, buildings on a whole city central block in the Melbourne CBD have been demolished to create what is now Federation Square.

Why can't we emulate this kind of purposeful action? Why can't we, as a community led by Council, scope and deliver a 10-year plan for a future-facing renewal of the CBD?

Where do we start? None of the buildings over the Yarrowee and along its east bank merits preservation.

The worst of them, Norwich Plaza, is a decrepit warren of empty shops - unsaleable and unleasable. Acres of asphalt cover the river and its banks to provide free parking on public land for ageing Coles and Woolworth supermarkets.

Presumably, the river and its banks remain in public ownership. Private property rights must be recognised.

If approached in the context of a transformative project, freehold owners in the subject area may welcome negotiated public acquisition of their "stranded assets".

Discussion could be initiated with Coles and Woolworths management on terms and time-frame for resuming the land they occupy.

They can be good corporate citizens; they have multiple other outlets and investment options around burgeoning Ballarat.

We can reclaim the river as the city's natural north-south axis with wide pedestrian and cycle promenades along its banks and south down its valley.

We can reclaim the ashphalted river flats, on the south-side of Little Bridge St at least, to create there a welcoming all-seasons, multi-purpose, central city park or square along the river promenade.

A shorter, less shop-saturated Bridge St with a more attractive Little Bridge St aspect can evolve in this environment.

And let's not fret about car-parking. Up to 10,000 people at a time made their way to the Alfred Hall and Coliseum without cars a century ago!

A quality plan for an urban project of this magnitude would surely qualify for Federal and State infrastructure funding.

We could do it if we raised our sights and aspirations. Some ask why: I ask why not?

Frank Hurley, Alfredton.

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