This Melbourne suburb has been on the decline, but a new future beckons
SOURCE:ABC Australia|BY:Larissa Ham
Richmond's Victoria Street, once a buzzing area home to dozens of restaurants and grocers, has seen better days. What can be done to bring it back to its bustling best?
Restaurant owner Christopher Nguyen says he "feels sorry" for Victoria Street, a once-buzzing hub of Vietnamese restaurants sometimes known as Melbourne's "Little Saigon" or "Little Vietnam".
"It's very bad now," the owner of one of the street's longest-running restaurants said.
"All the customers say, 'What's wrong with this street? Why is everything closed?"
Diners at Victoria Street institution Vinh Ky. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)
According to a report by consultants Colliers, 22.4 per cent of shops in the street, which forms the border of Richmond and Abbotsford, are vacant.
Amid the graffitied roller doors and tattered awnings, "for lease" and "free rental" signs are everywhere. The neglect — especially at night, when the street is much quieter than it used to be — is showing.
And business owners admit it can feel unsafe, particularly near the corner of Victoria and Lennox streets, where people tend to gather before or after visiting Victoria's only supervised injecting room.
The Medically Supervised Injecting Room (MSIR), housed in North Richmond Community Health's premises in Lennox Street, began as a trial in 2018 and has safely managed more than 11,000 overdoses since.
Nearly a quarter of the shopfronts on Victoria Street are vacant. (ABC News)
However, drug use is still a huge issue in the area, with the Yarra City Council area recording the highest number of heroin-involved overdose deaths in Victoria during the decade to 2024, with 173 deaths in that period, according to Coroners Court of Victoria figures.
It's not the sole issue facing the street though, with demographic shifts, the economy and changing consumer tastes all playing their part, traders say.
Some businesses have also been slow to embrace change, such as using social media.
Such factors have resulted in a street that's a far cry from its heyday, when there was a flurry of colourful activity as streams of visitors arrived from around Melbourne to buy fresh produce and Asian groceries, and take their pick of cheap eats.
Yarra City Council is now working on a revitalisation of Victoria Street, which promises to make it "greener, more attractive, and safer for everyone", according to its website.
Demographic shifts, the economy and changing consumer tastes have all contributed to the area's decline. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)
However, the plan doesn't include the supervised injecting room, because that's run by the state government.
This financial year, the council has allocated $900,000 to its multi-year revitalisation project, including what it says are "high impact quick wins" such as graffiti removal and garden bed renewals.
It has also received $250,000 in state government funding to make the area more vibrant.
A street in need of a new identity
Andrew Phu, who grew up on Victoria Street and is a member of the Victoria Street Business Association, says the street has "lost its touch".
The 34-year-old spent much of his childhood living in a nearby social housing tower, after his grandparents arrived in Australia as refugees from Vietnam in the late 70s, following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.
Andrew Phu spent much of his childhood in his family's restaurants along Victoria Street. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)
His family owned several restaurants along the streets from the 1980s through to about 2007, including Van Van, which operated under the street's clock tower.
Mr Phu believes Victoria Street started losing its identity and going downhill in the 2010s.
"It was just the overall gentrification [of the surrounding area], house prices going up, the refugees moving out of the commission housing into normal housing," he said.
He believes one of the keys to resuscitating the street is creating a new identity that no longer focuses just on Vietnamese restaurants, but rather a mix of cuisines and types of businesses.
Graffiti is rife along Victoria Street, but efforts to clean it up have often proven futile. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)
"We've got to find a new identity for it, because the Vietnamese people, a lot of them, have moved to the western corridor and the northern corridor," he said.
"So they're living out that way — Thomastown, Lalor, St Albans, Deer Park.
"If you go down St Albans to Alfrieda Street, it's like Richmond back in the 90s."
He says while some people have given up on fixing Victoria Street, he believes progress can be made over the long term.
"If we don't start, it's probably going to get worse," he says.
"The vacancy rate in Victoria Street is 22 per cent, but if it gets into the 30s, that's when you're in a lot of trouble."
A long way from the 'golden times'
Ha Nguyen, the business association's president, says in its "golden times" — from the late 90s to early 2000s — the street had 30-odd Vietnamese restaurants.
"That's not going to be happening [again] any time soon," Mr Nguyen, who runs a cooking school on the street, said.
"They need to have a little bit of a readjustment what kind of industries are going to come."
Some believe more residential development in the area, such as apartments, would help. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)
Mr Nguyen said encouraging more residential development — so long as the right infrastructure was in place — would also help the street, and tie in with the state government's Plan for Victoria, which includes the target of 44,000 new dwellings in the Yarra municipality by 2051.
As for the divisive supervised injecting facility, Mr Nguyen believed the state government should also explore other options, such as providing more rehabilitation services.
However, the state government rejected calls for the facility to be relocated.
"This is a critical service that has managed more than 11,000 overdoses and saved at least 63 lives," a spokesperson said.
A plan to avoid the street becoming 'Detroit'
Yarra City Council Mayor Stephen Jolly, speaking at a recent community forum about the revitalisation project, said there were only three ways Victoria Street could go.
"The first one is that it gets worse and worse and worse," he said.
"It turns into somewhere like the central city of Detroit or LA South Central. Nobody wants that."
Mayor Stephen Jolly says revitalising will not be easy, but it needs to be done. (ABC News)
The second, he said, would involve getting rid of public housing and gentrifying Victoria Street into a "mini Camberwell".
"We want the third option, and it's really, really difficult," he told the meeting.
"What that means is we want successful businesses on Victoria Street, making money and having lots and lots of customers."
Cr Jolly added that the area should work to hang on to public housing tenants and the Vietnamese community.
Safety, or at least the perception of it, is a big issue for the street. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)
"And we also want to make it safer for those people who are neither public housing tenants or business owners, who are thinking of moving into the area, of setting up other businesses there, with quicker red tape and a safe community," he said.
Others at the meeting presented ideas such as encouraging:
More apartments to attract young professionals
A focus on arts and more artists
More cooking schools
Start-up hubs
Pedestrian-only sections of the street.
Many spoke of the need to make the street a destination in its own right.
Bringing new life to faded shopfronts
Down the Hoddle Street end, furniture designer John Morgan is among the business owners bringing fresh life to the strip.
He runs a mid-century furniture shop that also acts as an art gallery and event space.
Furniture restorer and shop owner John Morgan is among a new breed of business owners in the area. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)
Mr Morgan, who previously operated in a laneway in Collingwood, was attracted to Victoria Street by the affordable rent and the exposure.
"It's busy. You've got the shopping centre right next door, the train station right there," he said.
"I really love this area."
Aside from some building problems at the start of his lease, and a customer's car being broken into out the front, it's been largely smooth sailing.
One of the first things Mr Morgan did was take off his security shutters to make the shopfront look nicer. It has worked in his favour, with no graffiti in three years.
To boost security and promote his business after dark, he leaves the lights on and has installed a small security camera.
Tattered signage on Victoria Street. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)
He'd love to see more businesses on the street take pride in their facades.
"It doesn't have to be this big expensive thing,"
Mr Morgan said.
"But there are sunshades that are ripped, covered in soot, torn signs and old sticker posters everywhere.
"It really hides the business I think, but it also looks like either there's nothing there or it looks like a place you'd want to avoid."
Some parts of Victoria Street look more cared-for than others. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)
He points out that areas such as Brunswick and Collingwood also have their fair share of graffiti.
"It's just the businesses below are busy, clean, used, operating — they take pride in their business side at the bottom, and then you don't notice the rest," he said.
As for people using drugs in the area, Mr Morgan understands the situation can be confronting for people who are not used to it, but having worked in disability support in housing towers, he is empathetic.
A dining institution in the thick of it
In Christophen Nguyen's restaurant, the decor is old-school and the food is delicious.
Christopher Nguyen owns one of the longest-running restaurants on the street. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)
Diners still stream in for the dumpling noodle soup, amongst other hot favourites.
Mr Nguyen said little has changed in the restaurant in the past few decades, with three generations of some families becoming regulars over the years.
However, around 8am each day, it also gets busy outside his restaurant, with people injecting drugs.
The restaurant retains much of its original charm. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)
He says the cohort is "not really a bother to anyone, but a lot of people don't understand".
"To me, they are sick people, but [if] you come from somewhere [else], you don't think that way," he said.
"You're scared. You don't want your children to see that."
Aside from a new location for the injecting room, Mr Nguyen believes anything that can be done to beautify the street is a step in the right direction.
Three generations of families have dined at the Victoria Street restaurant. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)
Lives saved every day
North Richmond Community Health CEO Simone Heald understands many people would prefer the Medically Supervised Injecting Room (MSIR) was elsewhere.
"Let's not pretend that it's not confronting, having an MSIR within an area that you live," she said.
"It is a concern for neighbours, and I don't want to diminish that at all."
Many argue that the safe injecting room on Lennox Street, located next to a primary school, needs to be relocated. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)
However, Ms Heald said the issue was not the facility itself, but rather the drug trade that has existed in the area for a very long time.
"I think that's something that gets forgotten in some of the conversations," she said.
"The MSIR was put where it is because of the drug trade and the overdoses that were happening around Richmond."
Simone Heald says the safe injecting rooms provides both healthcare and "social kindness". (ABC News: Kyle Harley)
Often, she said, problems in the area — including a person who died of natural causes about a year ago — are wrongly associated with the MSIR.
Ms Heald said she wished the conversation could focus not on the facility's location next to a school, but on how the community can work together to address the area's illicit trade.
The centre has recorded 600,000 visits since 2018, and saved countless lives every day, Ms Heald said.
It has also provided 2,500 bloodborne virus tests and helped almost 400 people start treatment for Hepatitis C.
Perhaps just as importantly, it has also provided social care and kindness.
"We have these community members that are pretty much ostracised by society for the choices that they're making, and they come to a place where they are safe," Ms Heald said.
"People care for them, people accept them. So there's that social kindness as well for them they don't get for some parts of the day."
Ms Heald said the community health centre was also considering options to provide a safe space for people to gather, other than at the corner of Victoria and Lennox streets, which could be "unnerving" for passers-by.
The Victorian government spokesperson said everyone had to right to feel safe in their community.
"That's why we have made significant investments to improve safety and amenity around the MSIR, including more cameras, better police coordination and expanded outreach services," they said.
Pho restaurant battles through
A few hundred metres away, Hung Vo and his family run one of the street's busier restaurants, serving up affordable pho.
His parents, who arrived in Australia from Vietnam in 1981, opened their first restaurant on the street about 25 years ago, out of necessity, Mr Vo said.
Hung Vo (second from right), pictured with his father Tan, mother Hien, sister Kim and his niece Estelle. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)
"My mum had already been working at a restaurant in Footscray, and my dad had just been retrenched — he used to work at the old Dunlop factory," he said.
Mr Vo said problems on Victoria Street had gotten worse recently, but his family has chosen to "battle through".
"We've been here so long, we're able to do what we do," he said.
He believes improved lighting, CCTV and an increased police presence are among the answers.
And whilst the Vietnamese heritage of the street is important, he believes the street has to evolve, by introducing a wider mix of businesses.
He points to nearby Bridge Road, which was once a discount fashion mecca but has had to change with the times.
Hung Vo with his three-year-old niece Estelle. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)
After all, in the 1950s and 1960s, before the wave of immigrants from Vietnam, Victoria Street was different again — comprising many immigrants from Italy and Greece.
A small garden fosters a sense of pride
Alan and Yvonne Perkins live just around the corner from Victoria Street.
When they arrived four years ago, Ms Perkins was surprised by the way some locals spoke about the area.
"I have never been in a place where people come and introduce themselves … with the words 'people are terrible around here'," she said
Yvonne and Alan Perkins believe everyone must do their little bit to help the community prosper. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)
"If you come at it with the view that everyone's terrible, then you don't want to communicate with people.
"And that's part of the problem is that kind of social isolation is not good for you. It's not good for the community that you live in."
So far, the couple have enjoyed living where they do and accept the area for what it is.
Safety is not a huge concern, though Mr Perkins will meet their adult daughter, who lives with them, at the train station if she's coming home at night.
To help foster a sense of community pride and stop rubbish being dumped, the pair have created a small garden out the front of their house.
A small garden outside their house has sparked community connections. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)
At the beginning, Ms Perkins said, plants were being stolen. She was tempted to give up, until a forklift driver stopped by to admire the one flower left standing.
The garden has now become a source of connection, and prevented most rubbish being dumped there, she said.
The pair believes everyone needs to do their little bit — and have the difficult conversations — to help Victoria Street thrive.
"I actually feel we're kind of at this difficult stage, but when you get into a difficult state, there's a turning point," Ms Perkins said.
For Hung Vo, any possible solution must involve looking to the future.
"The main criteria is we have to look forward, we can't be looking back," he said.
"The whole purpose of revitalisation is to turn Victoria Street into what it could be, not what it was.