Greyfields - Page 4
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 25: After the Crisis
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Mark Welker
FIVE MONTHS LATER, a yearlong renovation of the Heart of the Park Shopping Centre is finished. The brown tiles are gone; the leaks are fixed. The sagging roof has been torn off and replaced with vaulted skylights. The floors squeak like a hospital ward. Disinfectant hangs in the air. The fluorescents are steady and white in the same way you think of God's bathroom being white. The shopfronts are lathered in wet reflection.
The anchor now has express lanes, clean tiles, a health-food section and golden lights over the bakery. But the checkouts are piloted by the same sour faces. Only the girl at the cigarette counter is smiling.
Of the old faces that waited behind the glazed shopfronts, there is none that I recognise. New faces, pulled into smiles, wait eagerly by the counters. The shopkeepers seem optimistic that shoppers will return, but only the anchor is still doing regular business.
Perhaps it's the mix. Two hairdressers now compete for business; a small greengrocer battles defiantly with the anchor. At the entrance, a franchise coffee shop attracts a small crowd of middle-aged businessmen pawing their newspapers, but few venture inside. At around three, the quietest time of the day, the centre has a high-noon flavour. Shop owners are caught up in the retail silence, and stare across the empty hall at each other.
Four weeks later the bookshop has gone, its window paint so fresh I can hardly see the scar. ♦