They are the self-proclaimed mad gamblers: ordinary people with dreams of making a mark in the business world. Only they chose Australia’s flood capital to do it.
Twelve months after one of our worst natural disasters, Lismore town center is a patchwork of bustle and desolation. Some retailers are lavish, some catatonic, and others closed their stores forever, leaving only the buzzing flies.
However, in this city with no flood insurance, no reliable flood warnings, no meaningful flood mitigation works, there is hope.
The occupancy rate of the CBD is now almost 60 percent, including the buildings facing the street and the upper floors. Before the flood, it was floating about 90 percent. This was 38.3 percent six months after the flood.
New entrants are opening businesses or buying cheap buildings to join pre-existing retailers who have literally dragged themselves out of the mud to start over.
It’s a big gamble in this town.
John Stewart is one of those who dare to dream big. The founder of the three-year-old Living School wants to open a new campus in one of Lismore’s high streets by August.
He joins the sole proprietors, corporate partnerships, corporations, real estate funds, government agencies and non-profit organizations that are sinking serious money into the Lismore floodplain.
Dairy giant Norco is rebuilding its ice cream factory on the banks of the Wilsons River. The cooperative will contribute $59 million to the project, with an additional $34.7 million and $11 million in federal and state funding. Detached Lismore Square shopping center has refurbished its devastated site and is almost fully let again. Likewise, its smaller cousin Lismore Central is undergoing a $15 million overhaul that will include retractable escalators in case a future flood threatens. Westlawn spent $2 million repairing his five-story building that attracted new major tenant Social Futures, bringing 120 staff to the CBD.
John Stewart, of Lismore’s The Living School.Credit:Elise Dewin
Stewart, a former principal of the Tudor House in the Southern Highlands, bought a dormant rural department store, McLeans Brown and Jolly, just before the 2022 flood, with the intention of creating a secondary school for up to 160 fee-paying students from years 5 to 8.
However, after the disaster, Stewart and the school board debated for months whether to proceed with a $6 million staged regeneration of the 123-year-old Woodlark Street building. They pledged again.
“I know what people say: Crazy John Stewart. I get the emails,” he says.
“We know there will be future floods. We have assessed the risk and we feel the responsibility of going back to our hearts outweighs the risk.
“We want to be an important future hub of the Lismore community and help that community cope with the floods.
“Everyone is going to be in trouble because of climate change (across Australia). We need to see Lismore as an opportunity, not to give it up anytime soon, but to see how we can adapt and support it.”
Fifteen years 10 students get internships to work on the reconstruction. The multi-story department store will be stripped to concrete and hardwood with removable waterproof cladding for easier cleaning, with elevators and hoists to raise equipment above the 2022 flood level. Part of the roof is removed to bring sunlight into the building. An internal rainforest will be planted to aid in post-flood clean-up.
The school will be redesigned to accept floods that come in and, just as importantly, quickly leave.
They are given ample opportunity to test their plan.
Twenty-nine major floods – 9.9 meters or higher – have inundated downtown Lismore since 1870. After a 10.65 meter high levee was built in 2005, only three floods have entered the CBD. The 2022 disaster – a record 14.37 meters – was two meters higher than the previous largest recorded events in 1954 and 1974.
Lismore is steeped in its European history, which from 1842 became a place to cut precious cedar wood and raise dairy and beef cattle. A town around the highest navigable freighter harbor on the north arm of the Richmond River, now the Wilsons River.
The city took root around the origin of the river and grew outward in fits and starts, ruled by the whims of shepherds and the surrounding valleys.
Modern Lismore is a regional city, a vast area that spans two worlds. Half of the residents, most of the business, industrial and public buildings and cultural institutions are connected to the historical bottom of the river valley, 10 meters above sea level. The other half lies atop a plateau 130 meters to 170 meters above sea level, east of the central business district.
The University and Base Hospital (outside the floodplain), the two major shopping centers, Lismore Square and Lismore Central, as well as regional government offices, servants and most of the industrial estates (all in the floodplain) serve the entire Northern Rivers area of nearly 300,000 people.
Now the weather is evolving: Lismore is Australia’s first climate city.
Lismore Mayor Steve Krieg knows the price required to do business there. The disaster of 2022 shattered him.
Before the flood, Krieg and his wife Julianne owned two cafes, La Baracca and Ristretto, downtown. Both were rental properties. With three children, the couple lived in a house next to La Baracca. They lost everything.
“It would have been very easy to walk away,” he says. “We had sold our family home to keep businesses afloat after the 2017 flood, and we were saving for a new mortgage.
“We were eligible for business grants, but also had to spend tens of thousands of dollars of our savings to get it back.
“We closed Ristretto, but continued with La Baracca. Given my position (as mayor) I couldn’t look this city in the eye when we walked away.”
However, Krieg admits that during recent renewal talks he was unable to sign another five-year lease on La Baracca and the attached house. He didn’t have the confidence.
“This city is awaiting the final CSIRO report (expected late next year) on long-term mitigation solutions and whether the NSW and federal governments will protect the CBD,” he says.
“We should be the test case for the rest of the nation… building back safer, smarter and more sustainably.
“But for now, we’re holding our breath.”
Cafe owner Bill Sheaffe, his wife, Dr. Ros Irwin, and grandchildren had held their breath long enough.
They closed down Caddies, which had been operating in the town center for 30 years, and a coffee roaster in South Lismore. Sheaffe misses the company, but does not regret their decision.
“People were always at their best when they went for a cup of coffee,” he says. “I really miss that… but we couldn’t afford to (both businesses) reopen. It would have cost us $200,000 to $250,000.
“I was devastated (by the flood) but the whole city was devastated. It pulled Lismore up one stop.
“We had already experienced nine floods, but none of that. I was at the end of my working career and had no intention of burdening our family with that kind of debt.”
Chris Harley, the director of Ray White Lismore, says commercial buildings have lost about 20 percent in value across the region since the floods. The drop in downtown Lismore had been greater.
However, Harley says the market still hasn’t reset itself.
“We’ve seen some real companies take the gamble and buy up real estate,” he says.
“But the other investors are quite clear that they prefer not to rely solely on the weather gods. They want to know how much mitigation reduces the risk of flooding or softens the blow.”
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Elton Cummings’ family has long owned three major CBD properties. He has consolidated his and pre-existing tenants into one building and is bidding his time on the other Molesworth Street buildings until “the government makes some decisions”.
When asked what is going on in the Lismore CBD, he laughs lavishly.
“Mate, they’ve got a giant punt,” says the 70-year-old, “We all have, really.
“You count on the government coming up with a serious mitigation solution, or with a policy decision to build upstairs where the first two floors are parking garages or easy-to-vacate shops or that there won’t be any major flooding in the next 10 years.
“If it comes off, the value of your building will increase and the income will increase.
“I wish I was 20 or 30 years younger. I would like to buy two or three properties cheaply. Look, it might not work out, and you have to be young enough to start all over again. But there is a chance that you will become a multimillionaire.
“It’s a gamble… but gee, it would be fun.”
And he starts laughing again.
