IGA Mascot NSW

NATIONALNEW SOUTH WALES

The IGA is pictured shortly before the last panel of fencing blocking access from Church Street was erected.

In mid-June 2020 a 12-year-old high rise residential building, Mascot Towers, in Mascot Sydney was reported as having significant structural damage and deemed to be unsafe.After the closure of some three weeks, IGA Mascot continued to trade.

However, MGA Members and owners of the IGA on the ground floor of Mascot Towers in Sydney’s innersouth, Ward Mellick and Scott Hill watched on in early December, as a wall of fencing was built at the front of their store.

A spokesman for the Mascot Towers Owners Corporation said the fencing was erected to comply with the SafeWork notice and advice from its own engineers.

While remediation work was on hold and litigation was ongoing, the corporation had to ensure the building was safe.

‘Basically, they’re locking us out on Christmas Eve,’ Mr Mellick said.

Residents of Mascot Towers were evacuated in June last year after major cracks appeared in the structure, but businesses on its ground floor had continued to trade.

Retailers were blindsided when Mascot Towers Owners Corporation told them on December 10 that access to their premises would be blocked due to safety concerns.

A letter from the corporation’s lawyers said the tower facades were ‘leaning and unstable’, posing a risk to the public on the Bourke and Church Street boundaries.

The letter advised a SafeWork NSW notice would require the erection of hoardings and public access exclusion to avoid the risk of falling bricks and rubble. That gave Mr Mellick and Mr Hill just a week to clear stock worth $400,000 and inform 15 workers they had lost their jobs in the lead-up to Christmas.

‘To give us seven days notice to pack up a family business is just nasty,’ Mr Mellick said. ‘It’s cruel.’

In late December SafeWork NSW granted an extension to the required measures which allowed the retailers to remain open until January 29.

‘When it was January 29, I thought, “Oh my God, I’m just going to get throughChristmas and New Year with the family”,’ Mr Mellick said. ‘I thought January’s going to be tough, but I could focus on my wife and kids. I didn’t think we’d be in this scenario where we’re again fighting to save our business.’

As contractors began erecting fencing along Church Avenue, Mr Mellick and Mr Hill estimated it would reduce access to their IGA by 90 per cent.

Mr Hill said casual customers would not search for another way to get into the supermarket, which was now barely visible from the street. ‘People aren’t going to do it,’ he said. ‘It’s just going to be a mess. A mess to get in and mess to get out.’

Mr Mellick said he and Mr Hill had prepared for relatively normal Christmas trading, but were now facing big losses.

‘Being Christmas, you stock up in December and you back off in January,’ he said. ‘We started ramping up our orders again.

‘The worst thing is the perishables. Every day they lose value.’

Mr Mellick said some of the other six businesses below the towers could pack up and move, but his 500 square metre supermarket was fitted out with equipment worth $400,000.

‘We’re not going to find another site like this,’ he said.

Mr Mellick, who has two boys aged eight and six, and Mr Hill, who has a ten-yearold daughter, have run the IGA since 2016 and have 15 years left on their lease.

The supermarket has a bottle shop attached and Mr Mellick and Mr Hill, both 48, also have a coffee shop next door.

‘We’ve got a really good following,’ Mr Mellick said. ‘It’s a great community. We’ve got regular customers, and we’ve got a really good team.

Ward Mellick (far left) and Scott Hill (raising hand) out the front of their supermarke as the fencing is erected