Of those who have been involved in Byron businesses over the decades, almost everyone knows Ed Ahern.
Besides being a longtime resident, he’s got a unique insight into the town, having run many successful businesses as a lessee, while also owning commercial property in the town.
Over the years, he says he has employed thousands of people.
Mr Ahern was also the town’s chamber president from 2006 through to 2011.
Now Ahern, who is nearly 70, says he is pulling up stumps on his CBD businesses and has sold his remaining commercial property.
‘I won’t be renewing the lease for the Village Grocer supermarket,’ he says of the 17/21 Jonson Street business, ‘And we will close the doors on June 27’.
He also recently sold his Bay Grocer property, which he bought in 2003. It’s located on the corner of Browning and Tennyson Streets and has been a popular alternative fresh food supermarket for locals.
‘A condition of sale was that the current tenants have a secure ten year lease’, he says.
While he is thankful for the opportunities and prosperity the town has provided him, he says the increasing pressures on running a business are making it hard to turn a profit, and now is the time to move.
‘I first arrived in Byron in 1978 from Brisbane, and rented a Wategos shack for $60 per week – though we needed to rent a room for $20 to make the rent!’ he said.
Onerous and prohibitive associated costs
Over the years, he has bought and sold many a home and commercial property, and even helped to establish Parkway Drive in Ewingsdale.
He says the main obstacles facing local business are the onerous and prohibitive associated costs imposed by all sectors of government.
‘Outgoing costs have reached a point where local business owners I know are freaking out. They don’t know how they will continue,’ he says. ‘Federal industrial relations laws, for example, with legislated penalty rates, put enormous pressure on employers’.
Regarding state government land taxes he says, ‘As a commercial tenant, land tax costs are passed down from the landlord, and make rents prohibitively expensive. The Qld government, for example, doesn’t do this’.
‘So when Covid hit, and a lot of commercial property was snapped up by Sydney and Melbourne investors, it put unrealistic pressure on rentals.
‘On top of that, Council has, for decades, imposed a hefty levee specially on Byron businesses. No other town pays nearly the same as Byron for doing business. This is applicable to outgoing costs for the tenant – such as rates at 200 per cent more in Byron Bay than any other town in the Shire.
‘For decades, Byron was a unique visitor experience.
‘Arguably, other towns in the region have now reached a level of similar visitor attraction, yet Byron is being unfairly slugged’.
Pay parking too costly
And while the business chamber initially supported pay parking for the town, he says it was equitable when it was around $2 to $3 per hour. The fee was raised to $5 per hour with time limits.
‘Now it’s $5 per hour, the cost drives visitors away. Many times, I have seen customers jump out of their flashy Bentley or Tesla to duck into the supermarket for a quick purchase, and they say that they don’t wan’t to park because it costs too much! I believe these issues should be addressed by Council if they are serious about supporting local businesses’.
The biggest change for the town – as most would be aware – is that increasingly the only retail stores that can exist are ‘loss leaders’ for multinationals. Their Byron stores can afford to take a loss because they make profits elsewhere.
Mr Ahern says, ‘Byron’s CBD has become a sort of an airport lounge, where you see high-end consumables on display, but they rarely get bought’.
‘Covid really hit the town hard, like it did everyone. With the borders closed, there was virtually no trading. We were even prevented from lying on the beach!
‘The economic recovery has been very slow’, he says, ‘and is nowhere like what it was pre-Covid’.
‘We had a good strategy after the party vibe in the early ’90s.
‘We attracted more sophisticated, high yield, lower impact visitors. There really should be an effort made to help local Byron businesses thrive, as they are the economic lifeblood of the town.
‘A prosperous town provides for professional skilled residents and services such as teachers, nurses, police and a healthy social fabric’.
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