Goodna retailers still struggling
Business in Goodna is yet to return to normal eight months after the January floods.
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- Shops in Goodna are trying to attract customers back to their businesses.
Business in Goodna is yet to return to normal eight months after the January floods with the upgrade of the Ipswich Motorway adding further frustration for retailers.
According to Danny Moore, owner of the Goodna Meat Mart, trade is still slow.
“Still to this day it [trade] is not recovering to where it should be.
“I find there is a lot of local people who were in their houses that aren’t in their houses now. That’s affecting business 100 per cent,” he says.
“There are two to three hundred families that aren’t back in their homes yet. That’s a 1000 people that would otherwise just be walking up the street, going to the local shops.”
Dean Behrens, the owner of Goodna Day and Night Pharmacy, agrees. “The trading is not what it was before. If you go across the other side of the highway people are just starting to move back in now.”
Local business owners believe that the ongoing upgrade of the Ipswich Motorway is keeping shoppers away.
“This highway is a bit of a mess here at the moment. Blocking another exit now is really just killing it around here,” says Wayne Corbett, owner of Wayne’s Tyre and Mechanical in Goodna.
Motorists wanting to get to Goodna have been forced to take detours through Redbank and Gailes. The Department of Transport and Main Roads closed the Goodna Exit on the Ipswich Motorway in July this year and expects it to be closed until January 2012.
Despite all the problems, Mr Moore is confident that business will soon return to normal thanks to the local community.
“We were fortunate in that we had some good tradies and some good people that wanted to get us up and running again.
“It’s probably going to be another 12 months until we get back up to where we were. I’m glad I’ve got some good customers. If you look after your customers, they’ll always be back,” says Mr Moore.