Perth Voice Interactive

THE “Prince of Flesh” is spearheading a campaign to set up night markets in Inglewood.

Mondo’s Vince Garreffa wants the suburb’s neglected laneways brimming with food and art stalls.

The legendary butcher, who served Prince Philip a snag on a recent Royal visit, is recruiting local business owners to form an Inglewood business network.

It would work with Stirling city council to progress the markets and look at other ways to improve the suburb.

“Inglewood is a sleeping giant and has lots of space and land to work with, unlike further down Beaufort Street in Mt Lawley where it is clogged and packed with traffic,” Mr Garreffa says: “Improving lighting in the area would be a start and make it safer and more conducive to night time markets and other activities.

“We also need signs to make people aware that they can park in bus lanes at night when they want to go out to a restaurant and socialise.”

“Inglewood is a sleeping giant and has lots of space and land to work with”

He says the Inglewood association will complement the Beaufort Street Network, which he believes is focused on the Mt Lawley-Highgate end.

The markets are part of a wider push by Stirling council to realise the full potential of a 2.8km section of Beaufort Street—known as an “activity corridor”—that stretches from Walcott to Salisbury Streets.

Around 70 people turned out to the Civic Hotel Monday night for the first in a series of meetings about improving the street. Speakers at the “charrette” included Californian architect Stefanos Polyzoides and Melbourne urban designer Chip Kaufman.

Beaufort Street is currently being widened as part of a trial to create a bus route that will ultimately extend through Perth and to UWA and the QEII medical centre. The year-long roadworks have irked some traders (“Trading pains,” Voice, March 29, 2014).

Cr Terry Tyzack says consistency in road signage through Mt Lawley and Inglewood would make it easier for drivers to know where they could park and for how long.

Stirling council looks set to lose Inglewood to a merged and enlarged Bayswater-Bassendean super-council under the Barnett government’s controversial boundary reforms.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK