Perth Voice Interactive

LIKE most light industrial traders around Leederville, Jim Ellis is moving out.

For 20 years he’s run All Suburbs Glass and Glazing from Carr Place, but now he’s sold up. The new owner plans to bulldoze the place and whack up units.

Mr Ellis, a 70-year-old native of England’s Birmingham, has seen a lot of changes to Leederville in two decades. He’d picked the site because it let him travel north and south of the river pretty easily. Back then it wasn’t much of a cafe strip and “cups of coffee were few and far between”.

“Leederville was not a desirable area,” he recalls. “It was a rough area, people used to go to Subiaco.

“You’d never have a beer at the Leederville hotel 20 years ago,” he chuckles. “There was always fresh blood on the wall from someone who’d been snotted! Now it’s a trendy place.”

Over the years the place was tamed, cafes jostled for position and the factories moved out.

Mr Ellis’s shop and three factory-style shops in the block have been bought by a developer believed to be based in China. Word is the new owner wants 50 apartments for the site.

Mr Ellis is a bloke who never leaves the house without cash in case he runs into a friend and wants to buy him a pint: he delivers the same sort of old-fashioned service at work.

He didn’t charge locals who took small bits of glass in for minor cuts and he’s proud of the apprentices he’s trained up and taken on full-time.

And while he’ll miss the community atmosphere, he’s philosophical about moving out of Leedy, acknowledging its industrial days are over.

He says the neighbours probably won’t miss the sound of the saw or fortnightly bin collections when a skip full of glass gets tipped, clattering and shattering, into a truck in the wee hours.

“It’s something that’s not viable in a residential area,” he shrugs.

by DAVID BELL