Perth Voice Interactive

BACK when he was a private citizen trying to get the Beaufort Street Festival off the ground, John Carey says he walked into Vincent city council and staff told him “you won’t be able to do it”.

Shortly after, a suspicious councillor walked the streets trying to find out who exactly these Beaufort Street Network young turks were.

Four-odd years later, David Doy is the guy the council brought in to make things easier for town centre groups to get things off the ground with a “facilitate, not regulate” attitude.

“People are always looking to improve their area, and rather than complicating it, it’s ‘how can do we do this?’” he says.

Called a “place manager”, he’s part-researcher, part-fixer, and solves little problems for traders or locals living around the town centres. When restaurants complain of red tape on alfresco laws, he gets the council to slash it.

When he sees Vincent has a clumsy busker licence system but no buskers, he gets it scrapped. When Bayswater umms and ahhs over new markets, he pounces, to let them set up in Mount Hawthorn.

He’s also helped set up trader and residents’ groups for town centres that don’t already have them (eg, North Perth Local and the Mount Hawthorn Hub), providing an avenue for locals to get involved in their community.

That town centre group model’s now being copied in Stirling and Victoria Park.

Highlights from the second 100 days of place management:

• Beaufort Street trees, furniture, the Mary Street Piazza, the big artistic pavement project,  getting the art market going;

• Leederville planter boxes, new olive trees, lighting and murals in dingy alleyways, with new seating and bins on the way;

• North Perth has 49 plane trees on the way (allergics prepare to cower), the big robot artwork’s been approved this week, and new old-timey markets are on the way for the Rosemount

• Mount Hawthorn’s got new trees, banners, entertainers and a makers’ market is on the way.

The yearly budget for the program is $94,511.

by DAVID BELL