As development of the Nicholas Street Precinct continues, it’s easy to forget the history of the inner city retail district, Ipswich City Square.
Councillor Marnie Doyle, chair of the Ipswich Central Redevelopment Committee, recently commented on this history, as well as Council’s longstanding goal to rejuvenate the city centre.
“Like many of you, I’d witnessed the slow and terrible decline of … our once thriving CBD,” Cr Doyle said on Facebook, on February 25.
“When the new council was elected in 2020, we faced complex decisions and difficult choices about these assets … [but we] embraced the opportunity …”As early as 1849, Benjamin Cribb opened a drapery shop on the corner of Brisbane and Bell Streets. Six years later, Cribb partnered with John Clarke Foote, and the pair revamped it as a department store called Cribb & Foote, selling everything from buttons to cars across its gradually expanding premises.
Various other stores emerged in the district throughout the following century, including a large Woolworths, Commonwealth Bank, and the North Star Hotel on the corner of Ellenborough Street — which later became the Birch Carroll and Coyle cinemas.
In 1972, Walter Reid and Co. purchased Cribb & Foote and renamed it Reids, although the refurbished store was short-lived, as an intense fire burned down most of it in 1985.
With a goal of rebuilding after the fire and developing it into a major shopping mall, Queensland construction co. Kern Corporation purchased much of the area in a cost-sharing agreement with state government during then-Qld Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s final year.
Approved by Council by 1987, plans were settled for the construction of the Ipswich Transit Centre, Ipswich City Square shopping centre, and Nicholas Street serving as a new Ipswich Mall.
The new Ipswich City Square opened on August 19, 1987, but despite the promise of a bustling commercial attraction, many stores suffered financially and either downsized or closed between 1990 and early 1991.
By 1991, Kern Corporation collapsed and needed to dispose of its assets, in September, 1992, Singapore’s Memo Corporation purchased the site for $29 million, far below the $120 million cost of construction.
The centre continued to languish for more than a decade, with Memo Corporation looking to sell in October 2006 and unable to find a buyer for over two years.
Frustrated by the situation, in 2009, Council borrowed $45 million from the state government and purchased the Square, forming a commercial company, Ipswich City Properties, specifically for that purpose, and developed a 15- to 20-year plan to revitalise the area.
Good intentions aside, Cr Doyle said that this had reflected “poor decision making and lack of due diligence.”
Since then, though, the relatively new ICON Tower, built on the corner of Brisbane and Bell between 2011 and 2013, sold in 2021 for a record-setting $145 million. It stands as a beacon of hope for the old square, and a sign of future success.
