{"id":43293,"date":"2026-07-03T01:53:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T01:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/43293\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T01:53:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T01:53:07","slug":"lord-mayor-backs-melbourne-after-laurent-claims-cbd-is-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/43293\/","title":{"rendered":"Lord Mayor backs Melbourne after Laurent claims CBD is “dead”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Melbourne\u2019s Lord Mayor Nick Reece has defended the city centre as an \u201cincredible\u201d place to do business, after the founder of the Laurent bakery empire said violence and drug use are \u201ckilling\u201d the state capital.<\/p>\n

Speaking to the Herald Sun<\/a> this month, Laurent Boillon revealed plans to scale back Laurent\u2019s retail footprint from 17 stores to 12, with its CBD outpost among those to close.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t be bothered, it\u2019s too hard\u201d, Boillon said, reportedly pointing to elevated rents, overheads, and antisocial behaviour working against businesses in the city centre.<\/p>\n

The \u201clevel of violence and drugs\u201d is \u201ckilling Melbourne\u201d, he told the masthead. <\/p>\n

Boillon, voted the EY Entrepreneur of the Year for 2025,<\/a> is not the only business leader to fear for trading conditions in the state capital.<\/p>\n

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Speaking to the same paper last year, chef Jessi Singh said his CBD restaurant Daughter in Law was broken into dozens of times in 2025 alone.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Data from the state government\u2019s Crime Statistics Agency<\/a> shows criminal incidents recorded in the City of Melbourne council area jumped by 24.4% to 34,556 in the year ending March 2025.<\/p>\n

The number of reports dropped by 3.2% in the year to March 2026, but criminal incidents recorded per 100,000 people remained higher than the long-term average.<\/p>\n

Responding to Boillon\u2019s comments and concerns about crime affecting inner-city traders, Lord Mayor Nick Reece told SmartCompany that inner-city safety is a \u201ctop priority\u201d.<\/p>\n

The City of Melbourne hired 11 community safety officers (CSOs) in 2025 to monitor and de-escalate troubling behaviour in hotspots across the CBD.<\/p>\n

While those CSOs do not have full powers bestowed to Victoria Police officers, they have the authority to issue infringement notices, and in high-risk circumstances, perform citizen\u2019s arrests until badged police officers arrive.<\/p>\n

The council has since doubled the number of CSOs and expanded its CCTV camera network, in what Reece called the \u201cbiggest safety investment in Council\u2019s history\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\u201cBusiness owners and workers tell me every day that our CSOs are making a real difference \u2013 supporting vulnerable people and preventing antisocial behaviour,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

City CSOs have conducted more than 7,300 interactions since 2025, or an average of 50 per day.<\/p>\n

The Lord Mayor also pointed to recent honours, like Time Out\u2018s designation of Melbourne as the world\u2019s most livable city in 2026, as evidence it remains \u201can incredible place to do business\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpend and visitation numbers continue to smash records, while our shopfront vacancies are among the lowest of any Australian capital city,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

At the state level, laws introduced in 2025 create new offences for assaulting or threatening to assault customer-facing workers, with penalties stretching up to five years\u2019 imprisonment.<\/p>\n

The law creates summary offences for verbal abuse against workers, with the courts capable of handing down sentences of six months behind bars.<\/p>\n

The state government has also introduced more protective services officers in suburban shopping centres, in response to an alarming spate of violent incidents.<\/p>\n

With rising overheads and concerns over violence and drugs convincing Boillon to cease trading in the CBD, the Herald Sun reports the Laurent retail business will turn its focus to shopping centres further afield.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Melbourne\u2019s Lord Mayor Nick Reece has defended the city centre as an \u201cincredible\u201d place to do business, after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[33607,260,29204,33608],"class_list":["post-43293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-melbourne","tag-laurent-bakery","tag-melbourne","tag-melbourne-cbd","tag-retail-vacancy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}