MCU14/0106 Appendix J - Retail Needs Assessment

4           Centre Roles and Usage Patterns
This section provides an overview of the existing retail and business centres within the Noosa Civic trade
area. It provides a summary of the approximate amount of floorspace in each centre, broken down by
specific uses, a review of the current mix of uses in each centre, and a description of the current role and
function that each centre plays in the overall network of centres.


4.1         THE NOOSA PLAN FLOORSPACE USE DEFINITIONS
The Noosa Plan defines uses and use classes in subsection 2.11 Dictionary. The defined primary uses
include agricultural uses, business uses, community uses, infrastructure uses and residential uses. The
Noosa Plan employs the nesting of land uses so that:

    a primary use includes use classes;

    a use class includes uses based on performance and potential level of impact;

    a use in turn is defined; and

    a diagram for each primary use is included to assist explanation of the nesting construction.

For the purposes of the Noosa Civic development application, the types and quantum of relevant
business and community uses in the Noosa Civic trade area was surveyed. The Noosa Plan defined
uses and use classes relevant to this report are outline in Appendix B.


4.2         DEFINITION OF RETAIL FLOORSPACE
It is important to note that the retail business use class as defined in the Noosa Plan varies from the
industry standard definition of retail floorspace as used by Urbis and most other retail economists.

The definition of retail uses, as typically defined by Urbis, has been developed with reference to the ABS
definition adopted for the purposes of past Retail and Services Censuses, the Australian and New
Zealand Standard Industrial Classification system (ANZSIC), with some minor exceptions due to retail
property industry reporting standards (e.g. Shopping Centre Council Australia, ‘Reporting Guidelines’).

For the purpose of this analysis, each individual tenant in each of the main centres has been assigned a
use class based on the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification system (ANZSIC)
published by the ABS. In turn, each ANZSIC class has been categorised as retail or non-retail according
to standard retail property industry classifications.

The ANZIC system is designed to assign all business entities to one of 19 industries, based on their
predominant activity. It is structured hierarchically with industries at the top level (e.g. Division B - Mining
or Division G -Retail Trade). Each Division contains a number of sub-divisions, groups and classes (e.g.
Subdivision 41 - Food Retailing is within Division G - Retail Trade; Specialised Food Retailing (Group
411) is a group within Subdivision 41 – Food Retailing; Fruit and Vegetable Retailing (Class 4122) is a
class within Group 411 - Specialised Food Retailing).

Notably, Urbis includes cafes, restaurants and takeaway food services as ‘retail’ even though ANZSIC
includes these uses in Division H - Accommodation and Food Services. This is appropriate, in our view,
as cafes, restaurants and takeaway food stores are shopfront uses that rely on household expenditure,
and which are usually found within centres of all types.

A full concordance of ANZSIC groups and classes with Urbis retail categories is outlined in Appendix C.

Appendix B outlines the retail business uses as per the Noosa Plan and also stipulates if the specific use
is included in Urbis’ definition of retail, and hence is defined as retail for the purposes of this report.




URBIS
NOOSA CIVIC - RETAIL NEEDS ASSESSMENT DEC 2014 MASTER - FINAL                       CENTRE ROLES AND USAGE PATTERNS   33