Sailing, pets at the beach, Street fair in New Lambton and hugh League match NZ beaten by Aus, there was little time left for serious issues this weekend.

Back doors and terrace houses that became office space and a legal precinct, as in lawyer.   For some reason all this activity seems destined to move to the Civic area.
It is evident that some areas in the city become more popular than others and businesses like to moove into the action but there is still scope for numerous nearby vacant properties to join in the momentum instead of more new buildings if clever and bold ideas were employed.
Cars and pedestrians have non stop turn taking in Steel Street now that new shops have created more activity. 

Behind the scene.

Change is constant. In King Street, a row of terraces, home of everyday Novocastrians, became shops. Retailing declines and maybe, homeowners will return again to the old terraces.
Commercial activity in the city has freedom to abide where it thinks fit. No particular entity is in control, I imagine.  To movers and shakers: go on! radicalise yourselves and find clever  arrangments that facilitate the use of our empty city buildings.
At the same time as a brand new shopping centre is squeezed onto a city site, empty disused premises, just one block distant, are left to rot. Can planning exert pressure on commerce who display immunity to the surroundings and ignore what we have here.
Wastefully, commerce just doesn't get it when it comes to recycling building stock and the overall amenity misses out on a golden opportunity. The high costs of adaption become part and parcel of developments.  The move to Honeysuckle left a few big casualities in the CBD and is bad exmaple.
Certain radical penalities might be applied to discourge the duplication of shops and offices.  Radical yet prudent limitation of suburban developments before consolidation of what we already have is the wildest dream and a red rag to a bull.  Image the outcry.
Good as it is, it takes more than opening up crafty shops in response to an impending influx during a festival.
We are not alone, cities everywhere grapple with urban renewal. Try more inventiveness along with pressure.

Yass Firewood Supplies, Yass.  And bagged kindling and bagged coal.

A timber jinker.

Firewood.

I am all for community activism but in my opinion this is just faux green martyrdom by selfish, self-important baby-booming chardonnay socialists and their over-indulged progeny.

Surely this comment is wide of the mark! On line comment to the Herald on the subject of fig trees.