The latest data show that Coronavirus has caused a huge blow to Melbourne's CBD, with the number of people working and shopping there plummeting from 1 million before the outbreak to 50,000 a day today.
Working from home has become the norm, skyscrapers have become "ghost buildings ", and many employees may never return to work in the city centre, because working from home makes it convenient for employees and reduces corporate costs.
A state government usually has 32,000 employees working downtown, but now there are only 1900.
The three buildings in the centre of the city new bank (ANZ), which used to hold 10,000 employees, now have only 700 employees in CBD.
Bank of Collins St used to have 1200 employees at its office, but now it has only 250.
Mayor Karp (Sally Capp) said Melbourne is facing unprecedented challenges.
The crisis prompted the mayor to form a new committee, which included business people Lindsay Fox and Elizabeth Proust、 social entrepreneur li li Chris Lucas, aimed at revitalizing the melbourne centre.
A council of mayors will work with states, federal government and departments to revive the city centre by increasing the population.
Both the state government and the city of Melbourne have begun discussions on how to achieve this. One proposed programme is to attract suburbanites to buy economic housing in CBD through the conversion of existing buildings for residential purposes, and the return of large numbers of students to the city centre is also on the agenda.
On average, Bourke St Mall traffic dropped 66% compared with the same period last year, while traffic at Southern Cross stations fell 88%.
Flows in Chinatown fell 60%, while Lygon St fell 37%.
Capp said most of the staff working in the office went home to work because Melbourne's travel economic was stagnant.
"It has a huge impact on cafes, restaurants, bars, retail stores and hotels ," she said. "
The Melbourne office vacancy rate is expected to rise to 14%.
The number of jobs in Melbourne's inner city declined by 10.6 percent, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data, and about 13,000 institutions applied for JobKeeper. in the city centre
A number of CBD commercial tenants are understood to have delayed negotiations for the extension or renewal of leases.
Last week, NAB" blocked the use of Docklands two buildings, while ANZ said 90% of office workers in melbourne were working remotely, and the company had a series of plans to determine whether and when employees could return to work.
The head of the state real estate committee Cressida Wall said it was too early to judge what the office market would look like.
