Cook and feast

Otao Kitchen – 393 Victoria St, Abbotsford. A cooking school where teams cook together, then sit down to share the meal. Christmas formats include a social class and a MasterChef-style team challenge, from $159 pp. 0408 217 899 · otaokitchen.com.au

The Victoria Street Passport is the street’s pocket guide for summer 2026–27: a free A6 booklet in English and Vietnamese that sends customers along Victoria Street and into its shops, collecting a stamp at every featured business.

Backed by

Who it reaches

Where it goes

Reach

Ways to take part

How it works for your shop

How to book

WhatsApp Ha on 0475 833 595 or email hello@victoriastreet.org.au with your business name, a contact person and your offer.

Sample 

Summary

Victoria Street has one realistic chance left to turn around, and it is this one. If the Victoria Street Revitalisation Plan is not funded and delivered in full over the next two years, the conditions that make recovery possible will not line up again.

About one fifth of the street's shopfront floor space is empty. Colliers put shopfront floorspace vacancy at 22% in April 2026. VSBA's own count on 15 October 2026 found 35 vacant shops out of 215, with 11 advertised for lease that day. Traders have warned that once vacancy reaches the 30s, a strip is in serious trouble.

For the first time, every piece needed for recovery is on the table at once:

• A plan: Yarra City Council adopted the Victoria Street Revitalisation Plan on 11 August 2026, with implementation starting in 2026/27.
• A reason to invest: the State's Plan for Victoria targets 44,000 new homes in Yarra by 2051, and Victoria Street is an activity centre earmarked for change.
• A cultural moment: the Plan marks the 50th anniversary of Vietnamese migration to Australia with a public art project.
• A trader base still standing: 180 businesses are still trading, including family businesses.

Each of these is time-limited. Developers will build elsewhere if planning certainty does not arrive. Long-standing traders cannot carry losses indefinitely. The anniversary will pass. A plan that stalls in its first two years loses the trust of the people it depends on.

VSBA asks the Victorian Government and Yarra City Council to:

1. Fund the Plan in full and publish the budget, including the State advocacy items the Plan names.
2. Establish the State-led Victoria Street Precinct Revitalisation Board within 12 months, with traders at the table.
3. Deliver a visible safety and amenity lift in the first 12 months: lighting, CCTV, cleaning and a coordinated policing and outreach presence.
4. Start the vacant shop program now, with a public target to cut vacant shops on the street.
5. Publish the baseline measures and report quarterly, so everyone can see whether the Plan is working.

The street today

About one in five shopfronts on Victoria Street is empty, on both the Colliers and VSBA measures.

The VSBA count is lower because it counts every tenancy, including upstairs offices and each tenant inside The Hive. Several large sites are empty, including 66, 210–212, 306–308 and 513–519 Victoria Street, each between 400 m² and 800 m².

The street's character has thinned. In its peak years, from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, Victoria Street had around 30 Vietnamese restaurants. Today it still has a strong core of Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese and Korean food, grocers, butchers and bakeries. Colliers describes a retail offer geared to food, liquor and groceries, and notes a cluster of vacancies on the north side between Regent Street and Hoddle Street.

Traders name the same problems again and again:

• Safety and perception of safety, particularly around Victoria and Lennox streets.
• Graffiti, roller shutters and tired facades, which make the street look closed even when shops are open.
• Quiet evenings, with fewer reasons to visit after dark.
• Planning uncertainty and fragmented ownership, which hold back investment in the buildings themselves.

How we got here

Victoria Street has been planned for, consulted on and upgraded for more than a decade, and vacancy has still reached 22%. Past efforts improved parts of the street but were never large enough, joined up enough or sustained enough to change its direction.

Three lessons stand out:

1. Streetscape alone does not fill shops. New paving and seating were welcome, but they did not address safety, planning or the business mix.
2. Small, one-off funding does not change a 1.6 km strip. Short grants deliver short projects, and the gains fade when the money stops.
3. No single agency owned the outcome. Safety sits with Victoria Police and the State, planning with Council and the Minister, and health services with the State. Without one table where these meet, the street fell between them.

The 2015 Masterplan noted that "a significant number" of shops sat behind steel roller shutters from 5.30 pm to 9.30 am. More than ten years later, the Plan is still proposing a roller door removal trial.

Why now

Five conditions have lined up in 2026 that have never lined up before, and none of them will last.

The Plan also contains the ideas traders have asked for over many years:

• Safety: CPTED lighting, CCTV registration, syringe collection, graffiti removal and a coordinated crime prevention response.
• Business support: a Business Concierge, a planner for business permits, a facade program and a vacant shop program with incentives for long-term vacancies.
• Activity: outdoor dining trials in side streets, a pocket park at Jonas Street and a marketing strategy for the street.
• Culture: in-kind support for the Lunar New Year Festival and a place identity study.
• Governance: a State-led Precinct Revitalisation Board with Department Secretary-level representation.

The ideas are no longer the problem. Delivery, funding and the State's part are.

Why never, if not now

If this Plan stalls, Victoria Street does not stay where it is. It slides, and each step down makes the next recovery harder and more expensive.

Vacancy feeds on itself. Empty shops mean fewer visitors, which means less trade for the shops that remain. VSBA traders have warned that once vacancy reaches the 30s, a strip is "in a lot of trouble". At 22%, Victoria Street is closer to that line than to a healthy strip. We lost 10 shops in a fire bombing.

The street's identity is at risk. Victoria Street is Melbourne's best-known Vietnamese precinct, and many of the families who built it have moved to outer suburbs. If the remaining traders close, the cultural reason to visit goes with them. Rebuilding a cultural precinct from nothing is far harder than supporting one that still exists.

Investors will go elsewhere. The housing target will be met somewhere. If Victoria Street cannot offer planning certainty, consolidated sites and a safe ground floor, development will go to other activity centres. The chance to bring thousands of new residents, and their spending, to the street will pass.

Trust will run out. Traders, residents and property owners have taken part in consultations since at least 2015. Another plan that is adopted but not delivered will make the next one much harder to support. With current tax increases and cost of living pressures, our traders may not survive in the next two years.

What must happen

VSBA asks for the Plan to be delivered in full, on time and with the State as a full partner. Each ask below has an owner and a deadline so progress can be checked.

Victorian Government

Yarra City Council

What VSBA will do

• Share the VSBA trader database (215 shops, updated October 2026) to build the vacancy baseline and track change.
• Connect landlords of vacant shops with the vacant shop program.
• Deliver the Lunar Festival, the Moon Lantern Festival and the Clocktower Community Market as regular reasons to visit.
• Take part in the Revitalisation Board and the Council working group.
• Report back to traders every quarter in English and Vietnamese.

Measuring success

The Plan will be judged at its two-year review, around 2028. VSBA proposes these public targets so that everyone knows what success looks like.

If the targets are missed at the two-year review, the Board and Council should reset funding and actions rather than wait for the end of the Plan.

Sources and data notes

• Victoria Street Revitalisation Plan – Your Say Yarra: consultation dates and adoption on 11 August 2026.
• Draft Victoria Street Revitalisation Plan, May 2026: priorities, actions and State advocacy items. The Plan was adopted with amendments, so check details against the final version.
• Colliers, Victoria Street Revitalisation Plan – Context Analysis Report, April 2026: 22% shopfront floorspace vacancy.
• ABC News, 2 January 2026: 22.4% vacancy, 2025/26 funding, trader and Mayor comments.
• Victoria Street Streetscape Masterplan, adopted 15 September 2015.
• Victoria Street consultation, 2017.
• Economic development in North Richmond.
• Yarra City Council – Victoria Street: Council's annual ground-floor vacancy audit.

VSBA data: The VSBA trader database counted 215 shop records on Victoria Street on 15 October 2026, including upstairs offices and each tenant of The Hive. It shows 180 trading and 35 vacant. 27 businesses recorded as closed have no street address and are not counted. Proposed targets and deadlines in this paper are VSBA proposals, not commitments by Council or the State.

The need

Victoria Street needs one coordinated camera network from North Richmond Station (Hoddle St) to Church St, covering every side street and laneway.

• Arson: the July 2026 fire at 409–421 Victoria St destroyed about 10 businesses.
• Graffiti and amenity: VSBA has run clean-ups under the Multicultural Trader Grant, and graffiti keeps returning.
• Clean-up costs: Council has spent a large amount on clean-ups, and this money will run out.
• Traders: 200+ mostly small, multicultural businesses with no coordinated coverage of side streets and laneways. 
• Events: the Lunar New Year Festival (run by VSBA since 1994), Moon Lantern and the Clock Tower Market need crowd numbers and live safety monitoring.
• Data: the precinct has no reliable visitor counts for marketing, sponsors or grant reporting.

The proposal

A trader-owned network of AI 360° cameras at 15–20 corner sites plus key hotspots, coordinated and part-funded by traders through VSBA over 3 years.

• One camera per intersection, mounted on a corner shop, covering Victoria St and the side street.
• Hotspots: Lennox St, North Richmond Station, The Hive Shopping Centre, Clock Tower carpark, Abbots Yard Lane, Post Office Lane, the 409–421 site and rear laneways.
• Smart features: people counting, graffiti and loitering alerts, clear footage for Police.
• Built to grow: traders can add cameras later on the same system.

How it works

Traders own the cameras and footage; Police get the footage; VSBA gets the numbers and event-day safety view only.

Funding

VSBA will apply for grants, with traders contributing towards their own sites. Final costs will be set through installer quotes.

Safeguards

The network protects privacy and community trust.

• No facial recognition, number plate recognition or audio.
• Footage kept 30 days and released only to Victoria Police.
• No footage used in marketing or posted online.
• Clear signage across the precinct.

What we are asking for

VSBA will deliver the network with traders. We ask our partners to back it.

Contact: Victoria Street Business Association · hello@victoriastreet.org.au · victoriastreet.org.au

Good news for Victoria Street traders and customers: Yarra City Council has agreed to continue the one-hour free parking arrangement for another year, through to June 2027.

The one-hour free parking initiative was introduced to make it easier for people to visit Victoria Street, Bridge Road and Swan Street, support local businesses and encourage regular turnover of parking spaces.

For Victoria Street, accessible parking remains particularly important.

Our precinct is made up largely of small businesses — restaurants, grocers, bakeries, health services, retailers and family-run businesses. Many customers come to Victoria Street for a quick meal, groceries, an appointment or to collect something from a local shop.

One hour of free parking gives customers an important incentive to stop, visit and spend locally.

Now traders need to help demonstrate its value

The next 12 months are important.

If Victoria Street traders want one-hour free parking to become a stronger and more permanent part of the precinct, we need good evidence about how it is working.

The Victoria Street Business Association encourages traders to:

• Tell us whether customers are using the free hour.

• Share customer feedback about parking.

• Tell us whether it has made visiting Victoria Street easier.

• Encourage customers to correctly activate their free parking session at the meter or through PayStay.

• Participate when Council or VSBA asks for feedback about the program.

Under the current system, customers must still start a parking session, even when staying for less than one hour. The free hour applies to eligible paid parking areas, with normal parking time restrictions continuing to apply.

Parking is only one part of revitalising Victoria Street

Free parking alone will not solve every challenge facing the precinct.

It needs to work alongside better safety, cleaner streets, stronger business promotion, events, investment, reduced vacancies and improvements to the overall visitor experience.

But making Victoria Street easier and more affordable to visit is a practical step.

The coming year gives traders, customers and Council an opportunity to better understand what works and what can be improved.

If you are a Victoria Street trader, please share your experience with VSBA.

The stronger the information we can provide about customer behaviour, business activity and parking usage, the better informed future decisions about the program can be.

Victoria Street Business Association

Moon Lantern Festival 2026 | Tết Trung Thu | Sunday 20 September

There is a moment near the end of every Moon Lantern Festival that is worth the whole day. The sun has gone, the stage lights come down, and a few hundred children start walking with paper lanterns they made themselves that afternoon. Some of the lanterns are lopsided. Most of them are held very carefully. Parents walk behind with phones out. That is the parade, and it is the reason we run this festival.

Tết Trung Thu is the mid-autumn festival, held on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month when the moon is at its fullest and brightest. In Vietnam it is a children's festival. Families gather, mooncakes are shared, lion dancers move through the streets, and children carry lanterns after dark. The stories told on the night belong to the moon: Chị Hằng, the moon lady, and Chú Cuội, the boy who held onto a banyan tree as it floated up into the sky and has been sitting under it ever since.

Victoria Street has been marking Tết Trung Thu for a long time, in shopfronts, in homes, and in the back rooms of restaurants. This year we are doing it together, in one place, in public.

What is on

The festival runs from 2:00pm to 7:00pm at Abbots Yard, 329 Victoria Street, Abbotsford. Entry is free and everyone is welcome.

Gates open at 2:00pm with stalls, lantern making, face painting and live music from Finbar. From 3:30pm the stage program starts with storytelling and prizes, then the Moonlight Dance, the AVWA traditional lantern dance, and a second storytelling session. Welcome and speeches are at 5:00pm, followed by show bags and a mini game called Pass the Moon.

The back half of the afternoon belongs to the lion dance at 6:00pm, Cool Kids entertainment at 6:20pm, and the lantern parade at 6:40pm. We close at 7:00pm.

There is also a youth activation at the Richmond end of the street, at the corner of Lennox and Victoria Street. Program and times will be confirmed closer to the day.

Come early if your child wants to be in the parade

This is the one thing worth planning around. Lantern making runs through the afternoon, and children carry the lanterns they make in the 6:40pm parade. If you arrive at six, there will not be time. Come in the afternoon, make a lantern, eat something, and stay for the walk.

Eat something you have not eaten before

Victoria Street is one of the great eating streets in Melbourne, and the stalls at this festival are run by the traders who make it that way. Bring cash, because some stalls do not take cards. Bring a jacket too. It gets cold on Victoria Street once the sun goes down, every year, and every year people are surprised.

If you would like to give a red envelope to the lion dancers, bring one. It is not expected and it is always welcome.

Why we do it

The Victoria Street Business Association runs two festivals a year. The Lunar New Year Festival in February is the big one, tens of thousands of people, the whole street closed. Tết Trung Thu is smaller and quieter and in some ways more important, because it is aimed at the children who will inherit this precinct and the elders who built it.

It has been a hard year on Victoria Street. Coming together in public, with food and lanterns and lion dancers, is not a small thing.

Bring your family. We will see you there.

Sunday 20 September 2026, 2:00pm to 7:00pm Abbots Yard, 

329 Victoria Street, Abbotsford 

Free entry, all ages, undercover venue hello@victoriastreet.org.au | 0475 833 595 | victoriastreet.org.au

Trăng Về Trên Phố Victoria

Lễ hội Lồng Đèn 2026 | Tết Trung Thu | Chủ Nhật 20 tháng 9

Có một khoảnh khắc gần cuối mỗi mùa lễ hội đáng giá cả ngày hôm đó. Mặt trời đã lặn, đèn sân khấu hạ xuống, và vài trăm em nhỏ bắt đầu bước đi với chiếc lồng đèn giấy các em tự làm buổi chiều. Có cái méo mó. Hầu hết được cầm rất cẩn thận. Cha mẹ đi phía sau với điện thoại trên tay. Đó là buổi rước đèn, và đó là lý do chúng tôi tổ chức lễ hội này.

Tết Trung Thu rơi vào ngày rằm tháng Tám âm lịch, khi trăng tròn và sáng nhất. Ở Việt Nam đây là tết của thiếu nhi. Gia đình quây quần, chia nhau bánh trung thu, đội lân đi qua các con phố, và trẻ em rước đèn khi trời tối. Những câu chuyện kể trong đêm đều thuộc về mặt trăng: Chị Hằng, và Chú Cuội ngồi dưới gốc cây đa.

Phố Victoria đã đón Trung Thu từ lâu, trong các cửa tiệm, trong nhà, trong bếp các nhà hàng. Năm nay chúng ta làm cùng nhau, ở một nơi, giữa cộng đồng.

Chương trình

Lễ hội diễn ra từ 2:00 chiều đến 7:00 tối tại Abbots Yard, 329 Victoria Street, Abbotsford. Vào cửa miễn phí, chào đón tất cả mọi người.

Mở cửa lúc 2:00 chiều với gian hàng, làm lồng đèn, vẽ mặt và nhạc sống của Finbar. Từ 3:30 chiều chương trình sân khấu bắt đầu với kể chuyện và phát thưởng, tiếp theo là múa dưới trăng, múa lồng đèn truyền thống của AVWA, và phần kể chuyện thứ hai. Chào mừng và phát biểu lúc 5:00 chiều, sau đó phát túi quà và trò chơi Chuyền Trăng.

Nửa sau buổi chiều dành cho múa lân lúc 6:00, Cool Kids biểu diễn lúc 6:20, và rước đèn lúc 6:40. Kết thúc lúc 7:00 tối.

Ngoài ra còn có hoạt động dành cho giới trẻ ở đầu Richmond, góc Lennox và Victoria Street. Chương trình và giờ giấc sẽ thông báo sau.

Đến sớm nếu con muốn rước đèn

Đây là điều đáng lưu ý nhất. Làm lồng đèn diễn ra suốt buổi chiều, và các em cầm chính chiếc đèn mình làm đi rước lúc 6:40. Nếu đến lúc sáu giờ thì sẽ không kịp. Hãy đến từ chiều, làm lồng đèn, ăn uống, rồi ở lại rước đèn.

Thử món chưa từng ăn

Phố Victoria là một trong những con phố ẩm thực lớn của Melbourne, và các gian hàng tại lễ hội do chính những tiểu thương đó đứng bán. Mang theo tiền mặt, vì một số gian hàng không nhận thẻ. Mang theo áo khoác nữa. Phố Victoria lạnh khi mặt trời lặn, năm nào cũng vậy, và năm nào cũng có người bất ngờ.

Nếu muốn tặng bao lì xì cho đội lân, hãy mang theo. Không bắt buộc, nhưng luôn được đón nhận.

Vì sao chúng tôi làm

Hiệp hội Doanh nghiệp Victoria Street tổ chức hai lễ hội mỗi năm. Lễ hội Tết Nguyên Đán tháng Hai là lễ hội lớn, hàng chục ngàn người, đóng cả con đường. Tết Trung Thu nhỏ hơn, yên hơn, và theo một cách nào đó quan trọng hơn, vì nó dành cho những đứa trẻ sẽ kế thừa khu phố này và những người lớn tuổi đã dựng nên nó.

Đây là một năm khó khăn với phố Victoria. Cùng nhau đứng giữa cộng đồng, với đồ ăn, lồng đèn và đội lân, không phải chuyện nhỏ.

Hãy đưa cả gia đình đến. Hẹn gặp mọi người.

Chủ Nhật 20 tháng 9 năm 2026, 2:00 chiều đến 7:00 tối Abbots Yard, 329 Victoria Street, Abbotsford Miễn phí, mọi lứa tuổi, có mái che hello@victoriastreet.org.au | 0475 833 595 | victoriastreet.org.au

At its meeting on Tuesday 11 August 2026, Council adopted the Victoria Street Revitalisation Plan. It runs for four years and covers safety, cleanliness, vacant shops, greening and the street's multicultural identity.

More than 580 people took part in the consultation between 14 May and 7 June. Two things stood out. Safety was the one issue almost everyone agreed on. And the in person conversations, which reached more traders and more Vietnamese community members than the online survey did, put more weight on food, identity and greening.

Year one commitments include visible safety improvements at Lennox Square by February 2027, amenity and safety works in Butler Park, an Identity Study, a trial roller door removal program, and advocacy to the State Government.

VSBA supports the Plan. Our job now is to hold the dates. Adopting a plan and delivering it are different things, and Council heard clearly during consultation that trust depends on follow through. We will report to traders on what actually gets delivered, and we will keep pushing the State Government items, particularly safety infrastructure and support for the businesses affected by the July fire.

If something in the Plan affects your shop, or you want to know what year one means for your block, 

contact us on 0475 833 595 or hello@victoriastreet.org.au