There is an old Billy Ocean song When the Going Gets Tough the Tough Get Going, which could have been written just for 2020. It is a mantra that Stan Liacos, the CEO of Queen Victoria Market, has had to apply in this most difficult of years to keep the biggest market in the southern hemisphere open and posed for recovery.

The irony is that last year, the Melbourne landmark had its best year in a decade, drawing over 10 million visitors. Tourists visiting Melbourne would include Queen Victoria Market at the top of their list of places to see in the city– it was the biggest magnet for tourists in the state.

In early 2018, Mr Liacos was appointed the CEO of Queen Victoria Proprietary Limited, the commercial company that administers the market on behalf of the landowner, the City of Melbourne.

He had been the director for Regional Development Victoria responsible for the Loddon Mallee area since 2015. Before that he had served as City Futures Director for the City of Greater Bendigo which he had joined in 2006. He currently divides his week between Bendigo where he lives, and Melbourne.

“My professional background has been urban design and town planning and I had also studied postgraduate marketing and management. Most of the roles (in my career) have been in planning, advocating and achieving beneficial change,” said Mr Liacos who was born and raised in the Melbourne suburbs of Williamstown and Brunswick.

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“I was invited (in 2018) to work back in Melbourne to run the historic Queen Victoria Market but what excited me most about the role was driving the long-awaited $260 million refurbishment and redevelopment of the market complex,” said Mr Liacos.

The re-development project which will take about five years includes the creation of a major big new basement car park, the creation of new city square, new operational infrastructure and restoration of our many historic listed buildings.

“My brief in 2018 was that things at the market were not trending well and I was tasked to turnaround our business fortunes and to lead positive change. I have recruited a new management team who are talented, committed and doing a great job,” he said.

“When you endure the COVID storm – which still has months to go – you appreciate the value of your staff.”

He began in 2018 with drawing more visitors to the market the numbers rose from nine million visitors in 2018 to 10 million the following year, a 15 percent increase..

“Most of the visits pre-COVID came as a result of putting on more cultural events and introducing more night markets. We also improved our marketing, promotions and support for many diverse traders.”

Mr Liacos said in 2019, 1.4million visitors were overseas tourists. Tourists, local and international accounted for 30 percent of visits and the remaining 70 percent were Melburnians and Victorians.

In March,2020, everything changed with COVID and the change was drastic.

“It is like you spent a year improving a house and doing something good and then a storm hits. It was and is gut wrenching.

Soon Queen Victoria Market was losing over $1million a month. Not only was the market in serious trouble but so were its 600 traders – there are about 40 Greek Australian traders mainly as fishmongers and deli shops in fresh food sector. Mr Liacos said that it was imperative to keep traders supported and onboard throughout the crisis, so his administration offered generous rent reductions and operations support.

“It was not only a commercial responsibility but a cultural one to keep going through the crisis. Queen Victoria Market is a part of the city’s heritage and we cannot afford to see it closing down,” said Mr Liacos.

Being a fresh food market primarily meant that it was also imperative for the city centre that it remained open during the lockdowns.

The only problem was that much of the base that relied on the market for its fresh food has been drastically eroded by the COVID lockdown restrictions – no office workers from many towers in the City Melbourne, no tourists and interstate visitors, no students, and less hospitality industry to be supplied.

“People living within 5km of the market (the range Melbournians could travel from their homes under the most severe lockdowns) accounted for about 25 percent of visitors to the market.

The other large municipal markets in Melbourne such as South Melbourne, Prahran and Dandenong Markets could draw on a far higher percentage of locals in range of their locations.

“From the moment the restrictions were in place, the focus was to keep our traders supported and financially viable.  The thinking was ‘if we lose the traders, we lose the market’.”

The rents went down substantially to help the traders. The City of Melbourne also helped and for the first time in its 142-year history, Queen Victoria Market has needed to borrow money to keep going through the COVID crisis.

“When COVID-19 hit, we have had to be agile and quick on our feet because the rules were seeming to  change daily. We had to put in cleaning and hygiene protocols and change the market layout within a matter of days. We have had to rely on our business acumen and operational cleverness to get through this.

“We all have had to be mentally tough, determined and resilient. Change happens when you have no choice,” he said.

“This has taken five years off my life, I have never been more exhausted. I particularly feel for the small businesses, the elderly in isolation and for the Year 12 and first-year university students whose year been blighted by this,” said Mr Liacos.

“We think we have one year more of major business adjustments (because of COVID) and we will take between five and 10 years to pay off our unforeseen debt. The crisis will also have an impact on central Melbourne which is a vertical city of offices and residences with most of those offices not working for months,” said Mr Liacos