High Street is one of Melbourne's premier retail, lifestyle, wellness, and fashion destinations.
Place Activation Plan for Armadale
Economic Snapshot
April 2025 - September 2025 Economic Snapshot(PDF, 514KB)
What's happening in this precinct?
The highest spend category in High Street remains discretionary retail, underscoring the prevalence of fashion retailers in the precinct and accounting for approximately 63% of total spend. High Street has experienced a slow winter, with an overall fall in spend of 18%, which is mostly concentrated in discretionary retail. The only growth subcategory, cafes, grew by 19% ($381K) compared to the same period of last year, and accounts for 6% of total spend in precinct. Some of this overall decrease in spend may be attributable to the loss of a major anchor tenant in June 2024, so a new baseline will likely emerge for the precinct in the next 6-12 months. Despite some vacancies this quarter, shop vacancy levels are some of the lowest of Melbourne’s retail precincts, remaining below 10%. High Street continues to attract a strong visitor base, with 69% of total spend coming from visitors rather than residents.
The economy
- Daytime spend – $35.5M
- Night-time spend – $2.5M
- Total local spend – $38M (down 17.7% from last year)
- Total customers – 36K (down 26.3% from last year)
- Highest spend day – 21 June 2025
- Highest weekly spend day – Saturdays
- Spend origin – 31% residents, 69% visitors
| April - September monthly spend |
|
2024 |
2025 |
| April |
$8,004,087 |
$5,875,000 |
| May |
$8,085,177 |
$7,309,000 |
| June |
$7,328,904 |
$6,618,000 |
| July |
$6,723,872 |
$6,112,000 |
| August |
$7,934,469 |
$6,054,000 |
| September |
$8,256,376 |
$6,151,000 |
|
April 2025 - September 2025 top spend categories
|
|
Category
|
Subcategory
|
Total spend
|
|
Discretionary retail
|
Other discretionary retail
|
$3,658,000
|
|
Department stores, clothing and accessories
|
$20,264,000
|
| Tourism and entertainment |
Restaurants
|
$1,869,000
|
| Takeaway and fast-food outlets |
$466,000 |
|
Cafes
|
$2,429,000
|
Vacancy and occupancy
- Vacancies now filled – 3 since January 2025
- Changed tenancies - 4 since January 2025
- Newly vacant premises - 9 since January 2025
|
|
July 25 vacancy rate
|
Change
|
|
High Street
|
7.02%
|
Up 2.4%
|
Street activity
- Busiest days - Saturdays
- Busiest times – 1 PM
Visitor demographics
- Top customer age band – 25-34, 22.1% of visitors
- Top customer life stage – Young singles, 25.5% of visitors
|
Top 5 non-Stonnington spend origin locations
|
|
Caulfield – North
|
$1.2M
|
| Brighton |
$717.0K
|
| Caulfield - South |
$542.0K
|
| Glen Iris - East |
$539.0K
|
| Camberwell |
$371.0K
|
Data sourcing: Pedestrian activity data taken from Summer Snapshot due to hardware changes. Source: City of Stonnington Pedestrian counters. Spend data current as of 20 October 2025 and is subject to revisions. Sourced from banking transaction data. Vacancy data current as of July 2025. Source: Vacancy Review, prepared by E3 valuations and commissioned by City of Stonnington.
Previous Snapshots