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When state Labor MP Katie Hall steps outside her office and the heavy door clicks shut behind her, a confusing mix of carnage and cherished memories lies at her doorstep.<\/p>\n
Fewer than five minutes\u2019 walk from her electorate office is Nicholson Street Mall, where her grandmother used to take her to Forges, Footscray\u2019s premier department store.<\/p>\n
It was a time when people would dress up and make a day of visiting the tailor, the shoe shop and the locally revered Coles cafeteria.<\/p>\n
In those days, Footscray was a proud and beautiful place, Hall says.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s still proud \u2013 but now it has a volatile edge.<\/p>\n
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The former Forges site at Nicholson Street Mall in Footscray. Joe Armao<\/p>\n
Just beyond Hall\u2019s electorate office, a couple of hundred metres from the mall, posters are plastered on the hunched white shoulders of the Nicholson Street bridge.<\/p>\n
\u201cAvenge Abdifatah Ahmed,\u201d one reads, referring to a 35-year-old man police shot dead<\/a> in Footscray\u2019s CBD in April 2025. \u201cNo justice. No peace. F— cops.\u201d <\/p>\n Across the bridge is the Courthouse Hotel, its historic facade recently spruced up with fresh paint and warm lighting.<\/p>\n On June 7, a brawl broke out in the pub before spilling onto the street<\/a>. Millenium Nyolic, 25, was stabbed in the chaos and died in a nearby laneway<\/a>. <\/p>\n Related Article Orange leaves crunch under an older woman\u2019s feet as she walks up to the pub. Hall points to a spot on the woman\u2019s path. The MP was attacked<\/a> here on Nicholson Street, too, a few metres from her electorate office. \u201cJust up here,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n On June 25, a man came running past her before he collided with two women walking down Nicholson Street. One of the women, an office worker returning from lunch with a sandwich in her hand, fell to the ground.<\/p>\n The man lined her up before kicking her in the head \u201clike she was a soccer ball\u201d, Hall says, her face grim.<\/p>\n A man of no fixed address was charged with assault<\/a> .<\/p>\n The MP takes off her hand brace to reveal a long bluish scar trailing down her ring finger. She needed emergency surgery after the man headbutted her when she intervened, knocking her over and damaging the tendons in her hand.<\/p>\n Related Article She winces as she moves her fingers gingerly up and down, practising the motion.<\/p>\n Walking now onto the pavers of Nicholson Street Mall \u2013 the section between Barkly and Paisley streets, closed to car traffic back in 1971 \u2013 the old Forges building can be seen, now largely derelict and vacant.<\/p>\n A large metal roller door seals off an entrance beside an immigration law firm and the adjacent Snap Fitness, the only occupants on the strip.<\/p>\n Four doors down, a postie stuffs letters into the mailbox of a business beside another roller door, shuttered at 3.15pm on a Wednesday.<\/p>\n The pizza joint opposite \u2013 a local favourite \u2013 is boarded up after its windows were smashed, and the remaining open restaurants and businesses look out over the mostly barren space.<\/p>\n The pedestrian mall was Melbourne\u2019s first and among the first in Australia, but now the MP wants to reopen it to cars.<\/p>\n Forges was the anchor of this place before the likes of Highpoint shopping centre opened, profoundly shifting the retail landscape, Hall says. After a change of ownership \u2013 and more than a century trading \u2013 the department store site was sold off to developers<\/a> in 2009.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n City of Maribyrnong Mayor Mohamed Semra who, with two council colleagues, was confronted in the mall by a man with a knife on August 5, is considering the member for Footscray\u2019s pitch as among ideas to revitalise its CBD<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt started to become about food, and we have the best food in Melbourne,\u201d Hall says. \u201cWe have beautiful small businesses. But the mall here has never really been the same since Forges closed.\u201d<\/p>\n Hall argues opening the mall to at least one lane of traffic would make businesses more accessible, with places to park directly outside them.<\/p>\n![\"Abdifatah](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0d35aca15fa5dddb8883c70e4a317d56e352d133.jpeg\")
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Woww Grocery owner Alex Embaye and friend Nyambol Muorter.Joe Armao<\/p>\n