Picture this: Eastside Business Awards finalists announced
Among this year’s finalists for the Eastside Business Awards are a gin distillery, a belly dance school and an art gallery.
With business awards, you can expect to see a finalist list dominated by the professional services, manufacturing and scale ups. This is not the case for the publicly voted Eastside Business Awards finalists.
The awards recognise and celebrate the achievements of the more than 7600 small businesses in the City of Norwood Payneham & St Peters, and since 2020, over 58,500 votes have been cast.
In a cost-of-living crisis where purchasing of big-ticket items is put on hold, the finalist list features the kind of places where the small and personal luxuries are found and customer service is high.
The Eastside Business Awards finalists for the Best Arts & Culture / Entertainment Experience are Art Images Gallery and Belly Dance Arabesque.
Art Images gallery manager Olivia Dryden said the Norwood business, which is celebrating 40 years of operation, has a strong connection to its local community.
“As soon as someone comes through our doors and sees how beautiful this gallery space is and get to know the staff, they just keep coming back,” she said.
“Whether it’s to see the exhibitions for something nice to do, or to purchase, both are just as important to us.”
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The gallery holds regular Fringe and SALA exhibitions, both of which receive subsidies from the council to cover registration costs.
City of Norwood Payneham & St Peters Mayor Robert Bria said the council has a multi-pronged approach to encouraging growth and, since 2019, the average year-on-year increase in consumer spending in the city has been just over $100 million.
“If this trend continues unchanged, spending will go from $1.9 billion in 2024 to $2.5 billion by the end of 2030,” Bria said.
“However, I strongly believe that with a sharper focus on key elements of the local economy there is no reason we should not be aspiring to reach $3 billion in annual spending by the end of the decade.”
That multipronged approach, he said, includes implementation of The Parade Masterplan, retaining Glynde and Stepney employment zones, growing and value-adding to the “flourishing” health care sector, and increasing population density in strategic locations such as Kent Town.
“Our city has a great economic story to tell, especially given that since August 2024, Creditor Watch has ranked Norwood Payneham & St Peters as the number one Council in Australia for having the lowest risk of business failure,” he said.
Bria called The Parade “the engine room” of the Norwood, Payneham & St Peters economy and “the CBD” of the eastern suburbs.
“Norwood accounts for 42 per cent of the total annual spend in our city, 57 per cent of supermarket spend, 48 per cent of dining spend and 37 per cent of health care spend, which underlines its importance to the local economy,” he said.
“Of course, it helps to have Timeout rank Norwood as the 35th coolest neighbourhood in the world.”
The stock room and gallery space of Art Images. Photo: supplied
Art Images Gallery’s current exhibitions feature the quirky handmade vessels of local multi-disciplinary artist Violet Cooper and paintings by Melbourne artists Aidan Weichard and Amanda Ketterer.
Dryden said the gallery’s location on the western end of The Parade is “fantastic”, with it having several complementary home and interior businesses close by.
While most sales are from a five-kilometre radius, around one in ten are from interstate and overseas.
The gallery represents more than 100 local and Australian artists and offers art rentals and corporate print sales, with printing done in Adelaide and framing onsite.
“People love that fact that when they’re buying something, it’s local when it goes up on their walls.”
When asked, Bria agreed that the city had a good mix of consumer-facing businesses, but there are other industries he would like to see expand.
“The Council’s Business and Economic Development Advisory Committee, which I chair, is taking serious steps to engage key stakeholders as it works towards the next iteration of the Council’s Business and Economic Development Strategy due to expire next year,” Bria said.
“We are acutely aware that to grow the economic pie in Norwood Payneham & St Peters, we have to ramp up our engagement with key players in government and the private sector to harness the incredible opportunities unfolding before us through strategic partnerships.
“I am ‘cautiously optimistic’ following a recent meeting with Planning Minister Nick Champion about the future of Glynde and Stepney, which are important to the city’s food and beverage manufacturing base.
“There is no doubt we have some hard work ahead of us but I believe we have the fundamentals right to build on our city’s credentials as a safe pair of hands in which to do business.”
The winners of the Eastside Business Awards will be announced at the awards ceremony on 30 April 2025.
Eastside Business Awards 2025 Finalists
