As a child growing up in the Glenorchy area in the early 90’s the Glenorchy Central Shopping Centre was the place my mother went to do grocery shopping.
At the time the centre had Purity (Now called Woolworths) which was my mothers choice for the family groceries, she was a member of the loyalty program which would reward you with money vouchers the more you spent in store.
The centre also had Chickenfeed which started with a small store in the centre but later moved to a bigger one once a clothing store closed down. This was the first Chickenfeed store in the state and was fantastic shop for a young boy with it’s many cheap toys available.
The highlight of a trip to Glenorchy Central was the small ice cream shop which was located where The Chicken Patch takeaway is now. As a child I had the choice of getting a ice cream or riding on the mechanical toy car ride that was outside Purity, Most of the time I would pick the ice cream. A friendly man ran the store and would throw on a extra scoop of ice cream for you at no extra cost. It was a sad day when the ice cream shop closed down, The shop space turned in a florist then a fish and chips takeaway before it was renovated into the current chicken shop.
The Purity had some competition from the Coles that was across the road until it was closed due to the newer and bigger Coles at Northgate opening up. When Coles closed the building was renovated into a Festival IGA supermarket. We shopped there a few times when they would have specials on some items but we stopped going after my mother bought a bag of multi pack chips only to get it home and find that rats had gotten inside and ate most of the chips. The IGA closed and the building was turned into the current Big W and a few smaller shops with the centre called Glenorchy plaza.
A Village Movie Cinema was built after some houses next to the Glenorchy Central car park and Chickenfeed closed down turning the centre into what it is today. You can still tell that the centre has been around a long time and you have to wonder if they will ever do major renovations to update it or maybe even bulldoze the site and re build it from scratch. The Glenorchy Central Shopping Centre will always have a lot of nostalgia for me.
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