One Standard Across a Danks Street Retail Precinct, Waterloo

The recurring problem: nobody owns the shared space

A mixed precinct — a design showroom, food operators, a providore, a gallery, a studio office — usually ends up with each tenancy arranging its own cleaner over the years. Several contractors, several standards, several sets of hours. None of them holds the arcade, the shared bathrooms or the rear service yard, because none of the individual leases makes it unambiguously anyone's job.

The consequences are predictable. Grease walks out of the food tenancies' back doors and across the arcade floor every night, where it sits. Shared bathrooms get cleaned by whichever tenant complains loudest that week. The service yard accumulates flattened cardboard, broken pallets and crates nobody claims. Tenants start invoicing each other for rescue cleans, and whichever retailer has customers walking the full length of the arcade becomes the loudest voice at every building meeting.

The common first instinct is to appoint a cleaner for the arcade alone. That leaves every other contractor on site and solves nothing at the source.

How we scope it

• One agreement, one supervisor, written demarcation. Every square metre of the building is assigned in writing — tenancy, shared or landlord — before any cleaning starts.
• Shifts split by trade. Food operators and providores run a post-close shift; showrooms, galleries and studio offices a pre-open shift, in line with our standard Waterloo retail cleaning and showroom cleaning programs.
• Grease handled at source. Food tenancy exit paths are degreased nightly as part of their own scope rather than treated as an arcade problem — the approach set out on our cafe and restaurant cleaning page.
• A dedicated shared-space pass. Arcade floor, shared bathrooms, entry glass and the service yard are a daily pass timed between the two tenancy shifts, with a weekly arcade machine scrub and a quarterly hardstand pressure wash.
• Waste sorted properly. Cardboard flattening and stream separation are written into each tenancy scope, and the service yard is cleared and set up with defined areas.

What the building ends up with

The deliverables are a written demarcation document covering every square metre, one supervisor for the whole building, a fixed itemised proposal with each tenancy and each shared area priced on its own line, and month-to-month terms ending on 30 days written notice. Consolidating usually brings individual tenancy costs down while funding the arcade, bathrooms and service yard that nobody was paying for. Upper-level office floors can be added to the same agreement under our Waterloo office cleaning program. Pricing context for a comparable precinct is on the cost guide, and our second Waterloo case study covers a Lachlan precinct residential tower.

Danks Street precinct — common questions