Jace Tyrrell

IT’S dear old Jace Tyrrell’s last week at the New West End Company after 20 years, as he’s heading for a new life Down Under.

I first met him when he was a young whippersnapper in the communications wing back in 2003.

He had come from Australia to work for what was at the time the capital’s first Business Improvement District (BID), promoting the interests of hundreds of businesses in the West End.

He smartly rose up the ranks, and by 2016 he was its chief executive.

Others may have encountered him over the years in several other roles: he also worked as a director of Westminster Property Association, chair of the Association of International Retail and served as vice chair of the Soho Neighbour­hood Forum.

And now he is set to become the inaugural chief executive officer of Australia’s first ever contemporary BID.

For those not up to speed, BIDs occupy a strange, quasi-autonomous place in public life.

A levy is imposed on all businesses in a particular area and then the cash is used in ways that are sometimes hard to quantify.

Cynics say that while smaller businesses resent the extra bill, the cost to larger chain companies is negligible and so BIDs – and the levies – carry on in perpetuity. Supporters, however, say the money helps pay for improvements to an area which entices in new trade; in essence work that local authorities no longer have the resources for.

In a press release about his appointment to the new job back in Sydney, he is credited with “overseeing growth in the famous West End from a £6bn to a £10bn turnover precinct, attracting 220 million visitors a year pre-Covid”.

All this by just one chap? No wonder the New South Wales premier Dominic Perrottet no less has said that “attracting Jace Tyrrell back home to Sydney is a wonder­ful endorsement” for the waterfront.

It’s been a long, long time since he used to ring the West End Extra incessantly with “stories” but Harrington wishes him well with his return to Oz nonetheless.