Thursday nights in Crown Street Mall were once the domain of bored teenagers - smoking, congregating and strutting their stuff in front of rival groups in the otherwise empty space.
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But any visitor to the same strip in recent weeks will have seen how much Thursday night shopping in Wollongong has changed.
Since late January, dozens of Eat Street Markets stalls have lined the centre of the mall, drawing thousands of visitors to eat empanadas, pierogies, tacos and other street foods from around the world.
The effect the weekly market has had on the city's main shopping hub is clear from a new set of Wollongong City Council figures, which showed more than 8000 people moving through the mall on Thursday nights.
The figures, collected last month, also show 1016 people stayed and spent time in the mall, while 79 per cent of people surveyed by council staff went there specifically to visit the markets.
The council did not collect data for visitor numbers on Thursdays before Eat Street Markets began, but has counted people visiting on a Wednesday night for comparison.
On a typical Wednesday evening between 5pm and 10pm, 1482 people were recorded moving through the western end of the mall (entering and leaving at the Keira Street end).
On Thursday evening, 8118 people were recorded at the same location.
Market organiser Kirrily Sinclair said she wasn't surprised with the results, attributing the success to the strong sense of fun and community the markets had promoted.
"What does surprise me is the distance people will come - we have people driving from Shellharbour, Kiama, the Sutherland Shire and even Campbelltown," she said.
"We have fantastic stallholders, and such a multicultural selection of food, which people love.
"But I think it's mostly that sense of community - when you get that many people together the atmosphere is palpable and, in this online era, I think people really crave the idea of connecting and eating together."
In the past two years, the council has invested millions of dollars into revamping Crown Street Mall, Keira Street and shopfronts along Crown Street.
It has also introduced smaller policy changes, and the council's economic development manager Mark Grimson said he believed these changes had given the private sector confidence to invest in the city.
"The council has made a lot of investment in the Crown Street Mall, and it's about encouraging people to see the CBD as a meeting place," he said.
He said people are now starting to see the CBD in a different light, as trendy and a place where people are comfortable to spend time.
"We're overcoming some of those traditional perceptions people had of the mall and the city."