Valley Malls Advisory Committee Chairman Phillip Di Bella. "The barrier to activating the Valley is its hygiene and its safety," Mr Di Bella said. "We can't bring in schools to play music on a Monday to a Friday if it is not a clean or safe area." Mr Di Bella is no newcomer to business operations in malls. He is chairman of the Queen Street Mall Advisory Committee and, before Christmas, was appointed chairman of the Valley Malls Advisory Committee.

Since taking charge in the Valley, three committee members have been sacked. Mr Di Bella is frank and blunt, telling brisbanetimes.com.au that improving local business was the first step in restoring some pride in the Valley. "The buildings look like a disgrace. The owners of property in the Valley need to pull their fingers out and say they are going to fix their properties and make them look appropriate," he said. "We don't want them to spend a fortune, we just want them to repaint if it needs repainting. They leave food on the tables for half an hour at a time so pigeons breed and dump droppings everywhere

"We want them to take some pride in it." He took aim at several Brunswick Street Mall businesses, describing one well-known business as "shocking". "The awning is broken, the awning is dirty and has never been cleaned, they leave food on the tables for half an hour at a time so pigeons breed and dump droppings everywhere," he said. Valley businesses have started to receive letters from Mr Di Bella asking them to lift their games. And he is also putting council's cleaners on notice.

"I can walk down Queen Street Mall - which is one of the number one places in Australia - at any time and see rubbish," Mr Di Bella said. "What I am interested in is the response time of council of getting that rubbish fixed? "We know it is going to be dirty at 11pm because people are going to be drunk, buy the food, and throw it on the ground. "But is it still dirty at midnight, or has it been cleaned up by 11.30pm? And then by midnight, is it a mess again?" Research had been launched into how frequently the mall was cleaned, if extra bins were needed, or if it was people's behaviour that needed to change first, he said.

Mr Di Bella said he was unsure whether more bins would resolve the issues. "We have a photograph in the mall, where there is a wheelie bin in the middle where four people are sitting - the wheelie bin is less than two metres away from them," he said. "Yet all the rubbish is on the floor around them. More bins is not the answer." However, he said he would be open to trialling local councillor David Hinchliffe's idea of extra bins. "I am going instruct council to put an extra 10 bins on the mall on a Friday and Saturday night," he said. "Put covers on them, make [patrons] look again."

If the rubbish remained on the ground, Mr Di Bella said the answer was to change people's behaviour. The need to upgrade the Valley's public toilets was more complex, and Mr Di Bella said he was impressed by what has happened in Melbourne. "In Melbourne, you are not allowed to open a cafe or a restaurant unless you have your own toilets," he said. "Why is it the responsibility of the precinct to provide public toilets? "Is it not the responsibility of all the traders who benefit from the direct trade of all the people in their area?"

Cr Newman said he would await recommendations from VMAC before he took further action. However, he said 200 people had been fined for littering in the Brunswick Street Mall since January and that the cleaning budget for the Valley Mall had been increased by 37 per cent this year. Loading "We have already put on more teams to patrol and clean up rubbish as well as provided more bins," Cr Newman said. "The CBD is much cleaner as a result but there is always more that could be done and we have concerns about the Valley."