Clover Moore unveils plan to return Sydney nightlife to its ‘Golden Age’
CLOVER Moore has unveiled bold plans to breathe new life into Sydney’s CBD with the Lord Mayor pushing to transform the city into a 24-hour entertainment hub and shake off its dull reputation overseas.
NSW
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THE NSW State Government has tentatively “welcomed” bold plans to turn Sydney’s CBD into a bustling 24-hour city in a move hatched to take the pressure off overburdened Newtown.
City of Sydney has unveiled its “Golden Age” vision for 24-hour shopping, bars and restaurants stretching from Darling Harbour, The Rocks, Hyde Park and Central, where trading ceases up to 5am.
Sydney – which regulates venue opening hours - has also mooted plans for bars and clubs in fast-rising Barangaroo to keep their doors open to revellers for an additional six hours, until 5am.
Racing Minister Paul O’Toole said while the state government regulates alcohol trading times it would consider ideas to bolster Sydney’s night time economy.
A spokeswoman for the minister said: “The NSW Government always welcomes ideas to bolster Sydney’s diverse and creative night time economy.
“As City of Sydney Council regulates trading times for businesses through planning controls, it already has the power to relax existing restrictions to allow later trading.
“The NSW Government regulates trading times for when alcohol can be sold, and it’s vital changes to these times would not increase risks of alcohol-related harm.”
Under the bold proposals, small bars and restaurants will stay open an extra two hours until 2am along Redfern Street, Redfern, King Street in Newtown, Union Street in Pyrmont, Crown Street in Surry Hills, Botany Road in Green Square, Macleay Street in Potts Point, and Glebe Point Road in Glebe, Hixson Road in Millers Point.
“This is partly to take the pressure off Newtown since the lock out laws, to make the city safer, more active and to get rid of queuing in hotspots like in Newtown,” said Lord Mayor of the City Of Sydney Clover Moore.
“It’s about setting up the CBD for the next ten years. We want a return to the Golden Age of 2007-2012 when the business district was a thriving bustling world-renowned centre before the lock out laws put a crimp in it,” she said.
She added: “The lock out laws were a comfort to come people, but not everyone - sophisticated residents of the CBD want places open late that they can walk to, tourists want to go out late, buy shoes late at night, shift workers want somewhere they can go to drink when they finish work.
“It’s time Sydney got moving again.”
The plans hatched in response to weeks of canvassing 10,000 residents have also led planners to draw up a detailed proposal for new 24-hour cultural precinct in the heritage warehouse in the industrial heart of Alexandria near McEvoy Street.
If approved it would house cinemas, theatres, restaurants and bars without the risk of upsetting residential communities with loud noise.
The detailed proposal will be considered at the City’s planning committee meeting next Monday and to full council on November 19.
If rubberstamped the proposal will be on public exhibition from November 27 to February 8.
Businesses will apply for new trading hours and, subject to trading performance, will be granted incremental two-hour extensions to trading every year.
City of Sydney Councillor Jess Scully said: “I want the choice to buy shoes at 2am if I want to.
“There are bars like the Ivy and Frankie’s Pizza open late in the CBD but people want more choice.
“The CBD used to be amazing, people will remember a cool bar that everyone went to re lock out laws called Goodgod – we want great places like that to come back, the golden era, as we remember it.”
The Daily Telegraph revealed a staggering 36,500 people now head to Newtown every Saturday night — thanks largely to tough liquor laws all but killing off the infamous Kings Cross.
City of Sydney officials say patronage in the inner west nightspot has jumped by about 65 per cent since 2012.
But while the change has been generally well received, the new crowds have brought a few problems. Assaults have risen 50 per cent in the last year and some in Newtown — which prides itself as a safe haven for the gay community — blame “homophobic bogans” from Western Sydney.
Where once The Cross pulled in crowds of 24,000 a night, Sydney’s city council estimates put a typical Saturday crowd at barely 4700 people last year. Two years previously it was closer to 8000.
Keep Sydney Open party spokesman Tyson Koh welcomed the proposed CBD changes as a step in the right direction.
“The psychological damage done to Sydney’s reputation as a boring city has been done – the BBC, CNN, New York Time and all over the world, the media reports backpackers and tourists are bored out of their brains in Sydney – but a 24 hour CBD is start,” he said.
“The state government hasn’t been pulling its weight in terms of reviving Sydney so anything that pushed for later opening hours is a welcome move.”