Artarmon Massage Centre’s brothel plan for Hampden Rd decided in court

An application for a brothel has ended up in court over fears a family friendly suburb could end up something more akin to Amsterdam’s red light district.

A Sydney massage parlour has lost a bid to permanently operate a brothel in a north shore town centre after a lodging a legal challenge against council planners and prompting concerns it would turn the area into a “sex hub”.

The Artarmon Massage Centre took Willoughby Council to the Land and Environment Plans last year after its plan to operate sex services at its 84 Hampden Rd site was rejected on planning grounds.

The $40,000 development proposal included a new disabled waiting room, ramp, ensuites, a reception area, and would have involved staff members working from 8am to 2am, seven days per week.

The development would have been located at 84 Hampden St.

The council objected to the parlour’s proximity to other brothels in the shopping strip along with “sensitive” sites in the town centre including a church, mosque and a primary school.

Residents also raised concerns there were “too many brothels and massage parlours in the Artarmon retail strip” with one submission claiming the proposal could turn Artarmon into a “red light district”.

The Land and Environment Court appeal centred on the massage parlour’s 15m proximity to another brothel which the court heard breached the council’s planning laws requiring brothels to be at least 100m apart.

The business would have operated in the Artarmon town centre.

Artarmon Massage Centre owner Yi Feng described the 100m control as a “line in the sand” and “there was little difference from say 80m or 120m in a shopping strip of some 300m in length”.

The centre said a “strict application of the planning law” could result in the business vacating the site and therefore negatively impact the amenity of the town centre.

The council argued the vacancy of the existing shop would be “preferable” to “creating a cluster of sex services premises” in the shopping strip which would “not coexist in harmony” with established uses.

A plan of the development.

The court heard submissions from a social planner hired by the council who said brothels can have a “neutral or positive” effect on town centres and “are not necessarily associated with increased crime”.

“Opposition to sex services premises often stems from an assumption that such premises encourage criminal, immoral and anti-social behaviour which is not the case,” the submission stated.

Land and Environment Court commissioner Philip Clay, in his findings, said the site’s proximity to other brothels had potential for “a change in character in the local centre including the creation of a sex hub” and that there was insufficient planning grounds to justify a breach of planning laws. 

“(It would) likely become notorious to the regular users of Artarmon local centre that the premises are sex services premises,” he said.

Artarmon Village Chamber of Commerce president Nick Logan, who runs Logan Pharmacy, had mixed thoughts on the decision but said he understood why residents had opposed the development.

“From a business perspective we haven’t seen it as our business to challenge or reject new businesses in the strip but I think Hampden Rd shops need redevelopment and until that happens there’ll be cheap available upstairs areas above the shops used by brothels,” he said.

“Artarmon doesn’t want to be a red light district and ideally the brothels would move back to the industrial area where they belong.

“That said the ones we’ve got in the town centre haven’t impinged on anyone else – it’s just the reputation (of brothels) that upsets people.”