NIMBYs are helping kill off our city, writes MATT CUNNINGHAM

IF we let NIMBYs shut down every development proposal, how can we expect anything but a ghost town? MATT CUNNINGHAM writes

We should be supporting businessmen like Dominic Wundke, writes Matt Cunningham. Picture: Keri Megelus

THERE hasn’t been much to get excited about in Darwin lately.

People are leaving, businesses are closing.

Last year the NT News counted almost 100 empty shopfronts in the CBD alone. You can’t even watch a film in the city anymore.

So it was with surprise and excitement I discovered a flyer in the window of an empty shop in an otherwise almost-completely empty shopping arcade in Nightcliff a few weeks ago.

“Dom’s Bar”, it said, with an explanation that Dom was planning to open a little wine and craft beer bar in the said premises.

Dom had done his best to explain what he was planning after a pink development sign had gone up in the window declaring a “hotel” was being proposed at this site.

But this was no “Rage in the Cage”-style beer barn, like the one that used to exist up the road at Lims. Dom’s plan is for a “small bar”, only open on Friday nights, Saturdays and Sundays, serving fine wine, craft beer, cocktails and tapas.

“I am bringing a new cultural hub into the heart of the neighbourhood,” Dom wrote in his flyer.

“A place for friends, quality food and drink ... and maybe a few food trucks.

“The focus is on local entertainment, music, art exhibitions.

“This is a new kind of venue for Nightcliff, a small bar with a cosy feel and a friendly atmosphere (think palm fronds and beautiful sunsets).”

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In the past few years I’ve watched as most of the shops in the Aralia St strip have closed.

There’s now little more there than the supermarket and the fish and chip shop.

At the beginning of this year the Asian Gateway restaurant was the latest business there to close its doors, after more than 30 years in operation.

Dom’s plan suddenly offered hope of a revival.

Perhaps one new business could spurn another. A cafe next door? Or a pizza shop? If you build it, they will come.

But sadly, no sooner had the bar’s flyer gone up in the window than the objections began rolling in.

The school council is objecting because the proposed bar is across the road from the Nightcliff Primary School.

This seems odd because the last time I checked school finishes at 2.30pm and the bar won’t open until 5pm on a Friday.

It will be shut from Monday to Thursday.

Concerns have also been raised that the 5pm opening time on a Friday is an hour before the After-School Care program closes.

But my children attend this program and on the odd occasion I’m unable to pick them up before 5pm they are usually the only ones there.

There’s no question the Territory has an issue with alcohol.

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But that issue plays out in the Mitchell St nightclubs and on the streets through the purchase of takeaway grog.

We should focus our efforts on addressing alcohol-fuelled harm where those problems actually exist.

Not by standing in the way of an entrepreneurs who want to help breathe some life into our suburbs.

Former treasurer Dave Tollner wrote this week that the NT had become the place where good businesses go to die.

But many are being thwarted before they even have a chance to be born.

And it’s not just the NT Government that’s to blame.

For a place that once prided ourselves on our can-do, have-a-go attitude, we are fast morphing into a bunch of whinging wowsers.

Of course, Nightcliff is the spiritual home of the NIMBY, so Dom was always going to face an uphill battle.

This is the same place where people voiced their furious opposition to a little cafe on the cliffs overlooking the ocean.

A place that’s now packed every time you go past.

And in these debates the voices of the disgruntled few are always amplified, drowning out the majority who either have no issue or who want to see a development go ahead.

But in these troubled economic times we need to make a decision.

Do we want to get behind a young businessman trying to breathe some life into our community, or do everything in our power to stand in his way?

If we choose the latter, we can look forward to more boarded up windows and empty shopfronts.