Byron Bay council proposal for Las Vegas-style precinct sends bohemian idyll into a tailspin
A quiet proposal to bring back late-night party precincts in Byron Bay has sparked the beach town’s biggest battle in decades, with millionaire pub owners, bohemian locals and council divided.
Residents of Byron Bay think their elected officials are trying to turn it into Las Vegas on the beach.
In April, they discovered New South Wales Minister for Music and the Night-time Economy, John Graham, announced Byron would be the first area outside of Sydney to become a special entertainment precinct.
It was a step to restore “vibrancy” in the once alternative-lifestyle town on the far north coast where the contrast between the haves and have-nots has never been more stark.
Byron Bay is a town where ocean-view homes sell for tens of millions of dollars, often in ramshackle condition, and pubs for hundreds of millions, while the township itself is a bazaar of failed stores and its footpaths are scattered with sleeping bags for the homeless.
A special entertainment precinct would “bring life back” to Byron, says local Mayor Sarah Ndiaye who applied for the program with little – or perhaps no – consultation on Christmas Eve last year. The precinct would allow her council to set trading hours, govern noise pollution and reduce red tape for activities such as outdoor dining along the main retail strip of Byron and into a tired part of town that Justin Hemmes, Antony Catalano and Metrics Credit are spending a fortune developing.
The April news reports took even Byron Bay Chamber of Commerce boss Matt Williamson by surprise. He quickly got on board, describing the plan as “pro-community”.
Many residents vehemently disagree. And they want a fight.
The nexus of the problem is that the precinct proposal in its current form comes with extended licensing hours.
It’s a bridge too far for many in a town where 50 people were arrested during a drunken riot in 1993 and revellers were filmed jumping from a second-storey balcony. Escalating alcohol-fuelled violence over the next two decades led licensees to voluntarily sign up to some of the toughest alcohol laws in Australia outside of remote indigenous communities.
Locals fear that could be reversed.
Ndiaye says many businesses in Byron “are really struggling,” and the special entertainment precinct will help take Byron back to its more “eclectic and vibrant way”.
The mayor would not say which of those businesses encouraged her to apply for the privileged status. Several of Australia’s richest men have skin in the game.
Bar and gambling billionaire Hemmes, the billionaire Flannery coal family, strata maintenance boss Scott Didier, former rugby league great Tom Mooney, and media and hospitality entrepreneur Catalano all have planned or existing businesses inside the designated special entertainment precinct.
But the town’s biggest pub owner, Didier, does not want the precinct to proceed.
Didier paid a record $140m for The Beach Hotel just a few months ago and is a 50 per cent shareholder in the Great Northern Hotel, which he and Scott Emery purchased for $80m in 2021.
“We will definitely make a submission against it,” Didier told The Australian. “Every single local person that I’ve spoken to, they are all saying the same thing. They don’t want all the violence back on the streets. Fifteen years ago it was terrible here.”
To be sure, Didier’s two pubs in the strip of land embedded in the precinct already have late-night liquor licences.
Byron’s richest residents
Didier made his fortune from his listed building services company Johns Lyng Group.
He says his managers at both Byron pubs – the two biggest in town – are concerned.
“They’re saying it’ll just push people out in the street. It will create a lot of pop-up bars … and a lot of these people are probably a little bit undercapitalised. I’ve had a lot of people call me on it and they’re worried about domestic violence, sexual harassment.”
He points out that his pubs have paid security guards and adhere to responsible service of alcohol guidelines.
An insurmountable problem is the lack of transport options for overserviced people to get home.
This view is shared by Didier and everyone else The Australian polled. Byron Bay has almost no public transport and very few options to ferry patrons to the surrounding areas of Mullumbimby, Suffolk Park and Ocean Shores.
“There are hardly any Ubers or taxis to get people out of town and when these things close, it just spills people onto the street, and that’s what the police don’t want, and nobody wants.”
Whether other venues with skin in the game want the special entertainment precinct is unclear.
Merivale is pouring close to $100m into the area. Hemmes snapped up former backpacker haunt Cheeky Monkey’s and an adjoining site for $13m and is set to open his popular Totti’s restaurant and Jimmy’s Falafel on the site.
Neither Hemmes nor a Merivale representative would comment.
It’s likely Totti’s retains the late-night licence of Cheeky Monkey’s irrespective of the precinct’s future, but the planned neighbouring Jimmy’s Falafel site could benefit from the change.
Where the special entertainment precinct could really add value is the $119m site of the old and new Woolworths which spans 1.1 hectares at 98-116 Jonson Street and was sold by JLL.
Hemmes was an underbidder on that property, which was snapped up by Ross Pelligra and Sam Mustaca but whose biggest equity owner will become non-bank lender Metrics Credit. Metrics has suddenly found itself a major player in the hospitality industry after companies it lent to, such as the owners of Rockpool Bar & Grill, have been unable to meet their loan repayments.
Catalano, who owns the prestigious Raes on Wategos, has an interest in land within the special entertainment precinct through his Bonobo by Raes at 116-118 Jonson Street.
That near-complete development includes short-stay accommodation and a restaurant and retail offering. Catalano would not comment on the precinct.
Brian Flannery, who made his fortune in coal, no longer has properties within the bounds of the proposed precinct. He owns Elements resort at Belongil Beach and the Byron solar train that shuttles people the 3km from Belongil into town during the day.
Flannery doesn’t want to be running the train at night if the special entertainment precinct proceeds.
“We don’t want drunken passengers,” he laughs, adding, more seriously, that it’s “not economical,” to run the 3km route at night. As for a legislated party town, he doesn’t have a strong opinion.
“I know from the locals and my friends that a lot of them don’t want it,” says Flannery. “They think there is enough alcohol consumption in Byron and enough entertainment without it.”
Fears about what might result from increased drinking hours in Byron has spurred local community groups into action.
Byron residents outraged
Two months ago the Byron Community Centre was filled with “hundreds” of people who attended an emergency meeting on the proposal, according to former mayor Jan Barham who ran the council from 2004 to 2012. She fears a return to a time when the streets filled up with drunken revellers unable to find ways home.
“We had a party town reputation at that time,” says Barham. “My concern is over safety. Safety for communities, safety for visitors. And we all know the correlation with alcohol. We’ve seen it before, and we are seeing it currently.”
She refers to the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research figures. “When we look at 2481 (the Byron postcode) our figures for assaults and sexual assaults are four times the state average. And when you look at Byron Bay town centre, the figures are eight times the state average.”
Barham’s opposition to the special entertainment precinct puts her at odds with the current mayor, despite them both being Greens. The former mayor says the town needs both a tourism management and safety management plan.
“Byron Bay is my local town and I get disheartened when I see it looking shabby,” Barham says. “Last time we did planning it was very clear through the citizens’ jury process that the focus should be on our values. Nature, health, wellbeing. No one said ‘we want to be a party town’.”
A public health nightmare in Byron Bay
Head of Byron Hospital Emergency Department, Dr Blake Eddington, is also opposed to the proposal, telling local broadcaster NBN it would double the number of venues allowed to serve alcohol after midnight.
Trauma rates rise 15 to 20 per cent for every hour that alcohol is served beyond midnight, he said, adding “first responders and our emergency department have enough pressure late on Friday and Saturday nights”.
The emergency doctor supports more well-planned vibrancy between say 9am and 11pm as long as existing issues such as security around licensed areas, street lighting and public transport are dealt with first.
The local medical community recall 1993 as a public health crisis.
“People were dedicated to getting off their faces. We were just lucky that night that people didn’t die,” one says.
Such feedback from the community is “welcome,” says Graham, the minister, adding that the special entertainment precinct already in place in the inner-city Sydney suburb of Enmore had “no indication of an increase in ambulance callouts,” since being implemented.
“We want to bring our night-time economies back to life, but not at the expense of safety,” Graham adds. “Consultation with the local police and health authorities is an essential part of the process.”
Such precincts are designed to give councils simple planning tools to cut red tape and expense for small businesses where they want to encourage increased activity.
“This is not just about licensed venues. The changes would apply to events, retail stores, cafes and outdoor dining,” Graham adds.
DJs support late nights
For local DJ and event promoter Scott Plant, Byron hasn’t been the same.
“A lot of people have taken a hit since Covid,” Plant says. And he is convinced after speaking to the mayor that transport options will be included in the precinct.
“A lot of people I know won’t come into town because you can’t get in and out … They are talking about having people patrolling the streets who would be independent from the police, just monitoring certain areas and making sure everything is OK.”
For Ndiaye, who has been mayor for one year, the growing backlash seems to have caught her by surprise.
She would not say which licensed venues she had canvassed, but says when she asked them if they were keen to expand their service hours, “none of the ones I’ve spoken to have expressed they would like to”.
The special entertainment precinct gives the council access to a $162,800 grant and she could have opted not to include later licensing in the Byron proposal, but says it was “just part of the suite of options”.
“The focus is not on the 3am close as far as I am concerned,” says Ndiaye.
As for Williamson, from the chamber of commerce, he blames a “huge deficit of trust in the Byron community” as likely leading to the whole project getting canned. He stands by his position that it would help bring Byron back to life.
“This whole SEP issue has degenerated into a vocal minority who feel like it’s going to create the second coming of Las Vegas,” Williamson says with a sigh.
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