With a renewed focus on Sydney nightlife as lockouts are removed in the CBD/Oxford St, the City of Parramatta have landed a thorough and comprehensive 24 hr economy and music strategy!
On 10 February 2020, Council resolved to endorse a 5-year night time economy strategy for the City of Parramatta, the Parramatta Night City Framework 2020-2024 (PNCF).
See link https://www.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au/council/night-city
The PNCF contains over 80 actions for Council across 6 focus areas:
Focus 1 – Planning for a future 24-hour CBD and late trading centres
Focus 2 – Parramatta as a centre of late-night business, leisure and culture
Focus 3 – A night city supported by infrastructure
Focus 4 – Promoting Parramatta as a thriving night time destination
Focus 5 – Keeping our city safe and engaging our community
Focus 6 – Parramatta as a leading night city
Live Music Office is included in many of the music actions, including:
- Continue with Live and Local as a musician development program and Amplify as a CBD wide venue activation for live music at night
- Support an annual all-ages music event with mentoring for young musicians and event producers at night
- Develop a Live Music Taskforce for the City to guide the development of the live music scene in Parramatta
- Develop a Live Music Strategy for the City
It’s also great to see a suite of strong regulatory measures endorsed by Council, including:
- Investigate planning mechanisms to enable conversion of existing food and beverage businesses into small bars with through minimum requirements of development applications
- Identify late night entertainment precincts for the purposes of place-specific activations plans, strategic planning and development controls
- Explore policy options to ensure future residential and late trading business development in precincts of a mixed character incorporate appropriate acoustic minimisation measures
- Develop and maintain consistent regulatory guidelines to live music throughout the City
- Develop a resource for new residents moving to late night entertainment precincts detailing expectations for reasonable night time sound
- Investigate the inclusion of a clause into the Section 10.7 Planning Certificate detailing expectations of some reasonable night time sound when moving to key entertainment and night time precincts consistent with existing practice in Sydney Olympic Park
- Investigate planning mechanisms to allow low-risk and small scale cultural uses to be classified as exempt or complying development in the Parramatta Local Environmental Plan
We very much look forward to supporting the City of Parramatta alongside the other councils nationally we are engaging with, to better support the development of the live music sector through the progression of this strategy.
