Bane of the Lane

While other small businesses have received Council laneway grants of up to $30,000, businesses in a central Kings Cross laneway say they are threatened with bankruptcy due to Council bureaucracy.

Llankelly Place, off Darlinghurst Road, has been transformed from a dark, vandalised, crime-ridden alley, into a spacious new walkway – half lined with cafés and restaurants, and half empty.

Café owner Jason Sinai applied for outdoor seating approval in early December, expecting a response before he opened in mid-January. He is still waiting nearly five months later.

“It’s supposed to be done within 42 days,” he said, “every third day someone comes from Council and we have the same conversation about why there’s no approval.”

With no space indoors, outside seats account for almost all of his business.

He said Council employees regularly threaten fines of $330 a day.

“That’s all the profit,” he said, “I’m quite certain it’ll happen one of these days.

“Without the outdoor seating you’d close the doors.”

When contacted by City News, Council said there was no outstanding application for the café.

Several small business owners have had similar complaints since the start of this year, when responsibility for overseeing outdoor seating licences in the area was taken over by Council’s Planning Department.

Councilor Di Tornai said the change was necessary for consistency because the area had been managed by a different Council department to the rest of the City, a consequence of the 2004 amalgamation with South Sydney Council.

“There wasn’t a consistency in the way the planning for the particular councils was written up, so we had to re-jig all of that so that everyone was treated with the same assessment process, in the same way,” she said.

City of Sydney has one of the fastest application processing times in the state, according to a council spokesperson.

“The City’s Planning Department assesses all footway applications and the Properties Unit manages footways once they’ve been approved, to help ensure consistency in the planning process and improve efficiency,” said the spokesperson.

Lilian Bourcet opened his sandwich shop next-door to Mr Sinai and had a similar experience.

“The papers are at Council, and we don’t know who’s working on it, when it’s going to come.

“If you look from Darlinghurst Road, and you don’t have any terraces, the laneway looks empty – there’s nothing to invite you to come in and make yourself comfortable,” he said.

“So if we’re not allowed to do that, the Council can give me my rent, and I’ll close the shop and go fishing every day.”

Council told City News Mr Bourcet’s application would be determined soon.

A few doors down, Malaysian restaurant owner Peter Hull has been asked to remove all outdoor seating despite the previous owners’ licence running until 2013.

“The day it’s onsold, the footway licence is no longer valid and then the new owner has to close down the footway operation,” he said.

“It is unrealistic for a small café/restaurant to have to close their footway trading,” he said, “we have been losing business by not being able to use the footway. They walk away – they won’t stay if they can’t sit outside.”

The businesses owners said they weren’t close enough to the city to be eligible for a laneway grant.

Michael Bain, owner of two venues on the laneway, said a grant would invigorate the area.

“Even if it was rubbish bins, or uniform awnings for the shops, or waive all the Council fees for outdoor seating for two years, or even if they spent some money for just advertising laneways for us,” he said.

Mr Sinai: “Or even if they just left us alone.”

By Lawrence Bull