Inner West Greens Councillors Call For Investigation Into Camperdown Park Cafe Approval

Inner West Greens councillors are calling for an investigation into a Council decision to allow a businessman to construct a private cafe at the back of his now defunct Comedor restaurant that backs onto Camperdown Memorial Rest Park, Newtown. 

Comedor closed in December, amidst allegations that its owner Walter Shellshear had abused and threatened his staff and delayed paying their wages.  But Shellshear, who denies the allegations, is pushing ahead with the cafe which Council promoted to the public as an extension of the Comedor.  The restaurant was awarded a ‘hat’ by the Sydney Morning Herald food guide soon after it opened in July 2024. 

Residents and other community members have written urgent letters to the Inner West Council and Councillors over the end-of-year period. They are urging a halt to construction and an investigation into why Shellshear, who had no hospitality experience, was granted the right to operate a commercial venture in the park without a tender.

“Serious questions have been publicly aired in the Sydney Morning Herald about the owner of the Comedor restaurant,” wrote Pip Hinman, whose family have been regular users of the park for decades. “This should mean that the Inner West Council, which purports to support workers’ rights, should reconsider its decision to hand Comedor a slice of Camperdown Memorial Rest Park. I am writing to urge you to make public what agreements were made with Comedor.”

In November, the Inner West Council voted to approve a take-away cafe on a deck at the back of the newly opened Comedor restaurant. Eight Labor councillors supported by Independent Councillor Victor Macri voted down a Greens amendment to delay a decision until a new Plan of Management for the Park had been finalised in 2025. 

Shortly after the meeting, Council released a statement stating that “this agreement will provide park users with direct access to one of Sydney’s best restaurants and add to the vibrancy and diversity of our hospitality offerings in the heart of Newtown.” Rumours about poor treatment of staff were already circulating and just weeks later, the restaurant closed.

Council’s controversial decision to approve the cafe became even more embarrassing when the SMH published an investigation into the conduct of Shellshear. It detailed the resignations of key staff including its chefs and manager amidst allegations that Shellshear had  abused and threatened staff, paid them late and was drunk and smoked in the restaurant. Shellshear denied all these allegations against him. 

Initially, Camperdown park users and residents who were following this saga hoped that given the circumstances in which the restaurant closed, the outdoor cafe would be put on hold. But despite community opposition, Shellshear seems determined to push ahead. 

Greens Councillor Liz Atkins, who moved the amendment to delay consideration of the proposal, said,  “The allegations about Comedor in the press are deeply concerning. Not surprisingly they have raised significant concerns in the community, especially after what was seen by many as a failed consultation process. If true, they are completely unacceptable and Council needs to reconsider its approval of the expansion of the restaurant into Camperdown Memorial Rest Park. My fellow Greens councillors and I have written to the General Manager asking for a thorough investigation into the matter and I have asked for a full briefing as soon as possible in the new year as to Council’s options.” 

Greens MP for Newtown Jenny Leong said, “While there may have been differing opinions locally on the extension of Comedor into Campo Park through the construction of an outdoor deck, there’s no debate that the alleged bullying and toxic treatment of staff is something that is certainly not welcome in our community.”

Camperdown park neighbours receive notification of cafe construction

Last week, Shellshear’s neighbours received a notice announcing that construction of a platform for the cafe would begin on January 2. The notice included no name or contact number and was not on letterhead. Some people even wondered if it was a fake. City Hub wanted to ask Shellshear if it was genuine and many other questions.  He told us to leave a note under the door of the restaurant building. We did this, requesting an interview. We received no response but his planner Phillip Bull, who acted for him on all Comedor planning matters, confirmed that the notice was from Shellshear.

Shortly after Christmas, packets of coffee and tea and barista products appeared on a shelf inside the back window of the now deserted restaurant building. 

No tender for Shellshear’s cafe

‘Other Inner West Park have cafes’ was a key argument used by Inner West Council and Labor Councillor Chloe Smith, who led the debate in favour of the proposal. While it is true that there are other cafes in Inner West parks, they were subject to a tender process and several are associated with other Council facilities such as swimming pools. 

Tenders for Council cafes are a competitive and publicly advertised process and only those with relevant experience are invited to apply. Shellshear himself has no experience in running a cafe. He hired competent staff but quickly and catastrophically fell out with them. 

There are well established legal principles to ensure that public land is managed in the public interest. Tenders and publicised expressions of interest are designed to ensure that those gaining the commercial advantage of trading in a public space are fit to do so and will provide the community with the quality service. (Here is a tender document  for Yeo Cafe in Ashfield which was specifically mentioned by Smith.) 

Other Inner West Park cafes are run by businesses with a strong hospitality record. This is a far cry from Shellshear’s company Landmark Recruitment Pty Ltd.. Until last year, Landmark was part of a chain of labor hire companies that Shellshear took over. Most of the Landmark subsidiaries were put into voluntary administration and then wound up, some of them with significant debt owed to the Australian Tax office and companies associated with Shellshear. 

Shellshear ran his debt company Judgement Debt Solutions out of the restaurant building for seven years. Its website was taken off line last April but some pages can still be seen on Internet Archive Wayback machine.

Shellshear promoted his ‘bullish’ and ‘aggressive’ tactics often associated with the debt industry, but not so suitable in  the restaurant trade. 

Shellshear has previously told journalists that he initially planned to develop the building into luxury apartments but decided on a restaurant instead.  All this information was publicly available to Councillors and Council staff – if they had looked. 

Was there approval for the Camperdown Memorial Rest Park cafe?

The first the public knew about the cafe was when an earlier notice that works were about to begin was distributed to neighbours in August. The SMH food reviewer also published a story that described how he was impressed by the promise of the delights of dining on a deck in a park.  Shellshear told him he was hopeful that he would get a  licence that would allow diners to bring alcohol.

To placate angry park users, the Council apologised for failing to conduct a required consultation process and proceeded to organise one. Although there was support for a cafe, a clear majority of those who expressed a view opposed the cafe.  Despite this, Council staff recommended that the cafe go ahead, with slightly extended opening hours and no chairs and tables – at least until after a trial period. 

The consultation process was flawed, as reported in an earlier City Hub report. Residents opposed to the cafe were left with a feeling that the decision, which had been postponed until after the recent local government election, was ‘locked in’. This raises a question about whether or how the café was ever properly approved and by whom. The consultation process effectively diverted attention from this significant question.

Who approved the cafe?

Phillip Bull has been involved in planning the restaurant for Shellshear since 2019. He was one of two speakers who publicly spoke in support of the cafe project at the November Council meeting. 

City Hub spoke to Bull twice. On the first occasion, he said that the cafe was very much part of discussions and was agreed to at the original 2021 court proceedings, which occurred because Council initially refused the conversion of the property to a food business. When we tried to ask further questions, he terminated the conversation and told  us to ring back later. 

The settlement document from that case, which is publicly available online does not include any mention of a café, deck or canteen. It also states that “Works or activities other than those approved by this Development Consent will require the submission of a new Development Application or an application to modify the consent under Section 4.55 of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979.” 

However City Hub has sighted the original drawings for the proposal and they do include a servery window that opens inwards. There is nothing however to suggest anything outside the property boundary. Given the inclusion of the window it would seem likely the Shellshear always intended to have the cafe. 

The public were kept in the dark. If they had not been, it would have been clear that approval for the cafe would be inconsistent with the existing Camperdown Park Plan of management (POM) which remains available on the Inner West Council website. Council has been slow to review this POM which will be superseded by a new POM in 2025. It has been conveniently set aside in the discussions about the cafe.

The first mention of the cafe came in a letter written by Bull to Rocco Sergi, who recently joined the council as a full-time property manager. According to LinkedIn, his background is in real estate and property management, most recently for the Greater Sydney Parklands including Callan Park.  

On August 23, Bull wrote to Sergi asking for a permit for a deck that had been approved by ther court in 2021. His letter was not in the form of an application but rather weirdly informed Sergi what permits would be required. He forwarded a Plan of Management for the cafe  which allows Council to terminate the agreement if Landmark Recruitment “do anything in or around the Premises which in Council’s reasonable opinion may be annoying, dangerous or offensive.“ Arguably, that condition may have been already breached. 

Bull wrote, “The restaurant premises is built and operational, an agreement has been concluded with the Park’s manager for use and works, that now needs to be formalised with the applications sought.”

City Hub wanted to know when that agreement was formed, whether  it was oral or in writing and who authorised it as a basis to proceed. But when we tried to raise these questions in a second conversation with Bull, he said, “Cafes in parks are not a big deal. Not a big deal, not a thing for journos to obsess on. Got to go now bye” and rang off. 

City Hub’s focus on this issue may seem obsessive given the small amount of land involved. But it is the job of journalists, including local ones, to ensure transparency in the public interest. This is especially the case when several residents have told City Hub that they are apprehensive about speaking out and do not wish to be named. If local media do not pursue issues, the danger is that flawed decisions will justify other decisions and a lack of transparency becomes accepted practice. Similarly the objections of residents become delegitimised as the whinging of ‘nimbies’.

City Hub spoke to Sergi who is supportive of the proposal. He told City Hub that he had relied on information given to him by others that the cafe was approved in the original 2021 application. Asked why it would not be better to wait for the new Plan of Management, he told City Hub that the permits to construct the cafe had to be done in advance so they could become part of the new POM. This seems to be a misunderstanding  of the process. The draft new POM will be  exhibited and only after that will the new POM be finalised. 

Sergi declined to answer further questions and said that we should ring Council’s communications’ staff. He has informed one resident who has written to him asking for a halt that the permits for Shellshear are in place and that he had referred to Council’s executive management a copy of the SMH story about Shellshear’s alleged abuse and threats when he became aware of it.  

City Hub has been attempting since mid December to get answers on a range of issues relating to the cafe from Council’s general manager Peter Gainsford. Before Christmas, Media Manager Jonny Browne said the latest list of questions could not be answered until January 3. 

Wendy Bacon is a freelance journalist who was previously the Professor of Journalism at the University of Technology, Sydney. She has publicly supported the Greens.