Pyrmont residents campaign against brothel plans

Pyrmont residents are fighting for the Council to ban the development of a brothel at 1 Union Street.

The development application is under Council review and residents are furious that a brothel could open on heritage-listed Union Square, metres away from the local war memorial.

Elizabeth Elenius, Convenor of Pyrmont Action Group said: “[This] can’t happen; as far as I’m concerned, if they do, it’s on their heads.

“It just cannot be approved. It contravenes city plans. It’s right across the road from the war memorial… They are going to get hundreds of letters.”

Chris Ji, owner and operator of the proposed brothel – ‘The Bank’, responded by saying: “We share the same concerns as residents. We are confident we can coexist. Our nature of business is different from strip clubs. I can’t see how it will impact the streetscape.”

Local residents and business owners have created a petition against the application.

Local vet and campaigner, Shane Abood, said under the Local Environmental Plan (LEP) the brothel would be “too close in proximity to childcare, a community centre and the casino.”

The LEP states a brothel can’t be within a 100 metre radius of a school, place of public worship or community facility.

Under current legislation a war memorial could be considered a community facility. If that is determined to be the case, brothels would be prohibited from Union Square.

“The one thing that enrages people is the [proximity to the] war memorial,” campaigner Kim White said.

Another community member, who is a registered child carer, looks after five children under the age of six on Paternoster Row behind the proposed brothel.

“All the parents disagree with this and also it will cause my business to drop, because the parents do not want their children across the road from the brothel,” she said.

The proposed operating hours of the brothel are 11am to 3-5 am (depending on the day of the week) and the community campaigning against the development believe this should be enough to convince the council to deny the application.

Under the LEP, brothels are also prohibited from being located within 75 metres of each other and must be 200m from the Casino.

Mr Ji said he is aware of the legislation and employed a town planner to measure the distances.

The application shows the distances are satisfactory but depending on how the legislation is interpreted the brothel may fail to meet regulations.

The brothel and the casino are shown to be within the guideline distance but the measurements have been taken from the far entrances of the buildings.

If the measurements are taken from the Casino’s Pyrmont street entrance the brothel fails to meet guidelines. It is one of the objections raised in the petition issues by the Union street community.

“It has to be outside 200 metres,” said Mr Abood.

“We’ve already got 100 signatures; we’re not mucking around, people are pretty angry about it.”

The campaigners are also anxious about the potential effect the brothel will have on school activities. The square is heritage listed and hosts educational school-tours on Sydney’s past.

“Sometimes there are 100 kids here,” said Ms White.

Mr Ji maintained the activities of the brothel discreet would be discreet.

“Clearly as we proposed, all windows of our premise will be obscure glazed and non-operable. The Streetscape will have zero exposure to our business,” he said.

Another campaigner, Barbara Romanowski, is concerned about how the brothel will change the social nature of the square.

“It won’t be comfortable to have chats like this,” she said.

The brothel’s current application says it won’t allow groups to enter its premises and Ms Romanowski believes this will cause groups of men to loiter on the street:

“If 5 go in, 5 go out, what will they be doing?”

She is already angered by the influence of the brothel at 121 Pyrmont Street, claiming men have approached her house mistaking it for a brothel.

The brothel at 121 Pyrmont Street opened under similarly controversial circumstances. It was initially not approved but the decision was appealed to the Land & Environment Court and reversed.

Now, the Union Street community are agonising over the possibility this could happen again.

Submissions to the council over the development application for 1 Union Street close on the June 2.

By Nicholas Jordan