The Eveleigh Hotel has been a gambling free family friendly community hub of the Abercrombie Street area for the last decade. We at the Eveleigh would like to keep it this way — but we need your support!

Recent planning restrictions proposed by the Sydney City Council are having a drastic impact on our hotel.

For the past year or so we have been the victim of incessant noise complaints from a neighbour, complaints that we – and our community of patrons – consider to be both unfounded and unfair.

As a result of these complaints, the council have imposed increasing restrictions on The Eveleigh. It is the most recent restrictions, however, being proposed by the council - on 27th January 2023 - which directly threaten our ability to operate in the future. These are outlined here:

1.     Future live music is banned.

2.     Outdoor seating is reduced yet again to a maximum of 6 people on two tables until 8PM.

3.     Side windows and doors must be closed to prevent noise leakage.

4.     Costly renovations must again take place to reduce noise leakage.

5.     Customers are alleged to have caused disruption outside, including drinking in the street, shouting, and smoking in anti-social areas. As a result we are on a final warning.

We at The Eveleigh Hotel completely and utterly reject these proposals, and we hope that you – the public – will help support us in this action.

Our reasons for rejecting each of these points are set out in more detail at the bottom of this petition.

At immense cost and personal effort our management and staff have already responded to previous restrictions from the council, despite the fact that we did not believe these restrictions to be founded upon reasonable judgement or sound empirical evidence. 

Actions taken by the council have caused great damage to the essential character of The Eveleigh Hotel. It is difficult to explain in this petition the degree of stress and anxiety experienced by the staff who, as one member of the front of house team put it, ‘feel constantly on edge’ as a result of the ever-anticipated complainant. To our great distress, staff have described experiencing an ‘anxious atmosphere’ at The Eveleigh in which any slight infringement of the rules, however momentary or inconsequential, may be witnessed and photographed by a complainant, or by the council themselves. Such an atmosphere has, in one case, led to an actual stress-related physical illness for which an ambulance had to be called during a shift. 

To summarise, the latest restrictions proposed by the council are only the most recent in a long series of demands which we believe to be unjustified. And, unfortunately, these restrictions are immediately detrimental to the viability of our family-run business in the future. The danger is that ongoing restrictions could very well result in the closure of the pub as you know it. What would the future hold? A soulless hotel with pokies and sports on the TV? Or perhaps private apartments? Certainly, our staff would lose their jobs, and it would set yet one more precedent in Sydney for the property owner’s right to exert their power over the local venues and hospitality businesses which bring so much character to the area in which they live.

We feel compelled therefore to ask the Sydney City Council to withdraw the recently proposed restrictions, and for the past restrictions be reconsidered. In particular we consider two entirely reasonable features of The Eveleigh Hotel’s operation going forwards to include: 
- modest live music events, such as jazz music on a Saturday afternoon
- and a restrained provision of outdoor seating, for 9 persons on 3 tables until 9PM. 

Here you can please show your support by signing our petition. You can also show your support by following us on Instagram @theeveleighhotel and sharing the notices we post on there, tagging in the mayor @clovermoore and using the hashtag #savetheeveleigh 

Thank you everyone for showing your support these past weeks - this community means a great deal to us. We love serving you, and your friends and families, and hope to continue doing so.

 

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The Eveleigh’s justification for rejecting the council’s proposals, in summary:-

 

1.     The only live music we present at The Eveleigh is distinctly family-friendly, both in noise-levels and in character. Our live jazz events which take place on Saturday afternoons finish at a modest 7PM. It is absurd to suggest that musical performances of this nature can be considered in anyway anti-social. The NSW government claim they wish to support hotels in moving away from gambling by promoting live music but how could any hotel owner, looking at what has happened at The Eveleigh, hope to succeed in this? 

2.     In the last year we have already reduced our outdoor seating from 9 people and a 10PM curfew to 8 people and an 8PM curfew. We do not understand why we are being asked to reduce our outdoor seating yet again when the Sydney City Council have stated in numerous places that they wish to support businesses to increase outdoor seating during the post-pandemic period. We propose an arrangement for outdoor seating, with provision for at least 9 people until 9PM when our restaurant closes. Sitting outside will protect our customers from potential risk of airborne viruses, particularly more vulnerable people, and it will also promote a positive social environment where people are showing a friendly presence on the street.

3.     The result of this proposal will reduce air flow to unsafe levels within the pub and, as a result, the atmosphere will be too hot for comfort during the summer, and, in addition, the oxygen levels will be reduced which is particularly dangerous in light of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Encouraging air-flow through open windows and doors was an intrinsic element of the hotel’s architectural design 150 years ago.

4.     According to a noise assessment carried out by an independent audio specialist in 2019, Acoustic Logic Consultancy, our noise levels were judged not to exceed the limits upheld by the council. We have already carried out renovations of an estimated $60,000 in recent years, responding with great patience to the council’s comments, and we are currently carrying out yet more renovations. Clearly the work we have already done exceeds all reasonable expectations. We do not believe that further renovations should be necessary, or that the Eveleigh Hotel should be liable for future expenses. If particular neighbors feel they are affected by noise levels which allegedly originate from our hotel, we believe they should be responsible for the cost of sound-proofing their own homes. To this end we would like the Good Neighbor policy, implemented in other areas by Inner West mayor Darcy Byrne, to be instated here.

5.     The Eveleigh hotel welcomes a diverse range of customers from the local area. The Aboriginal communities of Eveleigh and Redfern are particularly important to us.  As an inclusive hotel The Eveleigh regularly welcomes LGBTQ+, hard-of-hearing/ deaf, and multi-national and ethnically diverse groups. We believe that our customers are sociable, responsible, and proactive in improving the community’s safety and wellbeing. We do not recognise allegations that our customers are anti-social, aggressive, threatening, or otherwise inappropriate towards other members of the community. We do not condone or accept any such attitudes in our hotel. Our staff perpetually enforce our duty of care towards our customers and neighbors, for example by encouraging and reminding customers not to hold their drinks outside. Further restrictions imposed by the council will only make this more difficult.