Residents and venues must come to an accommodation if…

Residents and venues must come to an accommodation if Newcastle is to become a 24-hour city

NIGHT LIFE REVIVAL: King Street Hotel hoping to end its COVID hiatus.

IF you want quiet, move somewhere quiet. If you want vibrant, move to where the nightlife is. You can't have both."

So wrote Jake Fly, from Cooks Hill, in a letter to the editor on Monday, neatly encapsulating a popular view, that anyone who moves into the Newcastle CBD should be well aware of what they are letting themselves in for.

But the Newcastle CBD is ever-changing, as two articles in today's Newcastle Herald aptly illustrate. In one piece, photos of a packed Hunter Street between the wars recall its role as the Hunter's premier retail destination.

In the other, the striking new University of Newcastle building taking shape at Honeysuckle illustrates the growth of a burgeoning "education precinct".

On Wednesday, Newcastle West resident Narelle Heaney remarked that telling prospective apartment buyers about nearby night-time venues was not "a get out of jail card" for the authorities, it was "poor planning".

THAT WAS THEN: Hunter Street in the 1930s.

Ms Heaney said Newcastle City Council had two choices: it could "stop increasing inner city venues or stop approving unit developments".

Neither is likely to happen, and residential complaints about noise, public intoxication and disorderly conduct in the CBD seem destined to increase.

At present, inner Newcastle, like most city centres, is preternaturally quiet because of COVID.

But it will bounce back.

When this happens, policies encouraging the "night time economy" will benefit big venues as well as small.

Extended trading hours mean extended noise for nearby residents, and not only from the venues themselves.

TRANSFORMATION: The distinctive laminated timber frames of the University of Newcastle building under construction at Honeysuckle, with residential apartments at 10 Worth Place, fronting Honeysuckle Drive, across the street. Picture: Simone De Peak

Regardless of pleas to "be quiet when leaving", no-one can seriously argue that a 2am crowd will be less disruptive than a midnight one.

Even if every venue complies with the law, and every punter goes quietly home, the tension between the expectations of apartment dwellers, and the ambient impacts of a cluster of pubs, clubs, bars and restaurants, is a recipe for potential conflict.

Conflict can, theoretically, be managed.

But cultural expectations are important.

Hong Kong, New York and London are cities that never sleep, yet accommodate residential living in the heart of the action.

Such arrangements should not be beyond us.

After all, it can't be as noisy as living next to a steelworks, or the power station that once operated out of Zaara Street.