The future of live music in Brisbane could be shaped by an unlikely legal battle involving a construction titan, a developer who lives in a riverside mansion shaped like a shark and the bass player from Powderfinger.
At stake is the right of live music venues to rock – regardless of new apartments being built around them as the city’s population booms and becomes increasingly dense.
The stoush was sparked last Friday when Hutchinson Builders lodged a notice of appeal at the Queensland planning and environment court against council’s approval of a three-tower, 1,000-apartment, mixed-use development in affluent Newstead, valued at $1.5bn, and marketed as “Little Italy”.
Hutchinson owns the adjoining land and refurbished the old aircraft hangar into the Triffid, which recently celebrated 10 years as a live music venue. The venue owner, John “JC” Collins, was the bassist in one of the city’s most successful bands of all time: Powderfinger.
Scott Hutchinson, the chair of the family-run construction company, and Collins have lodged concerns that the Triffid could be inundated with noise complaints by future Little Italy residents because the city’s council has approved a tower that will be built over the venue without “meaningful” accommodation of the fact it is an existing and celebrated home of live music.
Hutchinson was this year recognised by the government as a “Queensland Great” – due in part to his commitment to Brisbane’s live music scene through the Triffid and another collaboration with Collins, the Fortitude Music Hall. Also cited in the gong was his championing of an urban honeybee initiative.
Two months ago, Collins was named “night-life economy commissioner” by the previous premier to protect the city’s live music scene in the face of headwinds buffeting the sector.
Max Panettiere of Panettiere Developments, which is behind Little Italy, has previously described the urban infill project as “a gamechanger for Newstead”.
He told real estate press that the development would include a “stunning public piazza” that would be a “precinct” to celebrate Italian food and culture and its rich history in the area.
In May this year, Panettiere unveiled his new four-storey mansion, Gill House – designed to resemble a shark – at which a “who’s who of property and finance” were reported to have entered on a red carpet to the soundtrack of the movie Jaws.
Despite the profile and pizzazz of these protagonists, however, all three appear set to do their talking in court.
Collins declined to comment, citing legal reasons and his role as the state’s nightlife tsar.
Hutchinson insisted the matter was “getting sorted out” – though refused to elaborate. Panettierre could not be contacted.
But others are watching the case with interest.
The Griffith University live music researcher Ben Green describes it as a “test case” for Brisbane’s vaunted music planning laws.
In 2006, the city council designated Fortitude Valley as Australia’s first “special entertainment precinct” in a bid to protect the live music scene by placing the onus on new apartment developments “to incorporate extensive noise insulation”.
The Triffid is at the edge of this nightlife precinct and holds an “amplified music venue permit” under the “harmony plan”.
“They’re a venue that is protected by everything Brisbane has to offer in terms of live music planning,” Green says. “But that doesn’t make you invincible.
“And if you were to be subject to hundreds of complaints, you could expect to have some trouble.”
Collins’s objection to council, lodged during Little Italy’s approval process in August, stressed he was “not opposed to appropriate development” but that the proposed glazed facades on the bedrooms and living areas overlooking the Triffid did not do enough to protect the venue from potential noise complaints. As well as better apartment design and orientation, Collins asked for a provision that future residents should expect to hear music from the venue.
Green says that, almost 20 years after the Valley’s laws were introduced, more Brisbane residents might have to start accommodating that expectation.
Because, increasingly, small live music venues are now “popping up in the suburbs”. And, unlike the Triffid, these often aren’t backed by construction moguls – nor protected by any music-specific laws at all.
“So that’s where the broader question is: should Brisbane look beyond the precinct model?” he asks. “Do we now need to look to citywide protection, or planning, for things like live music?”
That is a proposal backed by community radio station 4ZZZ’s chair, Ruth Gardner. The musician and radio announcer knows first-hand the impacts that noise complaints can have on venues. She runs the Cave Inn, in Woolloongabba, which was almost sunk by a single complaint last year. In response, Gardner and her co-owners raised almost $14,000 from supporters to soundproof the venue.
It was not only the financial cost of the build that took a toll, she says, but the administrative burden of preparing reports and the prospect of losing an income while being committed to a lease.
“We’re not driving Mercedes,” she says. “So it’s huge, it’s very frightening.”
But Gardner sees green shoots for live music in a city that has given the country some of its greatest bands, from global punk pioneers the Saints to critically acclaimed the Go-Betweens.
The Zoo, a live music institution that closed this year after more than 30 years, has reopened under a different guise. The Cave Inn was saved by its punters. But while the live music community remains strong, Gardner agrees it might be time to rethink how the city’s laws might best serve it.
“I would like to see Brisbane’s musical heritage be protected as something of cultural significance.”
