Lockout laws create the gentrification of the Cross
New South Premier Mike Baird’s controversial lockout laws have delivered a windfall for apartment owners in King’s Cross.
On Saturday, a two-bedroom apartment in the Kings Cross end of Potts Point sold for $1.63 million. That was $230,000 over reserve.
The bidding was furious with five bidders upping the ante with the bidding starting at the $1.4 million reserve. Such was the eagerness that the bids were rising quickly in $50,000, $25,000 and $5000 increments.
All up, the auction took just 19 minutes,
Michael, 35, an upgrader from Zetland who didn’t want to disclose his surname, told Fairfax Media that the lockout laws had made all the difference.
‘I know that a smaller place sold for $1.6 million up the nicer end of Macleay Street, but I think there’s plenty of potential for growth in this part of the suburb now with the lockout laws,” Michael said.
Estate agents are now saying that residential interest in the entertainment end of Kings Cross has increased significantly in the last couple of months,
That correlates to the closure of several pubs and bars in the area.
“This is certainly a changing market around here,” sales agent, Brigitte Blackman of LJ Hooker Inner City told Domain. “So many people are looking to move in.”
All this means that the Cross is changing as clubs close down.
One of them was Hugo’s Lounge which was last year placed in voluntary administration after suffering a 60 per cent drop in revenue since the laws with 1.30am lockouts and 3am last drinks were introduced in February 2014.
The owner of Hugo’s Lounge Dave Evans blamed it on the lockout laws. "We said it would destroy business, we said it would destroy staff, and here we are," Evans told The Shout.
But Veronica Wallington, co-owner of Kings Cross gym the P.E Dept.says it’s changing the kind of businesses and real estate being set up in King’s Cross.
"The businesses are closing down - the clubs and the bars - and I think that's heavily due to the lockout laws but at the same time the societal shift or cultural shift, it's there - it has been in Bondi - and is transferring further and further into the city," Wallington told the Sydney Morning Herald.
"I don't want to be biased and say I'm for the lock-out laws when it has helped close down businesses, but at the same time if it has helped accelerate this push for a healthier, wellbeing and cultural change, then I can only see it as a good thing. It was a change that was coming and it's just been accelerated by it.”
by: Australian Hospitality
