An outdoor cinema with bar and food vans is operating in the St Kilda Botanical Gardens from 2 - 26 February 2022 may be hugely popular but is a nuisance for locals. Local residents have raised concerns about the location of the outdoor cinema within the St Kilda Botanic Gardens. Residents only received 2-days’ notice of the commencement of the cinema operation in the gardens and were offered a $9 discount on tickets as compensation for the inconvenience.
Residents are inconvenienced by the noise both during and after the screening ends due to patrons (up to 300 people) leaving the gardens. The noise from these patrons can continue past midnight as they leave the gardens and return to their vehicles.
The outdoor cinema is operating on consecutive evenings (except for 2 nights) throughout February. Is it reasonable to expect residents to live with the noise and inconvenience and impact on residents' sleep, personal and working lives?
A temporary fence has restricted visitors from using a large area of the gardens during daylight hours. This and the additional unsightly temporary infrastructure set up by the cinema operator is detrimental to the ambience of these historically significant gardens and shows no respect for gardening staff who work so hard to maintain this wonderful space. We understand that gardening staff have expressed their dismay about the damage wreaked on the gardens by the cinema infrastructure/equipment and patrons reportedly using garden beds as a toilet!
Port Phillip Matters would like to know:
1. Who was consulted in relation to permitting the outdoor cinema in the Gardens?
2. Does the operator’s permit fee recover power costs, additional waste removal, repair of the damage to the gardens and all other costs incurred by the CoPP?
3. What action, if any, has been taken to mitigate the noise and impact on residents?
4. Should the outdoor cinema be relocated somewhere else for 2023 in an area well away from residential properties?
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