Council Dances Around Leichhardt Parking

There is still a big issue around Leichhardt and the urgent need to increase public parking space for its main street business areas, which the Inner West Council bluntly refuses to acknowledge. When asking Council to consider the scenario that a fair portion of consumers living outside of the local government area, tend to avoid Leichhardt for its lack of parking, the answer from them is that there is a high reliance on private vehicles and simply the demand for parking outpaces the supply.

They go further to explain that they are implementing programs to encourage active and public transport to reduce parking demands, noting that there is a corresponding environmental and social benefit from that. For the local businesses along Norton Street this is not great news on what can be seen as a prolonged assault on the dwindling customers that still drive to and from the area. It makes it even harder for the group of local Italian-themed businesses to consistently keep attracting the broader cohort of Italophiles from the further reaches of Greater Sydney.

Incredibly Council does have one quick solution on hand to gain some local free parking spaces located on the state owned Leichhardt Tram Sheds site behind Pioneer Park, currently exclusively used by staff and visitors of the neighbouring Sydney Secondary College as well as the St Gerasimo’s Parishioners. Council Dances Around Leichhardt Parking In this instance, Council has resolved to write to the NSW Minister of Planning and request in sharing the space as a free after-hours council carpark, but nothing has happened to date.

Instead, the Council seems to be more focused on pushing bike paths, way-finding signage promoting the places of interest in “Little Italy” and further supporting live entertainment, all in the aim to improving the local business economy. Without surprise, the local residential car owners are also impacting on the availability of visitor parking in the business areas, but the residents themselves are not all convinced to give up their car ownership and adopt active and public transport for their movements around the Inner West.

This becomes even more problematic with the Council proposal to see medium density housing along Norton Street, amalgamating several properties into a larger site on northern side of the Italian Forum. The centre of this major development is where Norton Plaza currently stands, and it may also explain why the investor that purchased the shopping centre for $153 million in 2019 remains anonymous. The question now is to see if there is a substantial planned increase for visitor parking space as part of this future development, but that may be some time in the distant future.