Australia: Selinas Club Headed For Wrecking Ball, New Venues For Melbourne & NSW, More

Selinas, the iconic Sydney music venue within the Coogee Bay Hotel once described by David Bowie as “the best club in the world,” is heading for the wrecking ball. 

Plans put before local council for a six-storey $111 million (US$81.1 million) development by the hotel include a supermarket, 60 apartment buildings, a three-level basement car park and an eat street precinct with eight new eateries.

Selinas is not included in the plans – which have aroused neighbor protests over the size of the expansion  –  along with a boutique hotel and an apartment block.

Hotel owner, Chris Cheung, said, “Selinas had a huge reputation.  In one month in 1992 (in February), 1 million patrons walked through the doors. I’ve never seen anything like it!”

But new legislation regarding audience safety and alcohol self-abuse meant large capacity rooms were no longer viable. “You move with the times.”

From the 1970s to the 1990s in particular, the 1,750-capacity room gave the likes of Midnight Oil, INXS, Cold Chisel, Hoodoo Gurus and Crowded House a regular middle-size space between start-out pubs and beckoning arenas. 

A 22,000-seat outdoor amphitheater is being set up in New South Wales (NSW)’s Hunter Valley winery region to host “some of the biggest local and international acts touring Australia”.

Property developer Winarch Capital’s newly-formed Cedar Mill Group acquired an 105 acre property in the heart of the region to turn into an entertainment and tourism hub.

To be called Cedar Mill Hunter Valley, it opens 2023 at a cost of $107 million ($78.2 million). Hosting events, conferences and functions, it will have a 100-bed hotel, specialist food and beverage, a wine museum and multiple cellar doors. 

It is forecast to bring 68,045 extra visitors to the region and inject an additional $33 million ($24.1 million) each year. 

The Hunter Valley, a two-hour drive north of Sydney, already draws 8.5 million visitors a year to 150 wineries. Some like Roche Estate and Hope Estate already host festivals as Red Hot Summer, Grapevine Gathering and Sunset Sounds, with Rod Stewart set for March 2022.

The acquisition and rebranding of the Hunter Valley estate follows the recently announced $235 million ($171.7 million) redevelopment of Morisset Golf Course, to become Cedar Mill Lake Macquarie, with a 30,000 person concert venue, cafes and restaurants, accommodation and Australia’s largest aquatic play park.

Cedar Mill Group general manager Kyle McKendry said the plan was “to have outdoor venues coupled with exciting tourism concepts in the best locations in Australia and New Zealand.” In July it bought event management, logistics and production planning company Humm.

Melbourne is set to get a new 3,000-seat concert venue in the bayside suburb of St. Kilda, if talks between the City of Port Phillip and the state and federal governments for funding are successful.

The venue would be built in parklands next to the 2, 896-seat Palais Theatre which is operated by Live Nation. It would fill in the vacuum of similar-sized Festival Hall in North Melbourne, which was in 2020 sold to Hillsong Church, and Metro Theatre in the CBD, which was demolished to become a hotel also in 2020.

In August the council began paying local music venues up to $5,000 weekly ($3,655. 41) until end of 2021 as compensation for lost business after Melbourne went into its sixth lockdown.

Entertainment publicist Lisa Treen passed away in Sydney from liver and kidney failure compounded by pneumonia. She was 54.

Initially an artist manager, with then-husband Phil Tripp, she ran a PR company, the Australasian Music Business Conference, a music biz directory and the Music Staff employment agency during which time she placed many women in entertainment firms.

Global Music Match – a collaboration founded in 2020 by Sounds Australia, Showcase Scotland Expo and Canada’s East Coast Music Association (ECMA) – was honored with this year’s WOMEX Professional Excellence Award.

Created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, via social media and peer-to-peer collaboration, Global Music Match’s aim was to create new audiences internationally for future touring.

In its inaugural year, 96 artists from 14 countries participated, including 12 from Australia, culminating in the live extravaganza Global Music Marathon at this year’s virtual Folk Unlocked conference. In 2021, the match expanded to 78 artists from 17 countries including 13 from Australia.