Splendour in the Grass can now take up permanent residence at the North Byron Parklands site at Yelgun after gaining approval by the Planning and Assessment Commission (PAC) today. This decision means that the festival can now take up annual residence at the location, as well as host other cultural events, and bring more employment to the area.
“It’s great to be bringing Splendour back permanently to Byron where the festival began”, co-producer of Splendour Jessica Ducrou said earlier today.
Changes made to the approval by the NSW Department of Planning include: a “trial period” for events, a limit of 4 days per event, and an incremental growth in patron numbers per year of trial.
The amount of patrons allowed to the event should be allowed to grow with each year of the trial:
Concerns over the environmental impact of holding the event there has seen a number of protests, but Mat Morris, General Manager for North Byron Parklands, has assured residents that: “63% of the site is out of bounds” — and that this has been put aside for vegetation and wildlife, and out of the 258.71 hectares, only 93.29 hectares will be used for events.
Splendour in the Grass will now be held at the Belongil Fields site at North Byron Parklands from 2013.