ATET case due for court soon as barge remains berthed at North Wharf

A trial date is expected to be confirmed soon for ATET’s long-running legal case against the City of Melbourne, marking a significant step forward nearly three years after the Docklands floating venue was forced to close.

ATET owner Jake Hughes said the matter was now due for a directions hearing on April 1, where a trial date is expected to be confirmed.

He said an outcome would likely take longer, with a decision expected sometime after the hearing concludes.

“It’ll be a two-week trial and then we imagine it may be weeks or even months later that we’ll get an outcome,” he said.

The court date is a major development in a case that has dragged on since ATET was shut down in 2023 after noise complaints and council action brought the venue’s short-lived operation at North Wharf to an end.

As previously reported by Docklands News, the Hughes family had invested more than $2 million into the project, which operated for only eight months before closing. Mr Hughes has long maintained the venue was compliant and should never have been shut down, arguing that the council acted unlawfully in terminating its licence.

He continues to reject the claim that ATET was persistently breaching noise limits, stating that the venue had been publicly portrayed as a repeat offender despite independent acoustic advice later proving otherwise.

He also says ATET had put forward a range of operational changes to address concerns, including reducing sound levels and cutting music entirely during more sensitive night-time periods.

He added that ATET also later offered to change the sound system, relocate to a site further from apartments, and enclose the venue entirely in acoustic glazing, noting that these “proposals all went well beyond the requirements for compliance, which had already been demonstrated”. Despite this, he said none of these proposals were accepted.

“When these proposals were rejected, we then offered to operate at background music levels permanently, and even this was rejected,” he said.

For Docklands, the case has remained one of the precinct’s most contentious recent disputes, touching not only on nightlife, planning and governance, but on wider frustrations about how North Wharf has been managed during a period of major change.

The ATET barge remains berthed at North Wharf even as Lendlease ramps up development works along the wharf. While much around it has changed, including the recent forced exit of Docklands’ heritage fleet from the same broader location, the former venue itself remains in place pending the outcome of the legal fight.•