The beach-side battle to find a parking space at North Wollongong will be a whole lot harder later this month.
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Just ahead of summer, Wollongong City Council will close off the beach-side car park opposite North Wollongong Surf Club for almost two weeks.
It’s because of the Corona Sunsets music festival set to take place on and around North Beach on Saturday, December 1.
Wollongong is the only Australian venue on this year’s touring schedule for the festival, which has also been staged at London, Mexico and Dubai.
The event site includes a portion of North Beach, Diggies, The Bathers Pavilion, the surf club and a portion of Galvin Park.
In the lead-up to the festival, the event crew needs the North Wollongong car park.
This means more than 120 car parking spaces across the road from the beach will be unavailable for almost two weeks.
“In order to assist with the bump-in, approval has been given for exclusive use of the North Wollongong car park for event site management, construction and bump-out from November 23 until December 4,” a council spokeswoman said.
On the day of the event there will also be a number of road closures, including Blackett Street and a section of Cliff Road.
“There will be traffic management in place in this precinct from November 23, to facilitate safe access to the beach for site set-up while still allowing vehicle and pedestrian access,” the spokeswoman said.
This means more than 120 car parking spaces across the road from the beach will be unavailable for almost two weeks.
She said council had required the event organisers to set up a transport plan to deal with expected extra traffic, given the festival was on the first weekend of summer.
The plan included "overflow parking” at the Innovation Campus, running three extra buses in a loop from Wollongong, North Wollongong and Fairy Meadow Stations, the Innovation Campus and to North Beach during the day and eight at night.
This would be in addition to the usual bus services that ran in the North Wollongong area.
“Previous experience indicates that festival goers do tend to use public transport to access the event,” the spokeswoman said.
“The traffic management plan includes extensive communication including a letterbox drop to residents, visual messaging boards, signage and information on the event website and a direct mail out to ticket holders.”